UCLA 13, USC 9: Game of the Decade?

As a Trojan, I generally have no particular interest in revisiting December 2, 2006 more often than necessary. It is truly a date which will live in infamy. ESPN ranks it #42 on the all-time list of most painful college football losses, but for me personally, it’s #1, trailing only a certain basketball game on my all-sports list of most devastating losses.

Even so, something got me thinking recently about the broader impact that game had, not just on the 2006-07 season, not just on the Trojan-Bruin rivalry, just not on the USC “dynasty” or the Pete Carroll Era, but on the entire course of college football history since that accursed game on that accursed day. If not for Eric McNeal’s interception of John David Booty’s pass at the Bruins’ 20 with 1:10 remaining at the Rose Bowl on 12/2/06, the entire landscape of college football today could well be completely and utterly unrecognizable.

I know it sounds crazy, but bear with me on this.

College football, uniquely among major American sports, is all about The Narrative. Because the sport’s very championship is poll-driven, perception is hugely important, and can have tremendous impact on both on-field results (by creating, or avoiding, certain matchups) and on the way history processes and interprets those results, applies their lessons going forward, and thereby alters future results. Certain games can take on larger-than-life significance, fairly or unfairly. For instance, just ask any Big Ten team that’s tried to win national respect since Ohio State’s consecutive title-game flops whether they felt the sting of those Buckeye losses. Or ask any Big East team that happens to go undefeated this coming season, and wants a shot at the crystal football, whether last year’s Cincinnati faceplant against Florida has any effect on their efforts.

Anyway, there are really two overarching themes that have dominated The Narrative over the last half-decade or so. One is The Rise of the Mid-Major, and for that reason, the real Game of the Decade is almost certainly the Boise State-Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl in January 2007, a month after the USC-UCLA debacle. It was not only a truly phenomenal game on its own merits, with a simply unbelievable ending, but its impact going forward was absolutely enormous, culminating in last year’s improbable Boise-TCU matchup serving as a potential national semifinal for this season, with the winner (as it happened, Boise) coming in as a preseason BCS title favorite or near-favorite — something that would have sounded utterly ridiculous to contemplate just a few years ago.

So, that’s one theme. The other overarching theme of The Narrative since 2006 is, of course, The Ascendancy and Dominance of the SEC. Think back to 2004, when Auburn went undefeated, yet didn’t sniff the BCS title game. That’s inconceivable now. Why? Because the SEC has won four straight BCS championships, and thus is almost universally perceived as being the Best Conference in the Land, bar none. Debates about “which conference is better?” have been replaced by debates about how much better the SEC is. Is it “head and shoulders above” everybody else, or only slightly better? Is it the “best conference from top to bottom,” or does it merely have way more elite teams than anybody else? Is it a great conference, or OMG THE BEST CONFERENCE EVER? All of this may drive us non-SEC fans crazy, but four consecutive national titles, by three different teams, will do that for you.

But such is the fragility of college football’s narratives that the entire SEC-dominance meme might never have taken hold, if not for a certain Pac-10 rivalry game in 2006.

Think about it. Coming into that game, Ohio State was the undisputed #1 team in the land, having beaten #2 Michigan in the OMG GAME OF THE CENTURY the week before. USC was the newly anointed #2, and was destined for a date with the Buckeyes in the BCS title game, provided they could beat UCLA for the eighth straight year. There was no “Florida vs. Michigan” debate, because it was irrelevant — the Trojans needed only to beat the lowly Bruins, and they’d be headed for their third consecutive BCS title game, and their shot at a third national title in four years. (Sorry, LSU fans.)

If USC beats UCLA that day, the Trojans go to the BCS title game, and they almost certainly whoop the overrated Buckeyes. Thus, instead of hearing about “SEC speed” for the following eight months, all we hear about is the ongoing Trojan dynasty. 4th-and-2 against Texas, rather than signaling the beginning of the end, is seen as a blip on the radar, a footnote to history. USC once again dominates The Narrative, and the SEC remains a regional bit player. Congrats on your Sugar Bowl championship, Tim Tebow & Florida, and better luck next year.

“Next year” would be the 2007-08 season — the Year of Chaos. USC still loses to Stanford (!) and Oregon, LSU still loses to Kentucky and Arkansas, everybody else (except Ohio State and, uh, Kansas and Hawaii) still loses 2+ games, and when all is said and done, we’re still debating which two-loss team should face the Buckeyes for the title. But the debate has very different parameters. Instead of LSU (which, remember was #7 in the polls heading into the final week) having a prohibitive edge because, well, hell, they’re the SEC champ, and you can’t deny the SEC champ … maybe it’s USC that has a prohibitive edge because, unsightly losses to Drunken Trees and F***in’ Ducks notwithstanding, they’re the defending national champions, winners of 3 titles in 4 years, the great dynastic dynamo led by the Bear Bryant of Our Time, so you can’t deny them a shot at the title, all other things being equal. In fact, I think you can remove the “maybe” from that statement. USC goes. And they whoop Ohio State, again. And now they’re two-time defending national champions (and 4 out of 5!). And the SEC? Still without a national title since LSU split the baby with USC with 2003-04. (Sorry, again, Tigers fans.)

