COLLEGE FOOTBALL: THE BOWL GAMES : COMMENTARY : There’s No Ducking It Was a Decent Game

OK, OK, so it wasn’t the Rose Bowl game of the century. So there was no socko finish. So it didn’t, in all probability, give us a national champion.

So Penn State, a 17-point favorite, covered the spread by a point in its 38-20 victory over Oregon. So the Nittany Lions, who probably could have scored again by throwing a few passes, spent the last 2 minutes 44 seconds running the ball against a weary and vulnerable Oregon defense.

So what!

It still was a decent football game.

It wasn’t the bloodletting so widely predicted. It wasn’t the greatest mismatch since Germany sent its armor against Poland’s mounted cavalry. Oregon was not a flock of sitting Ducks.

In fact, Oregon, for nearly three quarters, gave unbeaten and second-ranked Penn State all the discomfort a bunch of Lions from the Nittany Mountains of central Pennsylvania could have hoped not to experience.

For the longest time Monday afternoon, Penn State wasn’t playing for the national championship, it was fighting for its reputation. Losing to Oregon, a team that had lost to Hawaii, for pity’s sake, would have been as big a kick in the image as showing up for the second half in cheerleader outfits.

But there it was. With only 5 1/2 minutes left in the third quarter, Oregon and Penn State were tied, 14-14. And Oregon quarterback Danny O’Neil was torching the record book with the greatest passing performance since Ron VanderKelen lit up Pasadena for Wisconsin on the first day of 1963.

Unfortunately, for lovers of underducks and stirring finishes, that was as far as it went. Oregon couldn’t quite pull off what would have been a monumental upset. Form prevailed and so did Penn State, which showed itself to be a poised, opportunistic bunch devoted to playing its game and winning in its own time.

When the Lions needed to regain the momentum, they did it. With interceptions, with long runs, from scrimmage and otherwise, with whatever it took to get the job done.

“Oregon played tough,” Coach Joe Paterno of Penn State acknowledged. “We hung in and won.”

Oregon certainly had its chances. The Ducks just couldn’t make the most of them. And that, said O’Neil, is an aberration.

“That’s been almost our bread and butter, to get inside the 20. We punch it in every time. Today, we got inside the 20 and. . . . “

And disaster.

In the first quarter, with an opportunity to step out from a 7-7 tie, Oregon not only couldn’t punch it in from the 10-yard line on third down, it also couldn’t kick a 23-yard field goal on fourth. In fact, Oregon kicker Matt Belden, a freshman, couldn’t kick any field goals in three tries.

And on the last play of the first half, when a touchdown would have given the Ducks a tie, O’Neill apparently forgot that he had to throw into the end zone or out of bounds. Instead, he threw short to flanker Cristin McLemore, the play running the Ducks out of time for a field-goal try.

The killer, though, was a special teams lapse just after Oregon had reached its proudest moment. O’Neil had just completed a 17-yard scoring pass to McLemore and the Ducks were tied with Penn State at 14-14.

And then, on the kickoff, Ambrose Fletcher went 72 yards with the return to Oregon’s 21. That whoosh you heard was all the air escaping from Oregon’s balloon.

It wasn’t the end of the game, but when Ki-Jana Carter scored two plays later, then O’Neil threw his second interception, giving the Nittany Lions another cheapie only moments afterward, that certainly was.

“When we tied it at 14, I thought we had the momentum,” Oregon Coach Rich Brooks correctly assessed. “But they had that huge kickoff return, something that had not happened to us all season.”

Still, neither Brooks nor his players had to rue any lack of effort.

“We didn’t come down here to pick grapes,” Brooks said. “ We came here to win a football game.”

So they fell short. So, in the end, it wasn’t even close.

So what.

It still was a decent football game. Better than decent, in fact. The old Rose Bowl has seen plenty that weren’t nearly as good.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Air O’Neil

Rose Bowl records set by Oregon quarterback Danny O’Neil:

Passes: 61

Completions: 41

Passing Yards: 456

Total Offense yards: 456

Plays: 61

* STORY, PHOTOS: C9