LOS ANGELES — Come with me, folks.
Let’s walk down the steps of legendary Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and step onto the sidelines.
Look up at the scoreboard. There’s only 2:14 to play in the fourth quarter and Oregon is hanging onto its precarious 21-17 lead. The Ducks did have a somewhat commanding 21-7 lead at the beginning of the third quarter, but the USC Trojans have battled back and made it a ballgame that the Ducks are going to have to earn.
So in these closing moments, Oregon has to step it up and make a stop to prevent a potential blow to its Rose Bowl hopes.
There’s Trojan quarterback Carson Palmer faced with a daunting fourth-and-13 from the USC 25-yard line. The look on his face shows a young man who knows that for his team to have any hope at all to salvage this season, he is going to have to somehow complete this first down.
Now, look right there on the Oregon sideline. It’s Duck quarterback Joey Harrington, who can’t stand not having control of what is about to happen next. He’s nervously pacing the sidelines behind most of his teammates who are watching the play.
Harrington’s pants are covered in red from the Trojans logo on the 50-yard line, but it may as well be blood after the beautiful battle he has waged throughout the game. Didn’t he remind you of Mel Gibson’s character in the movie, “Braveheart?” The way he sliced through defenders with ease and how he always found his target.
Back on the field, there’s Palmer dropping back, finding a receiver 20 yards downfield and firing it. It appears as though receiver Matt Nickels is going to pull it in, but Oregon rover Steve Smith bats it down to turn over possession of the ball.
Did you just see Harrington? He didn’t see the play, but he heard the silence of the 54,031 fans in attendance and jumped for joy. He picked up his helmet and stormed out on the field.
All the Ducks have to do here is run down the clock and the first road-win of the season is theirs. The first three plays are running plays, and the Ducks are faced with a fourth-and-three from the Trojan 18-yard line. Looks like it’s up to struggling place-kicker Josh Frankel to extend the lead to seven points.
Huh? Head coach Mike Bellotti just decided to go for it on fourth down.
Harrington seems pretty pleased with the call. He takes the snap, finds a streaking Justin Peelle running toward the right part of the end zone and lets the ball go. It floats 18-yards into his tight end’s hands for the touchdown.
“At that point I didn’t think a field goal would do us any good because we’d still only be up by seven and the Trojans could score and go for two and win the game,” head coach Mike Bellotti said. “It worked perfectly.”
It was the exclamation point. Oregon 28, USC, 17.
Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the final 70 seconds to tick off and the fifth win for the Ducks will be official.
Those Oregon Duck fans in the east end zone sure can’t wait. Look at those crazies. They’re already celebrating and taunting the Trojans.
USC sophomore wide receiver Marcell Allmond must obviously respect them because he just gave all those fans a certain “No. 1” salute with a certain finger on his hand as he was being carted into the locker room.
Three… two… one… ballgame.
Some Duck fans rushed the field, as they have in the previous weeks against Washington and UCLA. Oregon wide receiver Marshaun Tucker is greeted by his family and friends who have made the trip up from El Centro, Calif.
And those Trojans walk off the field with their heads held low after their third-straight Pacific-10 Conference loss.
Let’s follow these triumphant Ducks through the tunnel to their locker room.
They have a certain championship look to them, don’t they? Yeah, they’re excited; but not too much, ya know?
“We enjoy [playing] big games,” linebacker Matt Smith said. “Yeah, we made some mistakes, but we stepped it up when we needed to.”
Okay, so maybe Oregon fullback Josh Line is a little bit excited. He deserves to be though, especially after that clutch 23-yard touchdown pass that he pulled in from Harrington in the second quarter.
“Who’s next?” Line is screaming to nobody in particular. “Who’s next, baby?”
Keep on following me and stay close because we’re about to brave the media crush. Come through these doors and into this room, where you’re not going to be able to breathe, let alone walk around from player to player.
“It’s a zoo in here, man,” wide receiver Marshaun Tucker said.
Sure is, full of national media wanting to get a piece of these up-and-coming Oregon Ducks. In one corner, Bellotti is surrounded by scribes and speaking into an ESPN microphone.
In another, there’s Harrington talking with the bright lights of Fox Sports Net cameras in his face.
We know what this means, right? These Ducks are no longer a secret.
They haven’t been a secret since their 29-10 victory over the Bruins Sept. 23, but really, there were a lot of people waiting for the “Duckies” to get on the road. Some were not quite ready to hail them as legitimate contenders until they won away from their boisterous crowd.
“Today we showed we can play on the road,” senior linebacker Garrett Sabol said. “We need to show that. We showed that we could come to somebody else’s house and win. This was huge for us.”
Come check this out. Peer out in the hallway with me. Do you see what I see? It’s Oregon athletic director Bill Moos and Bellotti exchanging an embrace.
And not just your “Hey, nice win” embrace either. It was more like a “Well, coach, we really have something special on our hands” embrace.
So, let’s get out of here and let these players, coaches and athletic director enjoy this win. There’s a big game next week against Arizona at home that needs our attention now.
But we both know that in a few months we could be taking a similar walk through a similar stadium just a few miles north of here in a town called Pasadena.