COLLEGE FOOTBALL BOWL GAMES : Time to Wake Up and Smell the Roses

They’ll be seated together today in Pasadena, roughly 30 members of the 1948 Northwestern team, the school’s first Rose Bowl entry.

“We’re thrilled, we waited so many years,” said Alex Sarkisian, 73, center/linebacker and captain for the team that beat Cal, 20-14.

“We all got together in 1959 and all agreed the greatest joy we could imagine would be to sit in the Rose Bowl and cheer on another Northwestern team to victory. We finally made it.

“Gary Barnett took our wish and our dream and made it reality.”

Today’s 82nd Rose Bowl game matches a dream team, Northwestern, against USC, a team that has lost its way and seeks to find its way back to respectability.

Northwestern (10-1) has partisans who won’t believe what has happened until their Wildcats actually take the field today, clad in their purple and black uniforms.

Sarkisian, 73, bristles at the “Cinderella” tag pinned by many on this team.

“This is not a Cinderella team,” he said. “These are outstanding Division I football players and a great coaching staff.”

Followers of USC (8-2-1) began confidently making New Year’s Day plans in October. Their Trojans were 6-0 and preparing to end a 12-year winless streak against Notre Dame.

Their national championship hopes ended at South Bend, Ind., where John Robinson’s team imploded, 38-10. The Trojans then began a stumbling 2-1-1 sprint to Pasadena, losing again to UCLA.

Robinson and his players hope to redeem themselves today with a performance commensurate with any of their final practices, which sizzled when compared to some drills late in the regular season.

Something like the 31-0 rout of Arizona State or the 31-10 victory at Arizona earlier this season would be about right, Trojan faithful figure. But definitely not the Trojans of the Notre Dame, Stanford, Oregon State or UCLA games.

Northwestern partisans hope their team can shake off the distraction of reports of trouble in Barnett’s negotiations for a new contract.

Barnett was handed a golden opportunity to take the heat off that part of the Rose Bowl story at a Saturday news conference but chose not to do so. Asked if he could address the question of his future at Northwestern, Barnett answered tersely:

“No.”

He did address, however, what an 11-1 Northwestern season would mean.

“Has any team ever beaten Notre Dame, Michigan, Penn State and ‘SC in the same year?” he asked.

He suggested the task will be fraught with danger today.

“Our problem has been simulating ‘SC’s speed in practice,” he said. “Keyshawn Johnson has more receiving yards this year than we’ve thrown for.”

Not quite, but close. Johnson has caught 90 passes for 1,218 yards. Northwestern, nearly all of it by quarterback Steve Schnur, has passed for 1,559 yards. USC’s total: 2,776.

The 6-4, 215-pound Johnson wraps up a remarkable college career today. His 90 catches are a Pac-10 record. A two-year player from the junior college ranks, Johnson is third on USC’s career pass-catching list, behind four-year players Johnnie Morton and John Jackson.

In 16 of his 22 USC games, he has had 100-yard games.

And today, he may add a new dimension to his game. He has been returning kickoffs in practice this week.

Northwestern’s Darnell Autry, the powerful-yet-smooth 6-1, 210-pound sophomore running back, will be the main target for USC’s oft-knocked defense today. The rap on Robinson’s defense was that over the season’s second half, it couldn’t stop the run.

If that is still a problem today, it’ll be a long afternoon for the Trojans. Autry reached 1,000 yards in Northwestern’s seventh game this year, averaging 152 yards in a 1,675-yard season.

That’s nearly half a mile more than Robinson’s leading runner, Delon Washington, who had 1,086 yards.

Barnett’s senior quarterback, Schnur, has thrown far fewer passes than Robinson’s two quarterbacks, Brad Otton and Kyle Wachholtz, and with a good deal less accuracy.

He was a 54% thrower on 218 throws. Otton and Wachholtz were nearly identical at 61% and threw a total of 23 touchdown passes to Schnur’s nine.

Otton, a 6-6 junior, will start today and Wachholtz, a senior, will also play, but Robinson wouldn’t say when. When the Trojans were 6-0, Otton was playing the first and third quarters, Wachholtz the second and fourth.

Schnur throws most often to 6-3 sophomore D’Wayne Bates, who caught 42 passes, five for touchdowns. Next come Autry (21 catches) and Matt Hartl (20).

On the rare occasions when Johnson is covered, USC goes most often to speedy fullback Terry Barnum (29 catches), wide receiver Larry Parker (24) and tight end Johnny McWilliams (22).

Robinson said his team is largely healthy, having recovered from the normal allotment of holiday-season colds and flu. Backup fullback Rodney Sermons has nursed a hamstring pull throughout the Rose Bowl practice schedule.

Barnett said his squad is healthy, and by design.

“We’ve taken a gamble out here . . . we haven’t had full live contact since our last game,” he said. “We spent our first eight or nine practices here trying to get our game rhythms back.”

Robinson is also thinking in terms of timing.

“The trick to this thing,” he said last week, “is getting your team at peak readiness on the day you play the game. If you’re a day early or a day late, the game gets out of whack on you.”

Throughout the practice schedule, Robinson has several times tried to impart to his players the magnitude of the Rose Bowl Game.

“I hope they’re as thrilled by it as I am,” he said. “I played in it and I’ve coached in it, and there’s nothing like the anticipation on that bus ride from the hotel on game day, through the Pasadena neighborhoods, all the people waving at you, and then going down onto the flatland, and then you see the Rose Bowl.

“There’s nothing like it.”