Now flash forward to the 2008-09 season. Remember that one? USC lost early to Oregon State, then dropped out of the national-title conversation completely. Instead the chatter was all about Florida, Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma. Why? Because by that point, The Narrative about the SEC was solidly established, and the Big 12 had positioned itself as the clear #2 conference, perception-wise. Never mind that the supposedly “down” Pac-10 when unbeaten in bowl games — they, and specifically the Trojans, were exiled to the kids’ table, despite having only one early loss (to a pretty good team, on the road!). So we got a Florida-Oklahoma title game, with Texas feeling jilted, while USC was condemned to another booorrr-ing!!! win over some Big Ten team in the booorrr-ing!!! Rose Bowl.

Now imagine if that season had started with, and let me repeat this for emphasis, USC as two-time defending BCS champions, and winners of 4 out of 5 national titles. The Pete Carroll Dynasty wouldn’t just have been a key component of The Narrative, it would have been The Narrative. “SEC speed”… what’s that? Tim Tebow… who’s that? Florida? Just a regional power. The title game? USC-Oklahoma, most likely. Certainly, certainly, there’s no possible way a one-loss Trojans team, with only that late-September blemish in Corvallis, would’ve been left out of the party, if the previous two seasons had gone as I’ve just outlined. When you’ve won two straight titles, and 4 out of 5, you cut to the front of the one-loss line, period.

So: USC beats always-overrated Oklahoma for the national title, its third straight, and 5th in 6 years. Then, when the Trojans fall from grace in 2009-10, followed by Carroll’s departure and the NCAA’s dropping of the Reggiegate hammer, it’s a real dynastic collapse, not just the fall of a quasi-almost-dynasty. Meanwhile, when Alabama and Texas square off for the title last January, the storyline isn’t the SEC vying for its fourth straight title; it’s two teams, and conferences, finally emerging from USC’s long shadow. Alabama wins, and the SEC finally gets its first national title since the (ahem) disputed/shared LSU title from 2003-04. But there’s no SEC Dominance Narrative, no four straight BCS titles to prove it’s a WAR!!!

And all because, in this (blessed) alternate universe, UCLA didn’t beat USC in 2006.

Think about that. Everything I’ve just outlined is a plausible, and I would argue likely, outcome of holding every single outcome constant over the last four seasons, save one: an intraconference Pac-10 rivalry game. (Well, okay, not quite. Granted, I’m assuming USC wins the three title games that I project them, instead of SEC teams, landing in because of their ’06 win over UCLA . But I think that’s reasonable, especially with regard to the two Ohio State games; we can at least argue about Oklahoma — or potentially Florida, which might have snuck into that game instead of OU, maybe, even without an SEC Dominance narrative. Impossible to know.)

And yet, although the change I’m making is incredibly minimal — one stinkin’ game, and a game that nobody thought was particularly consequential when it kicked off — the end result is a total sea change in The Narrative, a wholesale upending of the overarching perceptions that govern college football. We’d be living in a completely different world, football-wise, if the Trojans had beaten the Bruins that day.

For USC fans, this is quite obviously true, and quite obviously painful. If not for a single loss to the hated Bruins, we’d have, potentially, five titles to show for the Carroll Era, four of them untainted by Reggiegate, three of them both undisputed and untainted. We’d have had a true run of utter dominance, rather than a bittersweet mixture of successes and woulda-coulda-shouldas. But for the rest of college football, it’s no less true. The SEC bohemoth wouldn’t tower over the land. Other conferences’ fans wouldn’t be on the defensive, trying to argue that they aren’t that far behind the SEC. For that matter, the SEC might be substantially less wealthy; its lucrative TV deals are based in part on the perception of unquestioned football dominance, yet that dominance is, in turn, potentially as fragile as a single intercepted pass by a Pac-10 also-ran at the Rose Bowl in 2006.

UCLA 13, USC 9 was the most crushing loss I’ve ever experienced as a football fan. I knew that the moment it ended. What I didn’t realize is that — Boise-Oklahoma possibly excepted — it was also perhaps the single most consequential game I’ve ever watched.

P.S. I very nearly titled this post “USC 13, UCLA 9: Game of the Decade?” Caught my error at the last moment. Quite the Freudian slip, eh? Four-plus years later, and I’m still in denial…