I Can't Complain (but sometimes I still do)

Nipped in the bud

Once again, Trojans show Bears who’s in charge

By BOB PADECKY
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

LOS ANGELES - Until proven otherwise, and it’s beginning to look like it will take a lot of proof, USC is Cal’s daddy.

There is no gentle way to put that. No kind way to give Cal a pat on the back and say nice try, Bears. No tries are nice when the Rose Bowl is on the line. USC is Cal’s daddy because daddy is in charge, daddy knows when to turn it on and daddy knows how to take his kid to school.

And in the fourth quarter Saturday night, USC took Cal to class. USC showed the Bears what to do when the hands on the fourth-quarter game clock are going tick, tick, TICK, so loud you might forget why you’re here.

USC didn’t. With the score tied at 9-9, the Trojans scored back-to-back touchdowns. Cal answered the first score this way: two incomplete passes by Bears quarterback Nate Longshore and a 2-yard completion.

Cal answered the second touchdown this way: three incomplete passes, the third one dropped by a Trojans defender. Longshore appeared overwhelmed.

“You got to be able to keep up (with USC),” said Cal coach Jeff Tedford, giving the impression the Bears scrambled as best they could. And they did. The Bears don’t have to apologize for this one. They weren’t jobbed, victims of a conspiracy. They didn’t flop, fall flat or lean against excuses.

“At least we got this close (to the Rose Bowl),” said Cal offensive guard Erik Robertson, and if that sounds like acceptance, it is. It also shows the fundamental difference between Cal and USC, a flaw you might call it.

USC, if it had lost this game, would have never had a player say afterward, “At least we got this close.” Never. The Trojans don’t do close. The Trojans have won 21 Rose Bowls, 17 of them since Cal last won one. The Trojans have won seven national championships, two in the last three years. Those numbers aren’t just an egregious excuse to fill out the team’s press guide.

Those numbers are comfort in time of need, like Saturday when the Rose Bowl was hanging in the balance.

Those numbers are the sunglasses the Trojans wear when the spotlight is on them, like Saturday when the light was bright, especially the BCS one.

A team with those numbers, that tradition, plays like USC did Saturday in the fourth quarter. A team with those skins hanging on the wall doesn’t say, as Cal linebacker Desmond Bishop said, “We’re a program definitely on the rise.”

Oh, rather Bishop could say about the Bears what Robertson said about the Trojans: “They do a very good job at getting at the end of the season.”

USC, gunning for a national championship, flipped the switch and turned up the flame Saturday. Cal, gunning for national respect, achieved that.

The Bears didn’t embarrass themselves.

They led at the half, 9-6. They were tied at the end of three. But when it came for them to find their flame from their usual fire-starters, the Trojans were there to snuff them.

“No team this season played DeSean (Jackson) more aggressively than they did tonight,” Tedford said about his electrifying game-breaking wide receiver who had just two catches for 41 yards. “Someone was always in his face. He was always double covered.”

Running back Marshawn Lynch, the other hot current on offense, had 91 yards on 21 carries, but never had a run that was an eyelash from being a game-turning breakaway.

The Trojans were too fast, too many, too often. And it wasn’t a fluke, like the Trojans had just enough on defense.

The Trojans are obscenely talented — oh, that the Bears could say that — and that fact was never more obvious than when a kid named C.J. Gable ran the football.

“Before the game we said, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” Bears linebacker Zack Follet said. “We didn’t expect him to do anything.”

Yet this Gable kid, a freshman who had only 40 rushing attempts all season and gained only 159 yards, ran for 112 yards. Subbing for a banged-up Chauncey Washington, Gable ate up yards and time and did what USC running backs do, and that would be to keep the sticks moving on the sidelines.

“They have the No. 1 recruiting class every year,” Tedford said. “They have great coaching. There is no room for mistakes when you play them. They just keep coming after you.”

With wave upon wave of talent, the Trojans come. And they do it without blinking. They have been in this position before. They expect to be in this position again. They feel entitled and they have every right to be.

Cal? The Bears made a game of it. They made the Trojans sweat, maybe even made it a bit problematical that USC will advance to play Ohio State for the national championship.

It wasn’t an impressive rollover, after all. But, still, daddy was in charge. Make no mistake about that. Daddy knows that. And so does Cal.

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat