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Cal’s Rose Bowl hopes on the line against USC
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Cal's Best needs to be on display Saturday. (AP Photo/Paul Battaglia)
Cal welcomes USC to Memorial Stadium Saturday night, for a prime time Thunderdome game between two Rose Bowl hopefuls. Two teams will enter with Pasadena plans, but only one will leave with any hope of getting there.
And while both schools approach the contest with wounded national title hopes, the weight of the game should bring out the best in each team.
Any realistic chance Cal had at appearing in the national title game was lost in Eugene, Oregon last Saturday, somewhere between the Ducks’ fourth and fifth touchdown. While the BCS perennially allows one-loss teams to play for its championship, it will be almost impossible for Cal to qualify.
In order for the Bears to climb back into the good graces of the national pollsters, they would need to beat several highly-ranked teams and rebuild their national reputation. Unfortunately for Cal, there are no such opponents left on their schedule beyond this weekend.
Once the USC game is behind them, Cal will be faced with a comparatively friendly schedule. While that should bode well for their record down the stretch, it also means the Bears won’t be able to claim any landmark victories for the next two months.
Looking back, Cal actually hurt themselves when they borrowed from the SEC playbook and assembled a non-threatening non-conference schedule.
It paid off early, when the Bears jumped out to a 3-0 record against the likes of Maryland and Eastern Washington, while Oregon and USC struggled against Boise State and Ohio State.
But the Bears’ lack of quality non-conference opponents may ultimately spell their downfall in the BCS, given that they’ll have no more than one significant victory at the end of the regular season.
Pac-10 teams don’t have a conference title game or a menu of nationally ranked opponents to protect them from a bad loss, which is why West Coast teams can’t afford to schedule the way the SEC does.
Cal is finding that out the hard way, though their conference schedule didn’t do them any favors. Running into the Ducks at Autzen in the conference opener was bad luck, but facing USC just a week later is cruel and unusual.
The Bears can't afford to make any excuses though, considering how many promising seasons have been ruined in recent years. This is Cal’s karma for all the years they’ve been handed a break late in the season, only to slip up against a lesser team at the first opportunity.
There's no shame in last week’s loss at Oregon, but the way the Bears lost last Saturday reminds fans of all the previous Cal teams which lacked the focus necessary to stay in the BCS hunt.
The good news is that even though a BCS berth may no longer be in the cards, the path to the Rose Bowl remains wide open, which is where Cal’s schedule will soon come in handy.
Oregon is in the Pac-10 driver’s seat for the moment, but they’ve looked shaky in three of their four games this season. The Ducks are also without their best offensive and defensive players for rest of the year, now that Walter Thurmond and LeGarrette Blount have played their final collegiate games.
USC began conference play with a loss to Washington, and the Trojans look more vulnerable than they have in years. With young, untested quarterbacks and injuries to Taylor Mays and Stafon Johnson, this Trojan squad appears to have at least one or two more losses in them.
If Cal can hand USC one of those losses, they’ll be in great shape within the conference, with their two toughest opponents out of the way. Halfway through their nightmare two-week schedule, a split would leave the Bears breathing easy come Sunday morning.
A loss would put Cal at 0-2 within the conference, and given the Pac-10’s unpredictable nature, it’s not realistic to hope for a 7-0 finish to the season. Losing Saturday would all but bury Cal’s Rose Bowl hopes, and the Bears would likely be faced with a third-place finish or worse.
Considering the national title hopes Cal harbored as recently as last week, that would represent quite a steep descent. The Bears certainly didn’t need any importance added to this year’s battle with USC, but they found it anyway.
Saturday night’s contest may not determine who gets in to the Rose Bowl, but it almost certainly will decide which team won’t get there.
The Bears have earned a reputation as a team that falls flat under pressure, and if they want to shed that label this season, this may be their last chance to do it.
The Oakland Sports Examiner.
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