Having attended these college sporting events for a few years now, I’ve learned an extremely valuable lesson.
You’re searching for storylines, keeping your eyes open for anything to get your creative juices flowing. But more often than not, the storyline has nothing to do with sights.
It’s all about sounds, my friends.
Saturday night at the Rose Bowl, with UCLA taking on USC, my quest for storylines got its first piece of action early in the second quarter. The Bruins ran a reverse handoff to redshirt freshman receiver Ricky Marvray, and that’s when I heard it.
“Go Ricky, go!”
A reporter somewhere to the left of me was, without shame, cheering for UCLA. The first lesson I received when I began coming to these games was that being biased was the cardinal sin. Cheering gets you sideways looks, smacking of the lips and shaking of the heads from fellow reporters.
This guy could not care less. But instead of cutting my eyes, it registered to me that in a rivalry game of this magnitude, cheering may not be so frowned upon.
I realized that this game actually meant something beyond football in the eyes of this reporter and many others. Regardless of the poor seasons that both teams were having, never will the UCLA–USC end-of-the-season tilt be meaningless.
Never.
Towards the conclusion of the game, with the Bruins trailing 21-7 and facing a fourth-and-10 on the USC 19-yard line, I was making my trek down the aisle steps of the Rose Bowl in the midst of disappointed Bruin fans heading for the parking lot.
UCLA quarterback Richard Brehaut throws a fade to the right corner of the endzone that looks to be caught by junior receiver Taylor Embree, sending the crowd into a frenzy. But upon review, Embree drops the ball, and USC gets possession.
That’s when I heard it.
“That sums up our entire season, that last play right there.”
A UCLA fan standing behind me on the steps had just uttered this sentence to his friend. And you know how sometimes you say something a little loud in the direction of one person, but you kind of want others to hear you and agree with you?
It was one of those instances.
“We really had a chance to catch the ball in the endzone, but we don’t make the play,” coach Rick Neuheisel said after the game. “And at the end of the day and the end of the season, that’s really what it comes down to. We got close but we didn’t make the play. We have to look ourselves in the mirror and realize that. We have to be better.”
Wow, that kid really hit it on the head. Did he not say exactly what Neuheisel said after the game, just in a more condensed fashion?
The playmaking ability of UCLA this season was nonexistent. Sure, guys made big plays. Johnathan Franklin had a big 59-yard touchdown run to tie the game at seven.
But it was in the first quarter.
Fourth-quarter playmakers are what you need to be successful, and this season, UCLA was without one, period.
After I finally made it to the field through the posse of exiting fans, and about a minute after Embree dropped the Brehaut endzone pass which would have cut USC’s lead to 21-14, Trojans tailback Allen Bradford burst out for a 73-yard touchdown run, giving ‘SC a 21-point lead and essentially sealing the victory.
That’s when I heard it.
“This is our house! This is our house!”
That was the chant from the USC crowd in attendance, a chant that was heard loud and clear throughout the stadium.
Loud and clear, and with no disagreement, at least in my eyes.
Sure, everyone knows the Rose Bowl is the home of UCLA football, but what were the ‘SC fans really chanting?
“This is our town!”
Despite all the turmoil; the new coach, the sanctions, the transferring, the injured quarterback, ‘SC still dominated UCLA. At no point in the game could any spectator definitively say that the Bruins were in control.
USC did not out-skill the Bruins on Saturday, they did not out-talent them, and they didn’t even outplay them.
The mental edge still belongs to USC and no matter how many top recruits UCLA gets, no matter how many coaching changes occur at either school, it doesn’t matter until the Bruins strike some sort of fear or doubt into the Trojans.
The Trojans know they can and are supposed to beat the Bruins every time they step onto the field together, and it looks like the UCLA players know that as well.
And until that changes, well, unfortunately, Bruin fans should prepare themselves to be on the losing end of this rivalry for years to come.
Because most of the time, it’s sounds before sights, but it’s also mental before physical.