COLLEGE FOOTBALL: THE BOWL GAMES : USC Shows Best Side to Texas Tech, 55-14 : Trojans Eat the Whole Enchilada

Frisbee’ing tortillas, Texas Tech’s football fans sure had more fun at the 59th Cotton Bowl than their players did. While they amused themselves by flipping Tex-Mex food from the stands at USC’s athletes and band, the Trojans, paying their first visit to this game, were throwing five touchdown passes and scoring more points than any Cotton Bowl winner ever.

“BEAT USC” was written on every tortilla, but the team from Lubbock, Tex., got flattened like a pancake Monday, 55-14. Because USC played some of its most overpowering football in years, winning by a margin that would have been the greatest in Cotton Bowl history had Texas Tech not scored on the game’s last play.

This was USC’s 24th bowl-game victory and made John Robinson two for two since returning as coach. Had the Trojans played this way against Penn State or Oregon, this might have been a far more satisfying season. They beat Texas Tech worse than national champion Nebraska did.

“Was it easier than you thought it would be?” someone asked senior quarterback Rob Johnson.

“Yeah, it was easier,” Johnson responded.

He wasn’t gloating. But he also wasn’t forgetting what certain Red Raider players had said before the game about “Southern Cal’s” quarterback not being all that great.

“I guess they’ve never played our caliber of offense,” said Johnson, who can tell his grandchildren that his three touchdown passes were more than Joe Montana, Dan Marino or Roger Staubach threw in their Cotton Bowl games. “We definitely confused them. We pretty much manhandled them.”

Tony Boselli--on his final mission en route to the NFL--and his fellow bouncers on USC’s line pushed Texas Tech around like shopping carts.

Keyshawn Johnson scored three touchdowns, something only five men in Cotton Bowl history ever did--among them Jim Brown.

John Herpin intercepted two passes, same way people like Patrick Bates, Chris Spielman and even Bart Starr once did.

Israel Ifeanyi, the 6-foot-5, 250-pound “Nigerian Nightmare,” introduced himself to the Texas Tech quarterback on two sacks.

Everyone had a hand in this one, or a foot. Cole Ford, a kicker whose hobby is riding horses in 24-hour, 100-mile Pony Express endurance races, came through with two field goals in his last USC game, including a career-long 42-yarder. Ford once said his biggest thrill would be to win a game for USC and then ride off into the sunset on Traveler IV, the school’s mascot. Someone should have let him.

To a man, the Trojans took turns wrecking Tech. By game’s end, George Perry got to make a good tackle, Scott Fields pounced on a fumble, Matt Koffler even got to do a little quarterbacking. Brad Otton threw two touchdown passes--neither Montana nor Marino did that, Brad--to warm up for next season’s opener against San Jose State.

And not to be left out, Jeff Diltz was once stopped short of the goal line, couldn’t quite squeeze his fingertips around a sure-thing touchdown pass . . . then finally got his, making a beautiful, juggling catch in the end zone for USC’s final points.

In a contest one Texas reporter dubbed “Tinseltown meets tumbleweed,” nothing kept the Trojans from taking care of business. Totally outmanned, there wasn’t much for the Red Raiders to do but just lose, baby. Minutes into the game, 150-pound freshman Stacy Mitchell chopped off USC’s 290-pound Darrell Russell at the ankles on a block, and Russell gave him a look that said: “You try that again and I’ll have you for lunch.”

Mitchell, whose nickname is Li’l Big Man, didn’t annoy him much after that, but he did catch a 45-yard touchdown pass on the game’s final play, then celebrated as though he were Dwight Clark and had just beaten the Dallas Cowboys. Crossing the goal line, USC’s Grant Pearsall grabbed the Li’l Big Man by the collar and dropped him, just to say howdy.

Everything until then was all Trojans. They even scored three touchdowns over a span of 76 seconds.

“When they got that 21-point run, I think that kind of put us in shock,” Texas Tech linebacker Bart Thomas said. “They played perfectly and we played terribly. You compound those together and you get your rear kicked.”

A reporter from the Lubbock (Tex.) Avalanche-Journal took notice of USC’s mascot, Traveler IV, being led from the stadium a couple of minutes before halftime with the score already 34-0. The horse gallops across the field after every Trojan touchdown.

“Must be tired,” the reporter said.

The boys from Buddy Holly’s hometown had a long, long day. Peggy Sue got buried. Only Nebraska (42-16) had defeated Texas Tech by more than a touchdown, which caused a discouraged Coach Spike Dykes to say to the media: “Thank y’all for bein’ here. You done a lot better job of handlin’ your business here than we did of handlin’ ours, and I apologize for that.”

Forget it, Spike. Just tell your fans to leave those tortillas home next time. Scribbling “BEAT USC” on a stack of corn-meal fritters didn’t get the job done. And neither did a freshman quarterback named Zebbie Lethridge. Sorry, but somebody’s got to say it: Zebbie shouldn’t do Dallas.

Then again, playing Texas Tech is fun, and USC should do it more often. Thank y’all for bein’ here.