USC 34, Notre Dame 31: College Game of the Year

Note to everyone who reads my blog: I know that you hate football, but try to read this anyway. If you hate it, let me know...

I just finished watching the USC vs. Notre Dame game, which was so good I had to do a post about it. Full disclosure: Besides Cal, USC is my favorite team. Even when they were not that good, I always enjoyed the games we played against them, and I feel that they are the all time greatest college team. Going into this game, USC had a 27 game win streak which includes winning the last two national championships (last year's outright, the year before it should have been outright) and they have last year's Heisman trophy winner, QB Matt Leinart, and last year's team MVP, RB Reggie Bush, considered by most people to be the best player in college football. Leading up to the game, even though USC had a 27 game winning streak and Notre Dame has already lost once this year, most of the experts were all picking Notre Dame to win, and the ESPN.com voters voted 59% in favor of Notre Dame. This game was played in Notre Dame with the loudest crowd I have heard in a very long time, but the weather was very good, 66 degrees and sunny.

The first half saw USC playing as bad as I have seen them playing since they were beaten by Cal, which was their last defeat. In this game Matt Leinart threw two interceptions, including one in the endzone, and he had only thrown three all year until this game. The sole bright spot was Reggie Bush, who averaged over 10 yards a carry over the course of the game. The whole game, the announcers kept on talking about time of possession, because Notre Dame had the ball almost twice as long as USC. This is meaningless though, because USC is a quick scoring team, so they just don't NEED the ball for very long. Both defenses played extraordinarily well both halves; there were several big sacks and good defensive breakups. For me, the first half was marred by two calls by the refs: One was when they gave a first down to Notre Dame on a reception where the receiver was clearly not in bounds (which was proven by the replay on TV, but was clear before that) and also by a penalty after a fumble by Notre Dame. Notre Dame fumbled on third down, and even though there was lots of pushing and shoving, and I even saw Notre Dame players shoving the ref, a USC player was called for a fifteen yard penalty, which instead of giving Notre Dame a fourth down on their 7 yard line, it gave them first down. This is one of the frustrating things about college officiating; they care more about making the home crowd happy than about making the right calls. Because of the first penalty, and because of poor punt return coverage by USC, Notre Dame lead 21-14 at the half.

But no one feels safe with a lead on USC at the half. They outscore everyone in the second half, but this is especially evident in the other two games this year in which they were down at the half, against Oregon and Arizona State; in those two games, USC outscored their opponents by a combined 70-7 in the second half.

So the second half arrives, and USC ties it up at 21-21, then Notre Dame scores a field goal to make it 21-24 in favor of Notre Dame. USC responds with another touchdown in the fourth quarter to make it 28-24. Notre Dame scores with about 2 minutes left in the game to put themselves ahead 28-31. So, a few plays later, it is fourth down and 8 for USC at their own 26 yard line, meaning that they have to get a first down AND still make it down and score. Matt Leinart throws to his off-season roommate for a 61 yard play, giving USC a first down at about the 13 yard line. A couple of rushes later, they pick up the first down, but they still have 2 yards and only 22 seconds left in the game. Matt Leinart rushes with the ball to the outside, and here is where the game gets crazy. At the end of his rush, he jumps, and the ball gets knocked out of his hands straight off of the field, but this was really close to the goal. One ref called it a touchdown, although it wasn't, and another ref started to talk with that ref, and in the meantime, the clock ran out on the game, and the game ended. The Notre Dame fans started running out on the field thinking they had won against the number one team in the country, and so did the Notre Dame coach. Because the ball had been knocked out of bounds with 7 seconds left, 7 seconds were put back on the clock, and the fans were cleared off the field, and the Notre Dame coach was scowling as he left the field. I was actually thinking that USC would run a play with him on the field so that they could have an automatic penalty against Notre Dame, but that didn't happen. The whole time during the controversy, which wasn't a contoversy at all by the time it got sorted out, it was just confusing to the people in the stadium, the announcers were going on and on about how lucky Matt Leinart was that the ball was hit out of his hands because the clock would have run out otherwise, which is absurd because he was in the endzone a split second after the ball left his hands, so if the ball had remained in his hands he would have had a touchdown. One thing though, even though the announcers did seem to take Notre Dame's position on a couple of items, overall they were pretty neutral, which is nice. I hate living in Sacramento and listening to the announcers kiss their ass during every play, and even watching John Madden on Monday night football with his complete and total lovefests with some teams and players. He and Tom Brady should just get a room together and save the rest of us from hearing about how he is so great. So, back to the game, USC went out to spike the ball with seven seconds so that they could attempt the field goal to tie the game to take the game to overtime. Except they didn't spike the ball, and they attempted another quarterback sneak instead, with Matt Leinart doing some good spinning at the line to take it in for a touchdown. This was a really gutsy call, because if they would not have scored, they would have lost automatically. USC got a 15 yard penalty for celebrations, which cost them the extra point, and then Notre Dame tried to do a Cal-Stanfurd (spelling intentional) band play to score, but it didn't work, and the game ended.

Awesome finish to a game that was good anyways. Both teams showed that they are deserving heavyweights. When Texas is out fighting creampuffs, USC is showing that it is the champion for a reason. Great game, and if you are still reading this, thank you. (Please comment if you made it through this post.)

ESPN recap of the game.