Bowl Options Happily Considered by Trojans

On a rare and sunny Sunday--a day spent with family, basking in the warmth of a resounding victory over UCLA--Pete Carroll took a few minutes to look ahead.

The USC coach was talking about putting his team through light workouts the next few days when he had to stop himself. He was not certain about the NCAA regulations regarding how much his players can practice before their upcoming bowl game.

This is unfamiliar territory.

Carroll spent nearly two decades in the NFL before returning to college football last winter. And USC has been to a postseason game only once--the 1998 Sun Bowl--the previous five years.

This fall, after a 1-4 start, no one was planning on an extended season.

At least not until Saturday when the Trojans shut out UCLA, 27-0, to give themselves a 6-5 record and become bowl eligible. “We could end up 7-5 where nobody thought we could be,” quarterback Carson Palmer said.

It remains unclear where the team, at fifth place in the Pacific 10 Conference, will go. The Las Vegas Bowl gets the fifth choice and seems the most likely destination. That could change.

If Pac-10 champion Oregon goes to the Fiesta Bowl, Washington probably would go to the Holiday Bowl. The Sun Bowl gets the next choice, selecting among Washington State, Stanford and USC. But the Sun could work a deal with the fourth-slotted Seattle Bowl, which is anxious to get a Pacific Northwest team.

If the Sun lets Washington State remain in the north, its choice narrows to USC and Stanford. The Cardinal has seven wins with games remaining against Notre Dame and San Jose State. The Trojans, on the other hand, have the allure of a major television market. Also, El Pasoans like Los Angeles teams, rooting for the Lakers and Dodgers, said Bernie Olivas, the bowl’s executive director.

In other scenarios, the Sun takes Washington State, leaving Seattle to choose between Stanford and USC.

No matter where USC ends up, the Trojans already have benefited. They get what amounts to an additional spring practice in the next month, all the better to learn offensive and defensive schemes instituted by a new staff. Carroll and his assistants also have momentum when they visit recruits later this week.

“I can’t wait to get out there,” he said.

And when he returns, having mapped out a practice schedule, Carroll will try to avoid what befell the Trojans the last time they went bowling, when they looked flat while losing, 28-19, to Texas Christian, a 16-point underdog that ran all over them with its option offense.

“We’re not in such a state of rejoicing that we’re happy just to be there,” he said. “We need to win. We can’t afford to take a step back at this time.”

But such concerns could wait on an otherwise satisfying Sunday. Carroll hadn’t even looked at videotape of his team’s victory over UCLA.

The memories remained strong of a team that had stuck with him through a tough early stretch and was rewarded with its biggest victory of the season, a team that showed his preference for defense, stifling the distracted and dispirited Bruins.

“It was a pretty exhilarating night for us,” he said. “Everything went as good as we could have hoped.”

Good enough to keep the season going somewhere, anywhere.