At 4:15 a.m. on Oct. 31, 2009, my alarm clock went off. After slowly rolling out of bed, I jumped in the shower and threw on a yellow T-shirt. With that, my roommate and I were off to Autzen Stadium for the taping of ESPN College GameDay.
Given the ungodly hour of the day, the sun had yet to rise as we crossed the bridge over the Willamette River. Already, I was feeling like an underdog.
No. 5 USC was coming to town, and though Oregon was not far behind at No. 10, it was hard to imagine toppling the mighty Trojans. To me, Oregon was still an unknown commodity as a football team. USC, on the other hand, was a well-polished machine that had dominated the national headlines for nearly a decade.
Growing up in suburban Chicago, I had never attended GameDay. As we approached the set, still shrouded in darkness, I didn’t know exactly what to expect.
When we finally arrived in the parking lot where the stage was assembled, a raucous crowd was there to greet us. Students piled into the pit area in the middle, while hundreds of others hugged the railings off to the side. If I wasn’t fully awake on the walk over, I sure was now.
We grabbed a spot just off to the right of the student section, close to the Home Depot bus where Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso, Desmond Howard and Chris Fowler would soon emerge. As soon as the show started, the crowd turned its energy up a notch, and it pretty much stayed at a frenzied level throughout the morning. A beaming Chip Kelly donned the Duck costume and high-fived fans, and most everyone seemed to have embraced the role of the confident underdog.
By the end of the show, as I walked home to rest up before the 5 p.m. kickoff, I felt energized and convinced that Oregon could pull it off.
We all know what happened that night. The Ducks pounced on USC for a 47-20 win, and the fates of each program effectively crisscrossed.
Oregon would go on to win the Pacific-10 Conference outright and a trip to the Rose Bowl. The Trojans fell into a tailspin, losing two of their last four games and settling for an appearance in (gulp) the Emerald Bowl.
Pete Carroll departed for the NFL just before the NCAA hit the Trojans with major sanctions, barring them from bowl appearances for the next two years.
Lane Kiffin was hired as a controversial replacement, and the future was as uncertain as ever.
And now, here we are. Almost exactly one year later, Oregon and USC meet again. GameDay will be in attendance as well, this time in Los Angeles, and it is safe to say that no love is lost between the two schools.
Yet this year, the roles have been effectively reversed. This year, it is the Ducks who are ranked No. 1 in the nation, while the Trojans barely crack the top 25. It is national championship or bust for Oregon; the Trojans cannot play in any bowl game, period.
Back on that dewy morning last year, I could have never imagined that things would play out this way. USC was like an empire; it might stumble, but it could never truly topple.
To be clear, the specter of USC has not been vanquished. The Trojans may not be bowl eligible for the next two years, but they certainly have their fair share of talent. Matt Barkley is as good as they come at quarterback; five-star running backs fill the backfield; Robert Woods is emerging as one of the Pac-10’s premier wide receivers. I don’t know what to say about the defense, but it can’t get much worse, right?
Like Oregon a year ago, USC will be the underdog as GameDay heads to town. As the Ducks proved last year, that doesn’t mean anything. Special games seem to follow GameDay wherever it goes, and I expect another classic battle this weekend.
I would imagine that somewhere on campus, a USC student will be waking up bright and early Saturday morning to experience GameDay for the first time. Like me, they won’t know what to expect, from the show or the game later in the day. To them, I would say that anything is possible.
This time, however, I’ll be rooting for the favored team. And I certainly won’t be getting up at 4:15 in the morning.
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