Another Case of Hit and Miss for Bruins

Let’s not even bother with the first 58 minutes. Ugh. UCLA-USC was U-G-L-Y. No, let’s go straight to the last two minutes. Let’s talk about how this game became college football’s most exasperating 10-10 tie since Notre Dame vs. Michigan State, 1966.

Let’s confine ourselves to what happened Saturday at the Coliseum after UCLA freshman quarterback Bret Johnson loped out of his own end zone and lobbed a 52-yard grenade to his old schoolmate, Scott Miller, who spread his arms and practically took a bow in front of the Bruin bench.

First down, UCLA, at the USC 36! Under two minutes to play! Score tied! Crowd of 86,672 on pins and needles! Forget those 10 fumbles! Forget those four interceptions! Forget those 16 penalties! Suddenly we had ourselves an actual game here! Little, unlucky, unloved UCLA actually had a chance to beat big, bad, bowl-bound USC, which former UCLA coach Dick Vermeil just finished calling “the best football team in the country.”

Who among us ever could have foreseen such an upset?

(Cough.)

Anyhow, here is how it ended. Here is how UCLA wasted the time and yardage remaining. Here is why Terry Donahue, in at least a few conversations today, is probably being accused of Ara Parseghianing his way into a 10-10 sister-kisser when he could have gone for broke, rather than stranding his kicker 54 yards away from a field goal that would have made UCLA’s whole season.

First down: Shawn Wills runs one yard with a pitchout to the 35. Second down: Johnson runs one yard with a quarterback keeper to the 34. Third down: Wills runs to his right--right into USC’s Cleveland Colter for a loss of three, back to the 37. Time left on the clock: 0:02.

“Wills was supposed to get to the 32. He didn’t run where the play was meant to go,” Donahue said.

Oh, the 32.

That would have left Alfredo Velasco needing only a 49-yard field goal. Piece of cake.

As it turned out, Velasco did have that much distance in him. He’d already hit one 49-yarder in the fourth quarter. And, when he went for the game-winner, darned if the stupid football didn’t bonk the stupid crossbar and bounce backward, ending the game.

Nobody could blame the kicker. You couldn’t ask anybody to bring you the head of Alfredo Velasco. Just as nobody could blame Shawn Wills for running sideways instead of forward.

“Like I told Shawn, there were 50 plays in the game more important than that one,” Donahue said. “And there were 50 other ways we could have won the football game.”

Paul Simon could have set it to music. Yet, Donahue was right. UCLA could have won if USC’s acrobatic Gary Wellman hadn’t been granted a touchdown catch by a generous official; if USC kicker Quin Rodriguez hadn’t bonked the stupid football off an upright that bounced over the stupid crossbar for a field goal; if UCLA hadn’t spent so much time in first-and-40 or fourth-and-26 situations thanks to stupid unsportsmanlike-conduct penalties.

If the Bruins had caught a break, or played smarter, or played more bravely, their day (and season) would not have ended with defensive back Eric Turner kneeling on the field in sadness, or defensive lineman Jon Pryor standing by himself, swinging his helmet, shaking his head in disbelief as he watched a replay of Velasco’s kick on the Coliseum scoreboard.

If UCLA had won, maybe a couple of its assistant coaches would not have come close to mixing it up with a couple of USC’s assistant coaches in the elevator on its descent from the press box to the field.

If UCLA had won, maybe Marvcus Patton, the senior linebacker, wouldn’t have found himself saying: “I felt like crying. I felt we deserved it. I felt we did win the game. That touchdown they gave USC, I felt that was ridiculous. I saw it on the replay board and couldn’t understand that call at all. That call was ridiculous. I know the referees are intimidated by USC, being at the Coliseum and all, but I don’t think he (Wellman) was anywhere close. Ridiculous.”

More quietly, in another corner of the room, cornerback Carlton Gray, a freshman, summed up the experience another way.

“Well, you definitely get the bounces at home, don’t you?” he said.

Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but USC definitely did. Rodriguez’s kick bounces over, Velasco’s kick bounces back. There’s your football game, right there.

Say what you will about the cannonball runs of Ricky Ervins or the way that UCLA’s defense, despite giving up close to 400 yards of total offense, came within a weird bounce and a controversial call of holding USC scoreless. Two kicks decided this game--the last play of the first half, and the last play of the second.

The rest of the game? There must have been better football played Saturday in Nebraska Wesleyan at Chadron State, or St. Norbert’s of Wisconsin at Central Iowa, or Capistrano Valley High vs. El Toro High. Comes the future, there undoubtedly will be several wonderful battles between Bret Johnson and Todd Marinovich, but this was hardly one of them. The former was clumsy, the latter inaccurate, and both had better games in high school.

Did UCLA defeat USC Saturday, 10-10? Some will say so.

Some won’t. Terry Donahue won’t.

“Unless it puts you in the Rose Bowl, I don’t feel a tie is sufficient or satisfying,” the UCLA coach said.

This was a football game nobody deserved to win, and nobody did.