Sunday, October 7, 2007
Stanford's Ben Ladner, Tavita Pritchard, coach Jim Harbaugh, and Evan Moore, from left, celebrate after the Cardinal shocked USC 24-23.
Los Angeles -- Pete Carroll made sure the first words out of his mouth were praise for the team that is his Appalachian State.
"It happened in classic fashion for Stanford," the USC coach said as he swallowed mouthful after mouthful of fine fireplace ash. "Jim had them ready to play, and they just waited, and waited, and we made enough mistakes and they capitalized. They just waited us out."
Yeah, right. The six-touchdown underdog just waited for the No. 2 team in the nation to come back to them.
Actually, Carroll didn't mean it in such a dismissive way, but the distance between his program and Jim Harbaugh's is such that he couldn't think of it any other way. But Harbaugh could, and did. This was his new team's first signature moment, and it won't be forgotten soon if he has anything to say about it - a 24-23 win over No.2-ranked USC in the Los Angeles Coliseum, when nobody, probably not even the Cardinal themselves, thought such a thing plausible. Carroll made sure he would be gracious, because grace is demanded at times like this, and Stanford had surely earned at least that much.
But for all the feel-good glow the Cardinal trailed behind them as they left Los Angeles on Saturday night, the belief in their worth as a team and the reward that comes with it, there was still the temptation to look back at the wreckage they had wrought, bringing down a USC team that never saw it coming, even after it hit them.
"It happens," Trojans running back Herschel Dennis said. "Stuff happens. Stanford played a great game. They played better than we did. We thought they were confident, and really didn't care who they were playing. But I think some of the guys came out in the second half and thought they were going to go away, that they were going to lay down. It didn't happen that way."
The winning catch is made by Mark Bradford with 49 seconds left in the game.
No, not by a long shot. The difference, ultimately, was turnovers - USC committed five to Stanford's one - and the funny thing about turnovers, unlike any other football statistic, is that they allow the team that forced them to take credit and the team that committed them to take blame.
And while senior defensive end Lawrence Jackson and quarterback John David Booty wanted USC's first home loss in six years to mean less than it did, the truth as they saw it leaked out anyway. As Jackson and Booty both put it when asked what Stanford did to confound, perplex and befuddle the Trojans, "It wasn't Stanford, it was us."
Perhaps their version of truth is accurate enough. Across the nation, this will be viewed as a catastrophic Trojan failure. They will cite not just the 35-game home winning streak that disintegrated in the arms of Mark Bradford in the corner of the end one with 49 seconds to play but the 41-point bettors line that convinced all but the most rheumy-eyed believers to think that this was a fait accompli in pads. Stanford will not get the credit it believes it deserves - after all, the Cardinal went out and made Harbaugh ("USC might be the best team in the history of college football") a liar, but USC will surely get all the blame it can eat, and then some.
And it has to be that way, especially this year, where no team save LSU can fully be trusted. Indeed, until Jacob Hester's touchdown in the final minute at Baton Rouge, the college football season was probably going to be highlighted by Cal moving to No. 1 in the nation in its jammies.
But the Cardinal won't buy any of it. Away from the madness of college football's premiership, Stanford paid off its seniors, who suffered through one of the worst eras in the school's football history. They endured coaches they didn't trust or believe in, teammates who didn't always buy in to the plan and a parade of crushing losses, to come to a place where nobody ever wins and where nobody thought they could stay within 40, and hit the case ace on the river. When Bradford, who had lost his father only days earlier, outfought Mozique McCurtis for the game-winning pass from Tavita Pritchard, a lot of team demons were excised, a metric ton of team sins absolved.
So yes, this was Stanford's finest moment in years - at least going back to 1990, the last time they beat a No. 1 (the Trojans are No. 1 in the coaches' poll). They were 1-3 then, too, they were also in a place where road teams go to die (Notre Dame), and they were playing a team that was coming off a national championship. You may fight among yourselves to determine which win was bigger, which one meant more and who enjoyed it the most.
But in the rear-view mirror, the team they had just beaten - and yes, by doing more than merely waiting, and waiting - was still trying to make sense of it all. To make sense of any of it.
"I've been around the block, and I've had my wins and losses," Carroll said, talking faster and faster as though if the words came out fast enough he could stop thinking about them. "But I just don't accept it (losing). I don't know where to put it. I have no place for it. I'll find a way to put it off for awhile, but I'll have it forever."
And if he misplaces it somewhere, Jim Harbaugh might just be cheeky enough to remind him.
E-mail Ray Ratto at rratto@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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