Game of Year May Be Every Week

Amid the din and delirium of the Coliseum after USC’s final, fateful defensive stand Saturday, you could look across the field and see that the Trojan band was playing.

For the first time in memory, you were not sure if you could hear it.

The crowd was that loud.

It was so loud at times that Aaron Rodgers, California’s almost-perfect quarterback, said the noise might have caused “a couple of sacks and a fumble.”

“The crowd noise was tough,” Rodgers said.

Ryan Gutierrez, the Cal safety, said so too.

“Usually you don’t hear anything from the stands. You heard that 92,000 today.”

It was 90,008, to be precise -- still the largest crowd for a USC home game against any opponent other than UCLA or Notre Dame since 1952.

It was what USC Coach Pete Carroll called “an exquisite day at the Coliseum,” and he wasn’t stretching it.

“I give our fans some credit,” Trojan linebacker Matt Grootegoed said. “I have never heard the Coliseum rocking like it was today.”

It probably wasn’t the loudest the old place has ever been, but you had to have a little mileage on you to know better.

“I’ve heard it louder,” said Athletic Director Mike Garrett, the 1965 Heisman Trophy winner. “A Notre Dame game in the ‘60s, I think it was ’64. They were No. 1 in the nation and we beat them.”

Ed Orgeron, the assistant head coach and defensive line coach, has been here only since 1998.

“I remember the Coliseum not being that intimidating,” said Orgeron, recalling games with crowds in the 40,000s and 50,000s. (Pete Carroll’s first game in 2001 against San Jose State drew 45,568.)

“Other teams would come in here and we would not have a home-field advantage, against Stanford, or Cal,” Orgeron said. “This morning, I woke up and turned on the TV and saw ESPN ‘Game Day’ and saw how far we’ve come.”

The “Game Day” studio was set up beyond the peristyle end, drawing a crowd of several thousand from 7:30 to 9 a.m.

There was overflow parking at Staples Center -- certainly not a staple of Cal-USC games.

And on Hoover Street, one of the side routes into the Coliseum, people hawked bootleg Trojan T-shirts that read, “Get Back, Pay Back, Revenge” -- a reference to last year’s triple-overtime loss to Cal that was the only black mark on a season in which USC shared the national title.

All that commingled to make it feel like the biggest game of the year, which was precisely the risk for USC.

The No. 1 Trojans held off No. 7 Cal from a first-and-goal at the nine-yard line in the final two minutes, and it felt as if they were going to the Rose Bowl after their 23-17 victory.

They took a shot from a team that doesn’t look overrated after all, and from a quarterback who completed his first 23 passes, tying Tee Martin’s NCAA record for consecutive completions in a game.

But stretched out between the Trojans and a possible attempt to repeat as national champions by playing in the Orange Bowl for the BCS title are seven games -- seven minefields, if you will.

“It obviously was a big game. It had a lot of magnitude, a lot of hype around the country,” quarterback Matt Leinart said. “But like [defensive lineman Shaun Cody] said, every week, we have a bull’s-eye on our backs. Every team’s going to come out and play their best game. It’s important for us now that we’ve got this big win and we’re all excited to bounce back and stay at the same intensity throughout the season. We’ve got ASU next week and they’re undefeated. We can’t afford to let down. I don’t think we will. Coach won’t let us do that.”

It was obvious that this easily could have been a loss, just like the last game, a comeback against Stanford.

“We rope-a-doped them today,” Carroll said.

His refrain with the players since long before the Trojans were national champions was that they have to remain on an even keel, even if others roll their eyes.

“This was the challenge this week,” he said. “I know nobody likes to hear it, but that’s what this was because Arizona State’s around the corner. You’d be nuts to say this was the biggest game of the year.

“We can’t afford to talk like this is the biggest game of the year, the Revenge Game, whatever. We can’t afford the fallout from that, regardless of which way it goes. That’s not just this week, it’s the next week and the next week.”

In any case, dodging bullets doesn’t necessarily mean the next one will hit you.

“I love these wins,” Carroll said. “We have to be good at this. We have to be poised in these moments if we’re going to keep this thing going.

“You can’t avoid these games -- you can’t hope they don’t happen.

It was hard Saturday, but Cody needed only one word to describe what it felt like afterward.

“Euphoria,” he said.

Now all the Trojans need is a little amnesia the rest of the season.