PASADENA, Calif. — Click.
In this stadium with these teams on this November afternoon, images worth savoring flowed together as one, as if they were time-elapsed in the ever-expanding list of unforgettable Oregon games.
Which is why the use of a scrapbook for all these mental pictures proves crucial.
Joey Harrington, next to friends and teammates Ryan Schmid and Justin Peelle on the sideline, has his back turned to the field.
He can’t bear to witness UCLA kicker Chris Griffith attempt a 50-yard field goal with two seconds left that would give the Bruins a two-point win and send the Ducks home with glum uncertainty about their bowl future.
“I’m tired of watching those things,” Harrington said.

He does sneak a peek at the end, just in time to see the kick sail wide right and deliver Oregon a did-you-expect-anything-else? 21-20 victory at the Rose Bowl that keeps the Ducks on top of the Pacific-10 Conference and in control of their own destiny.
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Seth McEwan, the gritty, hard-nosed junior defensive end for the Ducks, watches the field goal bounce off the ground and subsequently drops to his knees. With a face red from pure exhaustion, he gazes skyward while lifting arms to the air and lets out a scream.
He then props himself up and hugs a distraught and teary-eyed Mike Saffer, the Bruins’ 6-foot-5, 304-pound offensive lineman, who pounded into McEwan and the Oregon defensive line during the 60-minute trenches battle.
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Rashad Bauman joins about 20 of his teammates at the game’s conclusion and sprints toward the end zone opposite of where their locker room is located to thank and celebrate with the thousands of Ducks’ fans who made their presence felt among the 78,330 in attendance.
Bauman waves up at them. Steve Smith yells at them. And Onterrio Smith slaps some fives with them. Bauman, after around 10 minutes with the Oregon faithful, then turns around and jogs toward the locker room, but not before dishing a little dirt on the remaining UCLA fans, who stand still in shock that their Bruins didn’t win.
“You see our crowd?” Bauman said later. “Our crowd out there was louder than their crowd!”
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In the basement of the Rose Bowl, just outside the Oregon locker room, fullback Josh Line emerges with a beaming grin and a head shaking in disbelief. The reality of having caught the winning touchdown pass to beat the Bruins on the road and keep the Ducks in control of winning their wild league is beginning to sink in.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” said Line, who broke loose from the line of scrimmage and rolled to the right side of the end zone on a critical fourth-and-goal from the one and caught the go-ahead score. “I felt like the ball wasn’t going to get to me.”
Line then stops his racing thoughts on the victory and hopes his wife is doing OK back home. After all, his wife is pregnant with their child and, well, “Some people say that stress causes births and I’m pretty sure she was stressed,” Line said. “My wife was probably watching at home and going crazy, and I hope she didn’t have my baby.
“I hope I don’t come home and I’ve got a baby in intensive care.”
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A few feet away from Line, over in the corner and away from the media spotlight, sits Oregon defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti, whose defense held the Bruins on that last drive on a critical third-and-five to force the 50-yard field goal try.
You can forgive him if he never wants to leave this position where he’s smiling, chatting with friends and just soaking up every bit of the Ducks’ victory over the Bruins in Pasadena.
After all, it wasn’t that long ago, 1998 in fact, when Aliotti was in the other locker room at the Rose Bowl for the one season that he was UCLA’s defensive coordinator before leaving under not-so-friendly circumstances with Bruins head coach Bob Toledo.
Bill Moos enters the room, takes off his coat, loosens his tie and heads right toward Aliotti and offers his hand. Aliotti shakes it and gets up and gives the Oregon athletic director a hug. He then sits back down, his face still one of elation, while Nike CEO Phil Knight is heard in the distance, exhaling, and saying, “Oh my!”
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And then there’s Colleen Bellotti, wife of Mike, who watches from the stands with mixed emotions as the last-second field goal for the Bruins misses. She celebrates with those around her and, later, walks off the field with her husband, whom she says was “more fired up than usual.”
But still, she felt Griffith’s pain when he walked off the field after booting the ball too short and too right. She knows all about kickers. Her son, Luke, is a junior place-kicker for Sheldon High, and just over a week ago, he had knocked through a field goal with 16 seconds left to give the Irish a 31-28 win and the Midwestern League championship.
“You feel bad for him,” Colleen said of Griffith. “So my heart goes out to him because you’re either the hero or the loneliest guy on the team.”
She says these words at the same time that her husband tells a group of journalists just an earshot away, “If he makes it, then that’s an awesome kick. I can accept that.”
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The roll of film is almost up, and you have to make sure to save some pictures for the remaining two “bowl games” of the season, as Bellotti calls them.
First, there’s the Dec. 1 Civil War. Then, there could be the Jan. 1 Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Ariz. Or, as doubtful as it seems, things could fall neatly into place and the Ducks could be returning to this rosy town on Jan. 3 to play for it all.
One last snapshot:
It’s of Harrington. He’s gushing over his first victory in the stadium he’s longed to play in. A reporter asks what it was like to play in the Rose Bowl for the final time. He gives him one of those Oregon Duck looks, one of those don’t-underestimate-us looks.
“You keep saying that, and I’m not buying it,” Harrington said. “There’s a lot of playing left.
“Stranger things have happened.”
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