Instant Analysis: Rose Bowl

Joe Paterno used to be college football’s most feared coach on New Year’s Day, the man who ruled opponents when given a month to prepare for a big game. After the 95th Rose Bowl, it’s crystal clear that Pete Carroll now stands alone, atop the San Gabriel Mountains, as his sport’s ultimate January genius.

USC didn’t just thump Penn State, 38-24, in the latest edition of the Granddaddy. The Trojan Empire of College Football also defeated its own internal voices, the ones that plainly wished to play Alabama in the Sugar Bowl or Texas in the Fiesta Bowl. USC resisted the temptation to sulk about playing another Big Ten team in Pasadena, instead of catching a plane to a Southern city for a date with an SEC or Big 12 foe. Having endured the familiar and unavoidably stale rituals leading up to this game (who wouldn’t after four straight years?), the Trojans faced more than a tough Nittany Lion outfit. SC’s players had to stare down an enemy called indifference, the same adversary that sunk them in a September loss to Oregon State.

If the Trojans didn’t bring their A-game, JoePa’s pupils—fuming about a manifest lack of respect from the national press—possessed the toolbox of skills needed to take them down. Yes, USC wasn’t competing for a national title, but a loss to the Lions would have eroded the program’s stature. Despite playing on hometown turf in the greater Los Angeles area, the Men of Troy faced a trap, and they’d need a prime-time performance to maintain their awesome aura.

Oh, did they ever deliver.

The Trojans might have gone through the motions in pre-game functions and media sessions, but when game time arrived in the Arroyo Seco, on a picture-postcard afternoon that has made the Rose Bowl stadium one of the greatest settings in sports, Pete Carroll’s crew came ready to conquer. Penn State—despite fighting for 60 minutes—simply couldn’t measure up, and Mark Sanchez proved to be the main reason why.

USC’s signal caller struggled on many occasions during an up-and-down season whose statistical totals were fattened by easy wins against woeful opponents such as Washington and Washington State. There were times in the 2008 regular season when a forward pass loomed as a frightening proposition for the Trojans’ offense. Shaky performances in unconvincing wins over Arizona and Cal made USC’s run to the Pac-10 title a bumpier ride than many expected. Entering this game, Penn State’s best chance to win rested with a defense that hoped to hold down SC’s point production. With all eyes on USC’s dominant defense, it was the Trojans’ offense that truly held the key to this confrontation. More than anyone else in a cardinal red jersey, Sanchez needed to show that he could master the Rose Bowl stage and benefit from a month of Carroll’s pre-bowl preparations.

After four flawless quarters against a defense that smothered the rest of the Big Ten, Sanchez not only silenced his critics; he played a Rose Bowl every bit as brilliant as Matt Leinart’s surgical 2006 slicing of Texas’s secondary. With one peerless piece of pigskin pitching, Sanchez won more than a football game; he won a lofty place in the history of college football’s most famous postseason showcase.

Sometimes, the numbers don’t tell the story of a convincing conquest, but in the case of Mark Sanchez, they do. USC’s quarterback produced his best game of the now-completed season, going 28-of-35 for 413 yards and five touchdowns—four throwing, one running. In his last game with departing offensive coordinator and quarterback coach Steve Sarkisian—who takes over full-time at the University of Washington tomorrow—Sanchez took his mentor’s advice to heart. Making sound reads, NFL-level throws, and unerringly wise snap decisions under pressure, Sanchez—in tandem with his tall and muscular receivers—destroyed Penn State’s secondary with ruthless consistency, despite the fact that the Nittany Lions’ front seven hit him with appreciable frequency in the first half. The genuinely awesome display turned what was expected to be a defensive battle into a rout that evoked memories of USC’s most imposing juggernauts. The first half Sanchez and company hung on Penn State represented a 30-minute masterpiece as complete as anything the Trojans have produced in the Carroll era, in a bowl game or any other context. Considering the bona fides of past USC offenses, that’s saying something.

In assessing this Trojan conquest—the latest big-game beauty to come from Pete Carroll’s cranium—what stands out on a larger level is the inability of other college football teams to bring the goods in bowl games, a fact that reflects well on Carroll’s motivational methods.

Earlier on this New Year’s Day, only one of six teams—Iowa—played big-time ball in a January 1 contest. The five other teams in action (South Carolina, Nebraska, Clemson, Georgia, and Michigan State) littered a football field with ample mistakes and multiple moments of failure. Oklahoma and Ohio State—two teams yet to play in their bowls—have often stumbled in the January spotlight. Very few of this season’s featured bowl games witnessed complete 60-minute efforts from a given club. Only LSU maxed out from kickoff to final gun against a big-name opponent, while Notre Dame and South Florida took weak teams to the woodshed. Given this lack of laser-like focus in bowl games, yet another Trojan trouncing speaks volumes about the program’s ability to bring the hammer when the whole nation is watching. This is how hype gets justified in America, and the USC juggernaut knows it.

A final aspect of this onslaught against Joe Paterno’s bruised and beaten ballclub bears mentioning. In many bowl games, coaches or coordinators fare poorly when they stay with their current team despite getting a better job at another program. The most notable example of this dynamic came when Florida State offensive coordinator Mark Richt stayed around for the 2001 Orange Bowl instead of immediately heading to Georgia as the Bulldogs’ new head coach. Florida State’s offense proceeded to get shut out by Oklahoma. Today in Pasadena, Steve Sarkisian had to battle the temptation to think about Washington first and USC second. Carroll, for his part, had to wrestle with the decision to grant Sarkisian play-calling responsibilities against Penn State and its veteran defensive coordinator, Tom Bradley. Considering the loss of fullback Stanley Havili, a critical component of SC’s offense as a blocker and pass catcher, the Trojans had more than just indifference to deal with. There were real concerns about the crispness of their execution and the quality of their play calling. History suggested that Sarkisian—like most men in his position—wouldn’t have a smooth day on the sidelines.

But after this sensational showing, one has to be reminded, yet again, that USC isn’t like most programs. Sarkisian isn’t like most men, because in Pete Carroll’s world, big-game preparations almost unfailingly work. Carroll is now 6-1 in BCS bowls, with his only loss coming in a classic game that Vince Young—wearing an “S” on his chest and a bright red cape on his back—stole from the Trojans three years ago. Interestingly enough, that’s the only one of the five Rose Bowls USC has dropped in the past six seasons.

Yes, Joe Paterno once owned January in ways few other college coaches did. But after the dominating deeds of Mark Sanchez and the play-calling clarity of Steve Sarkisian, it’s more apparent than ever that Pete Carroll is the gridiron guru you don’t want to face in a ballyhooed bowl game.

Perhaps USC gained little from this game, in the eyes of some observers. Maybe, some would say, a toppling of the Crimson Tide or a lashing of the Longhorns would have meant more. Those are fair points, but when you pulverize Penn State and Paterno on January 1—something rarely done in the past 43 years—you graduate to the head of the class in college football… not for a given season, but definitely on a larger historical level. In many ways, that’s exactly what USC football is and has been chasing under Pete Carroll: history. When scribes, sages and students of college football study the first decade of this century, the Trojans’ dance with dominance will be looked upon with increasing amounts of awe and amazement.