USC vs. Notre Dame 2005
Episode 5: Darth Poodle (everybody loves the Imperial March!)
Wake up the echoes . . . not so much. Notre Dame did pull out all the stops and almost pulled off the classic upset. More likely, based on the result of this year's game, it seems that Notre Dame merely used up all their mojo for at least the next four years (or did Dr. Evil just steal it).
I'm sure somebody will soon put together something pretty cool from this year's game.
From a Domer? Yes, indeed, and expressed in a public forum, no less. What is the world coming to?
What has to be even more painful (if you're a Notre Dame fan), is the realization that your hoodie-wearing, crew-cutted, robot genius coach with all the Superbowl rings may not be the savior of your storied football program after all. I wonder if anybody in South Bend is having second thoughts about giving Charlie Weis that multi-million dollar 10-year contract extension after his seventh game as a collegiate head coach.
A quote from Pete Carroll's weekly Tuesday press conference:
"I'm going to ask Coach Dorrell next year that they wear their home jerseys at the Coliseum . . . . I am hoping when they come here, they will be able to do that. I asked the Pac-10 about that last year and there are some issues. I think it's silly that there are some issues that we are going to have to forfeit a timeout or something, but I will do it. I think it's worth it. We should continue to enhance the beauty of this matchup."
Stewart Mandel expresses simply and concisely the best argument against an Ohio State-Michigan rematch:
My point all along . . . is that we don’t really know Ohio State and Michigan are the two best teams. It’s just an opinion. The only way to find out for sure would be to let someone else take a shot at the Buckeyes.
“I've never even begun to try and pump a game since the first Notre Dame game about it being a special game. I made that mistake in the first year and I knew it was a classic mistake and we haven't done it since and won't do it.”
“Every week, there's something about a game. It's the biggest crowd ever; it's the first time this or that and that's what we've come to expect and that's normal for us in a game. So those factors should not be part of the make up of a game.”
“I knew I screwed it up. I knew I blew it. I could tell during the week but I went with it. I just had to learn. It's more fun probably to talk up these kinds of old historic this and that's. And it's fun for everybody but it doesn't serve the preparation of the athletes and the coaches. It doesn't serve you well. You don't need that. We don't need extra incentives. If you understand that every game is a championship game, and you're going to give everything you possibly can in the preparation and in the participation of that game, then when would you ever decide when to, when not to? That's the whole point. It's the same philosophy that goes through everything that we do in football. When are you going to decide that a play is more important than another play; when I need to go full speed or when I need to try my best? So you get out of that mentality – you don't allow for that kind of thinking in any phase. We don't in any phase of our program. We're real hard about any indications of that being displayed by our guys. That's why we try to practice so fast and so hard every single day, every day of the year for six years.”
“When the whole instant replay thing happened, if you looked, I think the clock was 13:50 or something left in the game. We were all caught up in the replay thing; we're waiting to see what was going to happen. We were very competitive about not letting them score there. We took them down to fourth down and had a great chance to keep them out of there and not give them a breath of hope and then that whole thing started. It was somewhere in the middle of that, that it clicked in my mind that this is an opportunity that we could lose our edge. If they get this decision, and now it's ten points and there's a whole quarter left to play, that we could really suffer through this, this exchange, momentum and all. And it hit at me and I realized that what I needed to do is I needed to make sure and capture the focus of our players and not let them wander. Sure enough, I walked over and I saw a couple of our red-shirt freshmen offensive linemen kind of sitting on their helmets and they were kind of yucking it up and not really paying attention. And I looked at Dwayne Jarrett and I saw him kind of talking and I realized that I had to capture, I had to attempt to capture what the heck was going on because we might lose the focus and then all of a sudden, this turns into an ESPN game and then they're cheerleading for what the Ducks did at the end of the game as opposed to what we were going to do. So in an effort to try and make sure that we didn't, it was a teachable opportunity as well. That the game isn't over, and that you need to stay focused. I tried to capture them so I was working hard. From the All-American receiver and the quarterback and Ryan Kalil and the oldest guy in Oscar Lua, to the red-shirt freshman, I was trying to send the message of how we need to finish this game and to make sure that if nothing else, they were captured by my craziness down there. What was extraordinary for us in that moment is that the offense went out on the field after they scored, after all the garbage that happened, the offense went out there and went "Bang!" right down the field and scored a touchdown and it was over. We had them. I was fearing that we had the opportunity to lose the momentum over whatever that span was going to be and it was so important to remain competitive throughout that game that whatever it took, I was going to do it. Obviously, whatever it took, took me a little bit too far. But that was a competitors moment right there I thought. I wanted to at least let them know what I was feeling. I was wearing it on my sleeve.”
“Go back to the Auburn games and the Virginia Tech game, and the Arkansas game. Those are extraordinary bowl game atmospheres that are perfect for you to start your season off because once you've accomplished that win however you do it, you set yourself in motion to handle whatever is going to come up during the course of the season. I think there's a vast difference between that and playing a team that's from a different division or something. Some teams do, and we understand the philosophy there and it's a great philosophy as well but this has really served us well. There's no time when we ever take a breather in the schedule or look at anybody than the opponent because we know that anybody can beat you. That's about learning how to respect the game and respect the match-ups and respect what can happen that can be outside of your control. That's why playing against teams that are struggling is such an issue to play well because now you've gone over the top, you've lived the philosophy, and you've proven that you understand.”
“We couldn't be playing for a Rose Bowl if we were playing Western Carolina. I think the impact of the Pac-10 championship being this week is perfect timing. It's beautiful and we're looking forward to it.”
Last January, just prior to the Rose Bowl, I posted an entry outlining the turning point games of the 2002 – 2005 seasons. The loss to Oregon State looks like this season’s turning point. A recap:
2002: Having lost in overtime the previous week to WSU, USC trailed Cal 21-3. The Trojans scored 27 consecutive points to win the game 30-28. USC blew out its remaining 7 opponents, including Iowa in the Orange Bowl.
2003: Again coming off an overtime loss, USC was down 17-10 at halftime to ASU. The Trojans scored 27 unanswered points to win 37-17. The team won its remaining eight games by an average of more than 26 points, including a Rose Bowl win over Michigan to win its first national championship since 1978.
2004: It was the Cal game again. With USC leading by six, Cal advanced to first and goal with less than two minutes remaining. The USC defense held, sacking Aaron Rodgers (who set a single-game record for consecutive completions earlier in the game) on second down and forcing three incompletions. The Trojans won their remaining eight games, including a 55-19 shellacking of Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl.
2005: After the Notre Dame game, Leinart finally shrugged off the pressure of maintaining a school-record winning streak and leading the team to an unprecedented third national title and started playing relaxed football again. The team won the remainder of their regular season games handily (except a close one to Fresno State), but lost the BCS Championship game to Texas.
2006 so far: Trailing 33-10 with less than 20 minutes remaining against Oregon State, USC scored the last 21 points of the game and narrowly missed sending the game to overtime when their 2-point conversion attempt failed with seven seconds remaining. Since the loss, USC has beat Stanford 42-0 and Oregon 35-10, thereby outscoring its opponents 98-10 in the last 140 minutes of play. There are two big differences between the Oregon State game and the turning point games of the previous four seasons. First of all, the game ended as a loss. Second, it came a little bit later in the season, but only by a game or two. This is not surprising considering the youth of this year’s team.
Of course, I had the benefit of hindsight last season whereas there are still three games left in the 2006 regular season. However, if recent history is any indication, and the trend that started late in the Oregon State game continues, Trojan fans have much to look forward to for the remainder of the season.
