ROSE BOWL: USC 41, Northwestern 32 : COMMENTARY : L.A. Move Could Be Barnett’s Best Call

When Gary Barnett walked off the Rose Bowl field Monday, surrounded by a convoy of police security and a stadium full of people in purple who cheered and cried and loved him to death, it was easy to wish him well.

And, if you’re from here, it was easy to have another wish:

Take regular autumn walks on this same field, Gary.

The Rose Bowl is where UCLA plays its home games. Since Terry Donahue traded his sideline headset for a TV headset, UCLA has been without a football coach. One plus one equal two.

Certainly, it isn’t that easy. And certainly this isn’t a new idea. The Barnett-to-UCLA concept surfaced about 37 seconds after Donahue finished his farewell news conference. And at first, as much was based on simple logic as on any mind-set of Bruin Athletic Director Peter Dalis.

Barnett, who declined to comment on the UCLA vacancy on Monday, had made Northwestern, America’s college football doormat, into Cinderella’s slipper. He had a team that usually didn’t even rate a mention in the back pages of the preseason magazines now rated No. 3 in the country.

Also, he was young, good-looking and smoothly articulate. After Monday’s game, he described Keyshawn Johnson’s thrilling 56-yard touchdown pass play for USC with his own nice Biblical twist: “He kind of parted the Red Sea, like you know who.”

The more Hollywood saw of this guy, the more it just couldn’t wait.

And then came Monday’s Rose Bowl, and Northwestern’s exciting, wonderfully entertaining 41-32 defeat at the hands of USC. Instead of hurting his candidacy, the thrilling game seemed to raise Barnett’s stock.

In defeat, Barnett’s team played hard, almost valiantly. It was playing a USC team that finally showed what tremendous results it can get from some tremendous talent, yet it executed a successful on-side kick, made many wonderful plays and was battling right down to the end, even when it was clear that it could not win.

For fans who watched closely, the image of receiver D’Wayne Bates, who moments before had caught a touchdown pass that was nullified by a holding penalty, diving for a pass along the sidelines and crashing hard into a wooden TV stand, remains vivid. So does Barnett ordering a 49-yard field-goal attempt with 35 seconds left so that Northwestern could cut USC’s lead to 41-35--just one more on-side kick and a Hail Mary pass away from victory.

Northwestern never quit in the Rose Bowl. It simply ran out of time.

So stirring and Disney-like is the Northwestern story this season that everywhere the Wildcats have gone, since at least midseason when sports fans realized that the Big Ten standings they were reading weren’t a typographical error, they have stolen the show.

Trojan Coach John Robinson, in his postgame news conference Monday, was uncharacteristically testy about the lack of respect his team had received in pregame coverage. If you are sitting in Robinson’s chair, that is understandable. Notre Dame and UCLA notwithstanding, USC had a year that most schools and fans would die for.

But Northwestern was just too compelling a story, and Barnett too compelling a leader, for the media to ignore. For this little school, enrollment 7,400, that has always belonged more in the Mid-American Conference than the Big Ten, to be good and big and tough and dominant and actually beating the big boys was a story for the ages.

That, of course, made its creator, Barnett, the subject of great fascination. Also, a person of great marketability. And Peter Dalis pretty much knows a pot of gold when he sees one.

So this is what is known, through various sources close to the situation, about the status of the Great Bruin Barnett Pursuit:

--He is UCLA’s No. 1 candidate.

--His wife has already checked out some Southern California real estate.

--He met with Dalis on Saturday.

--His representative (translated lawyer) met with Dalis Sunday.

--He has asked UCLA to wait until Wednesday or Thursday for an answer, even though Dalis is uneasy over recruits visiting Westwood with no coach there to meet and greet them.

--Northwestern has pretty much made its final offer.

--One of Barnett’s negotiating priorities is to get some better deals for some of his assistants, either in Evanston or Westwood.

In Monday’s Rose Bowl news conference, Barnett was asked about the UCLA job, which was an appropriate question. His declining to discuss it was an appropriate response.

But even his non-answer answer was impressive.

“Right now, I need to take care of my guys,” he said. “We’ve got guys who are hurting, and I need to take care of them. They are important. I’m not important.”

Right now, on the day of the Rose Bowl, that’s correct. But in a few days, when the smoke clears a bit, Barnett could be very important, both for UCLA and the Southern California sports scene.

This one’s a tough call. Northwestern loves him, probably deserves him, but there is likely to come a day in the not-too-distant future when Barnett will wake up and realize that, when it comes to football, Northwestern will probably always be Northwestern, with half-century blips on its radar screen. And Barnett may deserve the brighter spotlight that UCLA can shine on him.

One thing is for sure. It will be a very tough decision. But then, Barnett hasn’t made too many wrongs ones in quite a while.

Times staff writer Steve Springer contributed to this story.