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Thursday, January 5, 2006
Rose Bowl will stand test of time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Los Angeles — You’ll see one like this in the regular season occasionally — remember Georgia Tech scoring three touchdowns in the last five minutes at Clemson on Sept. 11, 2004? — but you hadn’t seen it in a national championship game. You hadn’t seen a team trailing by 12 points with 4:04 remaining rise up and unhorse the reigning champs, who hadn’t lost in more than two calendar years. That alone puts the 2006 Rose Bowl in the discussion when the topic is “greatest college football game ever played.”
But it wasn’t just the epic Texas comeback that elevated this one. The whole game had, as become the custom with Southern Cal — a team of stars based in a city where stars adorn the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard — a cinematic feel. One great play gave rise to another. Reggie Bush would turn a somersault and Vince Young would trample somebody and Dwayne Jarrett would twist into a pretzel. Watching, you got the feeling that you’d never seen a game with so many transcendent players. There may never have been such a game.
Great games go back and forth, which is what makes them great. Think of Nebraska-Oklahoma on Thanksgiving 1971, when the giants traded scores until finally the Cornhuskers won. Think of Notre Dame beating Alabama on New Year’s Eve 1973, of these Trojans beating the Fighting Irish back in October. This one had the ol’ ebb and flow, sure, but it had something even more tantalizing — the false resolution.
When Jarrett scored his twisting touchdown with 6:42 to play, Southern Cal had won. The Trojans had been tested in a way they’d only been tested that day at Notre Dame, and they’d been stout enough and resourceful enough to win a third national title and a 35th game in succession. That was the clear feeling in the press box, and surely the feeling everywhere except along the Texas sideline.
“It was surreal,” Mack Brown said, “sitting there in the fourth quarter down 12 points and you still think you’re going to win.”
His team surely beaten, here came Young yet again. He’d been the best player on the field all game, and now he was about to render himself immortal. As spectacular as Michael Vick was in the 2000 Sugar Bowl against Florida State, Vick’s team lost by 17 points. Young made his team win when winning seemed unthinkable.
Young was so irresistible that he forced Pete Carroll to go for it on fourth-and-2 at the 45 when prudence dictated a punt. (LenDale White was halted a yard short.) The moment the measurement was made and the Longhorns leaped in exultation, the reign of Troy began to tremble. Vince Young had the ball and the chance to win the game. Darned if he didn’t win it.
Old-timers will talk about Red Grange against Michigan in 1924 (five touchdowns scored, plus another thrown), and those of us who knew O.J. Simpson before he became a pariah will recall his game against UCLA in 1967, and anyone with a TV has seen the clips of Doug Flutie against Miami the day after Thanksgiving in 1984. But Young’s seamless brilliance — 200 yards rushing, 267 yards passing — on such an exalted stage could well be the greatest performance ever.
Yes, it’s tricky placing a game or a player in historical context so soon after the fact, raw emotion being a deterrent to logical thinking. But it’s unlikely the passage of time will diminish this Rose Bowl in any way. Time should only enhance a game that contained the requisite thrills and spills and controversy — Young’s knee was down before he pitched the ball to Selvin Young for the first Texas touchdown — and provided the all-time plot twist at the end.
This correspondent didn’t witness the famous Notre Dame ties (against Army in Yankee Stadium in 1946, against Michigan State in 1966) that are considered among the greatest college games. Going on what I’ve seen, I’ve always regarded Nebraska-Oklahoma of 1971 as the best game ever played, better than Miami over Nebraska in the 1984 Orange Bowl, better than Ohio State over Miami in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl, better than Texas over Arkansas in 1969, better than the Flutie game. It is with only the slightest trepidation that I make this announcement:
I now have a new order.
The 2006 Rose Bowl stands at the top.
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The greatest college football game I’ve seen
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
At a New Year’s Eve party, a perceptive neighbor — and I should say here that all residents of Vinings Estates are perceptive and discerning — asked me if I could actually enjoy a game as I’m writing about it. The answer, I said, is yes.
Even though I might be tearing my hair out over a late reversal that makes me have to rewrite like crazy on the worst possible deadline… even then, there’s a part of me that can distance myself from the physical process of writing and marvel at what I’m seeing.
