Around the country, it’s treated like an afterthought.
Once you get out of the West side of Los Angeles, there’s
a common belief that once USC gets past a mediocre UCLA team
Saturday at the Rose Bowl, the Bowl Championship Series will once
again be saved from embarrassment. In one pocket of the country,
though, this rivalry game is the focus of anxiety and even
jealousy.
The No. 2 Trojans (10-1, 7-1 Pac-10) have beaten the Bruins
(6-5, 4-4) in seven consecutive rivalry games.
A win for the Trojans on Saturday would equal the longest streak
in the history of the rivalry ““ an eight-game winning streak
by UCLA that immediately preceded USC’s current reign. A win
for the Trojans puts them in the BCS championship game against No.
1 Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl.
A win for the Trojans. That is the theme of this week’s
rivalry game.
For all those who think the talk is a little presumptuous, here
is a stat: 66-19.
That is the score of the Trojans’ win last year over the
Bruins at the Coliseum, despite the fact that UCLA was a veteran
team led by Drew Olson, Maurice Drew and Marcedes Lewis. It was
such a hit to the program ““ even in their best season in
seven years, the Bruins still lost by 47 points.
“Last year, they came out quick,” wide receiver
Junior Taylor said. “We didn’t respond, and we let it
snowball.”
It was such a complete annihilation that it left those around
the program with one scary question: When’s the next time
UCLA will actually be able to beat USC?
As the years add up and the frustration mounts, UCLA looks that
much more nervous with each rivalry game.
“We’re not playing for much except respect and a
win, and they’re playing for a national title,” Taylor
said. “But we play like we have all the pressure, and they
are loose and free.
“We’ve got to have fun. We’ve got no
pressure,” Taylor said.
But until the Bruins are able to beat the Trojans in the Pete
Carroll era, the pressure will only build. And when it comes to
losing to the Trojans, there’s more than enough pressure to
go around.
Coaching out of a corner
College football coaches have to measure up to different
standards at each school.
But there’s one criteria that each program demands: beat
your rival, at least on occasion. This is something that UCLA coach
Karl Dorrell is still looking to do in his fourth year in
Westwood.
At his Monday press conference at the start of the week, Dorrell
stepped up to the microphone and asked mockingly,
“Pressure’s on me, or what?”
With or without a deadpan delivery, even Dorrell knows that he
is in a tight spot.
He returned to his alma mater to clean up a program marred by
allegations of NCAA violations in the final years of his
predecessor’s, Bob Toledo, tenure. While he has filled his
roster with high-character players who stay out of trouble, the
results on the field have been shoddy.
If UCLA loses to heavily favored USC on Saturday and to Florida
State in the Emerald Bowl on Dec. 27, this will be the third time
in four years that Dorrell’s teams have finished with
nonwinning seasons.
All of this is compared to the juggernaut that Carroll has built
at USC in six years.
With all of these subplots surrounding the Rose Bowl, Dorrell
said the best way to see through all these distracting elements is
to put blinders on.
“Would it surprise you to hear we have another great
practice,” he said. “I want to throw aside all that
extra fluff that doesn’t affect the game and just grind the
preparation in these guys.
“I want to get to a point where they are so sure of their
assignments that they get on the field and just react,” he
said.
Dorrell has managed the Bruins to a 6-5 record in a rebuilding
season with only three senior starters. Critics, fairly or not,
point to the fact that the Trojans are once again competing for a
national title in a “rebuilding season” with only four
senior starters.
So while it’s the players who’ll take the field on
Saturday, in many people’s eyes this is a lopsided rivalry
that pits Dorrell against Carroll.
Until Dorrell wins one, the UCLA-USC rivalry game will continue
to be an afterthought.
On the way out
When asked about UCLA’s futility against USC in his five
years in Westwood, Junior Taylor just exhales.
Then Taylor thinks back to the rivalry game in his freshman
year: UCLA fumbled the opening kickoff, USC scored on the ensuing
play, and it was never close again.
Then he thinks of his sophomore year when the Trojan defense
blindsided Drew Olson and recovered the fumble and returned it for
a touchdown.
Taylor has so much to say about the rivalry, but he needs to
organize his thoughts before he just gets upset.
“They’ve had some great teams since I’ve been
here, there’s no doubt about that,” Taylor said.
“But we have to execute and not get starstruck. A lot of the
times we’ve lost to them, we’ve lost in the first eight
minutes of the game.”
Taylor is one of 13 players who will leave UCLA without ever
experiencing a win over USC if it doesn’t happen on
Saturday.
The Trojans’ seven-game winning streak in the series has
been so dominant that it has left players such as Taylor with
incomplete UCLA careers.
For every Bruin on this team, there’s a checklist with
unpegged boxes.
“Improve the history of the program, I’ve done that.
To graduate, I’ve done that,” said Taylor, who is now
in his fifth year at UCLA after getting a medical redshirt in 2005.
“What I haven’t done is win the Pac-10 and beat
‘SC.”
The Bruins’ inability to beat their rivals isn’t
just an ego bruise. It reflects the balance of power in the Pac-10.
The Bruins will not be able to become an elite team in the
conference if they can’t ever beat the Trojans.
“We know that people aren’t going to just hand us
respect,” junior linebacker Christian Taylor said. “We
have to earn it. And to do that we have to take this program to the
next level. And to do that, we have to beat ‘SC.
There’s no getting around that.”