Good enough—again: Southern California isn't yet as powerful as it was last season, but the Trojans emerged from High Stakes Saturday as front-runner to make it to the Orange Bowl

Sporting News, The, Oct 18, 2004 by Matt Hayes

So here we are again. The cameras are flashing, the camcorders are rolling, and everyone who's anyone in this plastic city has a cell phone in hand and tickets at the 50 in the Coliseum. Look at this lady here, decked out in her Cardinal and Gold and holding up her infant for Reggie Bush to kiss while dad desperately tries to figure out this digital camera contraption.

"Is it on?" he asks. Oh, it's on, all right. Six weeks into the season, we're right back where we were last season. Just like last year, Southern California is the best team in the nation. Just like last year, the Trojans have two Heisman Trophy candidates, a soft schedule ahead and enough juice to win every time they step onto the field.

"You've got to survive, man;' says Bush, USC's tall glass of thrill. "That's the way it is every week."

For every team.

So here we are again. Oklahoma wins the Red River Shootout, and Texas coach Mack Brown is proud of his players. That's nice, Mack. Hey, Orangebloods: The Holiday Bowl is now taking ticket applications.

So here we are again. We flirted with the idea of the new ACC as the new king and the bulky Big Ten as a top-to-bottom beast. But let's stop kidding ourselves; the SEC is the best conference in the nation. Yet there's one little, bitty problem: Those athletic, fast machines keep damaging each other's national title hopes. This time, it was Tennessee--yeah, the embarrassed, teetering Vols of two weeks past--finding a way to beat Georgia for the first time since 1999 and putting a serious dent in the Bulldogs' national title hopes.

So here we are again. Pretenders--Minnesota, Texas, Ohio State--were exposed, yet there's still this undeniable feeling some one-loss team will emerge as this year's LSU. Just because the BCS was tweaked again doesn't mean such a team can't make it back to play for it all.

Which brings us back to USC--and the motivation for last week's payback against California. The Bears are the last team to beat USC coach Pete Carroll's powerhouse in the past 26 games. That happened in a triple-overtime thriller last year in Berkeley--a game USC quarterback Matt Leinart privately has seethed about since. Leinart played poorly that day and admits he gave Cal too many opportunities to win and didn't do enough in the three overtimes to pull it out.

So here we are again. USC can't salt it away midway through the third quarter, and Leinart throws an interception in the end zone to give Cal hope. Now it's the fourth quarter, and the Bears are driving, and the last precious seconds are ticking away, and they're getting ready to make it 2-for-2 in these wild showdowns. First-and-goal at the 9 with the hottest quarterback on the planet, Cal's Aaron Rodgers, under center--and USC still wins. Who among the more than 90,000 fans packed into the Coliseum wouldn't have bet their Botox that Rodgers was going to find the end zone?

He stepped on the field three hours earlier and hit his first 23 passes--"The guy was freakin' lights-out," Carroll says--and engineered the 56-yard final drive in less than 3 minutes. But he missed his final three attempts, the last grazing the fingers of wide out Jonathan Makonnen in the end zone and setting off a wild celebration that would have had Al Davis pining for the or joint again.

"I think that was the only pass he missed," says USC defensive tackle Shaun Cody. Actually, Rodgers missed five. The last three, though, were the only true misses--the other two were throwaways.

That, as much as anything, has to be disconcerting for Carroll, who doubles as USC's defensive coordinator--especially considering the state of the pass-happy Pac-10. Up next: Arizona State and white-hot quarterback Andrew Walter.

"We rope-a-doped them,' Carroll says. "That's not going to work every week."

Look, the Trojans aren't rolling as they were when Carson Palmer won the Heisman Trophy, or like last season when they brought home their first national title in 25 years. But they're winning, which, in this crazy, convoluted mess of a poll system-championship series, is the only way to cover your tail.

USC still can't protect Leinart--he was sacked four times and pressured countless others--and Cal gashed the vaunted USC run defense for 157 yards. The Bears more than doubled the Trojans' total yards (424-205), and USC clearly doesn't have the firepower it did last season.

So, there are two ways to h)ok at this: USC eventually will be exposed, or Cal is one of the best teams in the nation.

Says Leinart: "(Cal) won't lose again."

And USC won't be exposed. At least not until the Orange Bowl national title game. Just as Oklahoma was in the Sugar Bowl last season.

So here we are again.

RELATED ARTICLE: Five things we learned last weekend.

1 We were a year early picking Auburn to win it all, Quarterback Jason Campbell has flourished in offensive coordinator Al Borges' version of the West Coast offense, and a revamped defense kept pressure off of the offense until it could develop chemistry and confidence. The Tigers can control tempo behind the bruising running of tailbacks Carnell Williams and Ronnie Brown, and Georgia's loss to Tennessee means Auburn might only have to beat the Bulldogs once this season--in Auburn.