Case in point: The Rose Bowl. Even as I was writing — and rewriting — like crazy, I kept saying to myself, “This is a great game.” I kept watching Vince Young and Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart and LenDale White do terrific things, and I felt privileged to have been there. I know that sounds corny, but it’s one of the reasons I got into this business: I wanted to be there when great things happened.
And this was the greatest college football game I’ve ever seen. (For the longest time, the Alabama-Auburn game of 1985 was.) I’ve now seen a football championship decided with 19 seconds to go. I’ve seen a Super Bowl won at the final gun and a World Series decided on the last swing of a Game 7. I’ve seen an NCAA title snatched on an air ball that became a famous dunk. I’ve seen some things, but I like to think I’m not so old and jaded that I can’t get just as excited about Vince Young as I did about Lorenzo Charles 22 years ago.
I’m writing this on the shuttle bus back from the Rose Bowl. It’s 11:37 p.m. PST, and I’m tired and a little sick - I’ve got a cold and my voice is shot — but I’m still a happy correspondent. I saw something tonight that I’ll remember forever. Nights like this are why I keep doing this job.
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‘Horns finally expose USC defense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Pasadena, Calif. — For the want of a yard, a third national championship was lost. But Southern Cal’s failure went deeper than that. It went to the very core of football. The Trojans cheated fate all season, relying on their sterling offense to override a bad defense, and with 2:13 to play and a title on the line, Pete Carroll told the world he didn’t believe his defense could stop Vince Young one last time.
So Carroll had his Trojans go for it on fourth-and-2 at their 45. And LenDale White gained only half the required yardage. And Texas got the ball. And Carroll, who made the wrong choice, was proved right in his rationale. His guys couldn’t stop Vince Young.
The Trojans were regarded by many voices in the chattering class — most notably the strident ones on ESPN — as the greatest team of all time. They weren’t. They weren’t nearly as good as they were last season. They masked fundamental flaws with individual brilliance, and within sight of another title they were finally exposed.
“We had to keep scoring,” Carroll said. “We had to outscore them… . If we make a fourth down, we win.”
But they didn’t, and they lost. They lost to a hungrier team, a more balanced team. They lost after holding a 12-point lead with 4:04 remaining in the national championship game. They lost to a quarterback who managed to outdo Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush — both of them Heisman winners — by his magnificent self.
Vince Young rushed for 200 yards and threw for 267 more. He scored three touchdowns. He was the best player on a field overrun with great players. The phrase “refuse to lose” has become a cliché, but how else to describe what Young did in these last seven minutes? He brought Texas close with a breathtaking touchdown scramble, and he won it with another scramble, this on fourth-and-5 at the 8, this one so deft that he scored the climactic touchdown untouched by Trojan hands.
Texas didn’t play a perfect game. It fumbled the first time it touched the ball. It missed an extra point and a 31-yard field goal. It watched Leinart and Bush and White and Dwayne Jarrett author moments of sheer magic, but the Longhorns played through every dark moment. They kept playing even when playing seemed futile — what team chases down Southern Cal at the end? — and at the end they hoisted a championship trophy that was believed to be beyond their grasp.
For a Rose Bowl matching the Nos. 1 and 2 teams, this one had a lopsided buildup. Part of it was the memory of last season’s Orange Bowl, which had been hyped to heavens but wound up a 55-19 Trojan walkover, and part of it was the assumption that Southern Cal was simply impregnable. The Longhorns said nothing to rile the champs, but privately they had to be seething at the lack of a chance they were given.
Instead they made their own chances. They recovered a fumble after Bush’s silly lateral and stole a Leinart pass on the goal line — Michael Griffin made a terrific break on the ball — and scored seven times on their last 10 possessions. They were indomitable in a way that Southern Cal was supposed to be but, on what was to have been the night of its ultimate coronation, never quite was.
In the end it came down to a mismatch, but not the one that was supposed to wind up with Southern Cal two or three touchdowns ahead.
This mismatch was Vince Young against a defense so shabby that even Carroll, its architect, had no faith in it. Carroll let everything ride with his star-spangled offense, and on this night the stars fell 1 yard short. And a football truism was upheld yet again: You might win a lot of games with a bad defense, but you can’t win a championship.
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