There Are No Big Winners in ABC Booth

So, Pete Carroll, your USC Trojan team has just scored more points in one half -- 38 -- than Oklahoma has ever given up in a bowl game, your quarterback just tied the Orange Bowl touchdown-pass record before halftime, you’re in the middle of the greatest night of your coaching career and ... uh, oh, don’t look now, here comes Todd Harris on a softball blitz!

And he’s beaming!

And he’s armed with a microphone!

And he’s unblocked!

“I think everyone in America is surprised,” Harris informed Carroll, whose Trojans entered intermission Tuesday night with a 38-10 lead.

“You know how good this team is,” Harris reminded Carroll, who was two quarters away from his 22nd consecutive victory and second consecutive national championship.

“Are you surprised?”

You can bet ABC was. Analyst Bob Griese, despite having a month to prepare, said this a few minutes before kickoff: “[Matt] Leinart is the outstanding player of the year. But the pressure is on him tonight. He does not have a great supporting cast.”

Come again?

Not a great supporting cast.

When Reggie Bush, LenDale White, Steve Smith, Dwayne Jarrett and Dominique Byrd get a chance to watch the videotape of USC’s 55-19 triumph and hear Griese say that, they’re going to be really surprised.

Especially when Griese, less than a minute later, said, “You give me one pick of all college football players and I’m taking Reggie Bush. There’s so many things he can do: punt returns, receiving from the outside, running from the tailback position. And he’s so explosive. Any time he touches it, he can go all the way.”

Also, Bush finished among the top four vote-getters in the 2004 Heisman Trophy balloting.

Not many supporting cast members on any college football team get to say that.

Right after that comment, play-by-play announcer Brad Nessler turned toward the camera and said, “We’ve talked about tradition. You think USC doesn’t have tradition? Well, they do.”

Who was Nessler talking to? Who out there watching this game, even those hanging in just to see the “special world premiere” of U2’s video at halftime, didn’t think USC had tradition?

Even The Edge -- U2 guitarist, member of Bono’s supporting cast -- can tell you about USC tradition.

Just in case, ABC decided to use the pregame show of the most-hyped college football game of the year, with USC having finished first in the 2003 and 2004 Associated Press polls, to serve up old clips of John McKay and O.J. Simpson and Ronnie Lott along with graphics that reminded viewers that, yes, indeed, USC had previously produced 10 national champions, six Heisman Trophy winners and 135 All-Americans.

This is just one more reason why Keith Jackson and Dan Fouts, a couple of West Coast guys who work for ABC, should have been working this game.

Early in the first quarter, Griese, sticking with his supporting-cast theme, described USC’s receivers as “young and inexperienced.”

Young? OK. But inexperienced? After 12 regular-season games, all of them victories, all of them coming with USC playing with the pressure the preseason No. 1 ranking brings?

How did Leinart win the Heisman Trophy this season? By throwing all those touchdown passes to himself?

Fortunately, USC wide receivers Smith and Jarrett and tight end Byrd moved quickly to set the record straight, making spectacular, acrobatic touchdown catches that ABC was able to splice into a fairly convincing halftime highlight montage.

Maybe Griese simply has a mental block about USC pass catchers. In the second quarter, Griese watched Oklahoma’s Mark Clayton make a nice play and commented, “I think he and [Michigan’s] Braylon Edwards are by far the best [wide receivers] coming out this year.”

What about Mike Williams? If memory serves, he played pretty well for USC in 2003 before spending all of 2004 waiting to come out for the NFL draft.

It took awhile, but by the end of the Trojans’ 36-point victory, ABC’s crew had received the message.

During the third quarter, Nessler and Griese ran down the list of USC’s regular-season close calls -- California, UCLA, Stanford -- leading Nessler to observe, “You say, well, maybe they’re not that good. Then Cal got routed in the Holiday Bowl by Texas Tech. And you say, ‘Well, the Big 12 ... ‘ But right now, it’s the Pac-10. At least this one team that looks awfully good.”

With four minutes left in the fourth quarter, Griese said, “There’s no question in my mind that USC is the best team in the nation.”

And after the game, on-site studio host John Saunders looked sheepishly at analysts Craig James and Aaron Taylor and said, “A couple days ago, all three of us picked Oklahoma. I said I reserved the right to change my mind.

“I’m changing my mind!” Saunders added with a laugh. “I think USC is going [to win] it!”

James: “You all have heard me for a while. I’ve said that I thought that the Pac-10 was overrated. Well, I was definitely wrong about that. I think the team that was underrated was the conference champion, USC.”

Maybe ABC should have hired Shaquille O’Neal as a college football analyst.

After conducting the pregame coin toss, O’Neal told Harris, with USC leading, 28-7, in the second quarter, “I’m not surprised. They’re a great team. They’re showing a lot of pride out there. They’re showing a lot of dominance. When Oklahoma scored [first], it woke them up.”

ABC’s salaried analysts and commentators needed a little more time, but eventually, finally, they also woke up.