Galaxies apart, teams are barely rivals

Freshman year, I took a cluster course that focused on the
evolution of cosmos. I learned about the distances that separate
planets, solar systems, and galaxies. Unfortunately, the professor
never bothered explaining how far apart UCLA and USC are.

MapQuest tells me the campuses are just a few miles away from
each other, but the Web site can’t compute the distance
separating the respective football programs.

I’m guessing scientists haven’t invented a telescope
that allows the Bruins to see that many light years.

Saturday’s 66-19 shellacking merely confirmed that the
space between the two teams isn’t quantifiable these days. It
proved that last year’s closely contested game was an
aberration. Worse yet, it suggested that the match-up isn’t
really a rivalry anymore.

Rivals tend to respect each other’s abilities. Yet USC
coach Pete Carroll treated the Bruin defense like a group of
toddlers trying quantum physics. Early on, he didn’t bother
calling a pass play on third and 10 from USC’s own 3-yard
line. Up 31-6, he wasn’t inclined to pad the lead with a
field goal on fourth and four inside UCLA’s red zone.

Rivals tend to take great satisfaction in beating each other,
but Trojan players barely gave the Bruins a passing reference when
talking about their win.

“It’s great to be able to accomplish something, but
nah, not really,” USC wide receiver Steve Smith said when
asked if Saturday’s victory meant something special.
“We’re so used to it. We’ve been doing this for
so long.”

Rivals tend to produce fans with an impassioned hatred towards
the other school. So it seemed strange that the USC crowd gave UCLA
a standing ovation when the Bruins scored their first touchdown
with three-plus minutes left in the game.

The scene Saturday felt more like a pitiful exhibition contest
than one of the biggest rivalries in college football, but that
atmosphere has been seven years in the making. During this span,
USC has outscored UCLA 276-128. In the last five meetings alone,
the Trojans have jumped ahead of the Bruins 129-25 by halftime.

“When you lose by that magnitude, it’s tough,”
senior cornerback Marcus Cassel said. “But the score
doesn’t depict the difference between our teams. We just
didn’t play to our ability.”

Four of the last five years, the Bruins have said they
didn’t play up to their ability. It’s become such a
recurrent theme that it’s hard to tell what their abilities
against USC actually are. Defensively, the Bruins certainly
showcased the same potential on Saturday that they’ve
demonstrated all season.

It certainly didn’t require some high-tech telescope to
see the inevitable results. Pitting the nation’s premier
rushing offense against the worst rushing defense could only lead
to a couple different things. A 20-touchdown season for LenDale
White. A unanimous Heisman victory for Reggie Bush. Or both.

“He is just so fast, but what makes him special is his
acceleration,” safety Jarrad Page said of Bush. “He can
change speeds so fast. If he puts a move on you, you don’t
have a chance.”

Saturday, it seemed the Bruins’ best shot at stopping Bush
would have been a referee’s whistle flagging the Trojans 15
yards for making the game too boring and predictable. Twenty-two
times the public address speaker announced “Hand-off to
Reggie Bush.” The only variation came the two times he
proclaimed “Touchdown, Reggie Bush.”

Each and every time, the words needlessly reaffirmed the
astronomic gap between the two schools since the turn of the
century. The Trojans have consistently landed the better recruits.
Aside from last season’s contest, they’ve constantly
prepared the better game plan. And most importantly, they’ve
always won, usually in lopsided fashion. “I still believe
there is no talent difference,” tailback Maurice Drew
insisted. “We just didn’t execute.”

Execution may have kept the Bruins competitive, but they would
have needed even more for the victory Saturday. They needed the
Trojans to overlook them like last year. They needed a defense that
wasn’t hobbled by injuries and inexperience all season long.
And it certainly wouldn’t have hurt if Bush tore his ACL in
the first quarter.

None of it happened and the end result was a not surprising blow
out.

The outcome, however, doesn’t suggest these teams are
moving in opposite directions. UCLA’s 9-2 record is a marked
improvement that shows the program is progressing. It’s just
that the Bruins aren’t getting any closer to USC.

There isn’t a textbook or telescope on the market
indicating how far apart these programs are right now. I just hope
the available dictionaries still call the game a rivalry.

With reports from Bruin Sports staff. E-mail Finley at
[email protected].