Path to championship game is a straight line for Trojans

Three wins, and they’re in.

A wandering USC football team that has spent the fall in a futile search for its legacy has suddenly found the map.

Three wins, and they’re in.

With redwoods toppling all around them, the Trojans clawed into a noisy clearing Saturday night, looked up, rubbed their eyes and nudged their teammates: there it was.

The national championship game. Still distant, but finally visible, towering at the end of a straight road that suddenly doesn’t seem so impassable after a ground-baring 35-10 victory over Oregon.

Three wins, and they’re in.

If the Trojans can sweep their final three games of the season -- all against lower-ranked teams, two of them at the Coliseum, where they have won 31 in a row -- they should have a spot in their third consecutive BCS championship game.

“It’s that time of year,” said Trojan Steve Smith late Saturday, his teammates walking past him with chests puffed for the first time this season. “You can feel it in the team. You can smell it in the air. It’s all out there for us.”

How can this happen? How can they make it to Glendale, Ariz., if they couldn’t even survive Corvallis, Ore.?

Start with what happened before the seventh-ranked Trojans finished the first half Saturday.

Three teams ahead of them in the BCS standings had lost.

Louisville, done. Auburn, done. Texas, done.

“We watched TV in the hotel all day, we saw some of them go down” said Lawrence Jackson, who had his first three sacks of the season.

By the time the Trojans had understood this opening and charged through it, their future had been shaped.

Beat Cal and Notre Dame at home. Beat UCLA at the Rose Bowl. Play the winner of Ohio State-Michigan for the national championship.

“Coach Carroll said there is a time like this in the NFL,” said Oscar Lua, who had his second fourth-down tackle of the season. “It’s called playoff time. And we’re ready for it.”

If USC sweeps its final three games, yes, there will be other one-loss contenders and maybe even unbeaten Rutgers. But none of them will have beaten five top-25 opponents like the Trojans.

“We are in the middle of the toughest four-game stretch in the country,” Jackson said.

And if Saturday was any indication, none of those teams will have a better chance of stealing a national title.

The Trojans weren’t perfect, but they were consistently tough, and a long way from the ordinary that has plagued them all season.

This was much closer to the team that wiped out Arkansas than the team that squeaked past Arizona State.

They made big plays with big effort offensively. They made big plays with big risks on defense.

On a couple of rare occasions -- don’t say this too loudly now -- they even made like it was 2005.

Could you see a little Darnell Bing out there? It was evident in freshman safety Taylor Mays, who set up the Trojans’ second touchdown with a weaving 38-yard reception return, then later ended the first half by stopping a Ducks drive, forcing receiver Jeremiah Johnson out of bounds in the end zone.

“It’s all about maturation,” Lua said.

“Our defense is growing up every week. It’s finally getting closer to where we need it to.”

Could you see a little Shaun Cody and Mike Patterson out there? Yeah, veteran defensive end Jackson finally got a quarterback, three times. After the first one, he pantomimed lifting a monkey off his back, and who can blame him.

“Did you see that?” he said with a laugh. “Man, that thing was getting heavy.”

Could you see a little -- gasp -- Reggie Bush out there? At the end of the third quarter, Chauncey Washington blew through the middle of the line and outraced the little guys for a 43-yard touchdown run, en route to a career-best 119-yard game.

“We’re finally starting to play our game, doing the little things,” said Smith, who added 88 yards worth of catches.

No, no, you still couldn’t see any Matt Leinart out there. John David Booty still scares me, and, judging from the occasional Coliseum boos, I am not alone.

He snuffed the Trojans’ opening 72-yard drive with a bad pass that Blair Phillips tipped and intercepted at the nine-yard line.

Several other times he bounced passes or missed receivers and ended up with 176 yards and a late touchdown pass.

In all, the Trojans held one of the nation’s best rushing teams to 102 yards on the ground, gained 167 yards on the ground themselves, held Oregon scoreless after two drives in excess of 55 yards, and it pretty much looked like those old Trojan Novembers.

About the only thing that didn’t have a happy ending for them was a seven-yard tipped touchdown pass from Oregon’s Brady Leaf to Jonathan Stewart at the start of the fourth quarter, making the score 28-10.

After much examination, replay officials ruled it a non-catch because Stewart had been out of bounds before making the catch.

But then, Oregon challenged the review.

No, I didn’t know that was legal, either.

Upon further, further review -- with a long, long delay -- it was ruled that it was legal for him to return to the field for the catch.

So, um, er, yeah, it was a touchdown.

One of these days, somebody is going to replay the stupid Pac-10 replay system and declare it academically ineligible.

Not that the Trojans are worried about it right now. They have a national championship game invitation to acquire, a difficult task, yet an uncomplicated task, as simple as one, two, three.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.