There’s a Thrill, so There’s a Way

I said to myself: No way that USC can lose this game.

With five minutes to go, UCLA was down by 17 points. Seventeen points. I would have thought even a John Robinson football team could hold a 17-point lead. I wouldn’t have given UCLA a chance at that point in Saturday’s game, even if Troy Aikman came in to play quarterback.

Just no way that USC could lose.

But then, UCLA scored. It took 10 plays and four penalties, but with 6:12 left, UCLA kicked a field goal. Fourteen points down. And then, UCLA’s Keith Brown scored a touchdown. Seven points down. An on-side kick by the Bruins didn’t work, though. So pretty soon it was Trojan ball, first down, 1:37 to play.

Absolutely no way that USC could lose.

Well, here I sit, high in the Rose Bowl, above 80,644 people, watching what is happening down there on the field. UCLA wide receiver Jim McElroy is running halfway around the stadium, waving a golden flag. UCLA teammate Mike Grieb takes the flag from him, just so he can run around the other half of the Rose Bowl himself. You can guess what happened.

USC lost.

Excuse me. UCLA won.

The final score was 48-41, double overtime. Danjuan McGee has just won the game, forcing a fumble. Kusanti Abdul-Salaam has just won the game, recovering the fumble. Cade McNown has just won the game, with a great pass. Rodney Lee has just won the game, with a super catch. Bjorn Merten has just won the game, with a perfect kick. Skip Hicks has just won the game, by running for a touchdown. Anthony Cobbs has just won the game, by intercepting the game’s final pass.

I see it, but I’m not sure I believe it.

Every time you think there will never be a better UCLA-USC football game, one comes along. You can invite Aikman or O.J. Simpson or J.J. Stokes or Marcus Allen or Mark Harmon or Junior Seau or any alumnus you like, and still not find a more competitive, more amazing, more unpredictable UCLA-USC football game than the one these schools played Saturday.

This one had something no Bruin-Trojan football game has ever had: Overtime.

“You talk about playing 60 minutes,” UCLA Coach Bob Toledo said. “Hey, they went out and played 60 minutes-plus.”

You talk about playing. That’s what these guys did, and I mean guys from both sides. Don’t diminish what USC did. This is not a great football team, far from it, but you would never know that from the way Brad Otton passed, the way R. Jay Soward caught, the way Sammy Knight hit, the way John Allred blocked, the way Chris Claiborne tackled anything that moved. I don’t care who won, who lost. USC played hard.

It took every muscle in every Bruin’s body to take this game away from these Trojans.

“It’s like they knew they were going to win,” Toledo said.

But surely that was impossible, because USC had this game, had it cold. For three quarters, the Rose Bowl had become the Otton Bowl. Pretty much any pass Otton threw went exactly where he aimed it. To Soward, for a 19-yard touchdown. To Soward again, for 60 more and a score. To Chris Miller, for 12 yards and six more points. And when one quarterback got hurt, USC put in another, Matt Koffler, and he pitched one 78 yards to Soward for a touch.

This was SC’s game, all the way. This was the one that would make sure the Trojans would not have their third losing season in 35 years. This was the one that would take the strain off Coach John Robinson, whose own quarterback recently had to rush to the coach’s defense, rather than the other way around. This was the monkey-off-our-back game, for a USC program that has defeated UCLA only once since 1988.

Only it wasn’t.

Mike Bastianelli tried to save the day for USC, catching a pass thrown from his own goal line. Matt Keneley tried to save the day for USC, sacking UCLA’s quarterback twice. Even an official tried to save the day for USC, making a pass-interference call against UCLA’s Abdul-Salaam, with 11 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, even though USC’s Miller appeared to go over Abdul-Salaam’s back and interfere with him.

Ball at the UCLA 23.

And still USC lost.

“Nightmarish,” was Robinson’s description of it. He didn’t know what else to say.

Toledo? He didn’t know how to best express his joy. He should have just said, “Holy My Last Name!”

It was about as good as a game of college football can get, played between a couple of teams, neither of which has a winning record. When it was over, UCLA’s Hicks stood with USC’s Daylon McCutcheon on the field, shaking hands, talking about what had just happened.

Thousands of people will do the same, for many years to come.