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Southern Cal is staking a claim as college football's all-time best
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
LOS ANGELES - It isn't the University of Southern California's 34 consecutive wins. Oklahoma, after all, holds the record at 47 in a row, and the Trojans won't even surpass Miami's 34 from 2000 through 2002 unless they win the Rose Bowl next week against Texas.
It's not the back-to-back Heisman Trophy winners. Army did it first with Mr. Inside, Doc Blanchard, and Mr. Outside, Glenn Davis, in the 1940s, and Notre Dame players won twice in three years a couple of years later.
It's not having two All-Americans in the same backfield. Even Texas has done that on more than one occasion. As for the two national titles, it's actually 1 1/2 and counting. Remember that LSU, after all, was the BCS national championin 2003.
It's doing all of the above, and more, at a time circumstances dictate otherwise, that places the Trojans of Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll in such rare air as they prepare to play the Longhorns in the Rose Bowl for the BCS title Wednesday.
"If they win, they're probably at the top," said Dave Lapham, the former NFL lineman who is the lead analyst on Fox Sports Net's Big 12 broadcasts. "In the era of 85 scholarship-limit football, they will be a true dynasty at a time when such things aren't supposed to happen.
"Scholarship limits were supposed to make sure you couldn't do this, and USC is doing it."
In the discussion
Dan Jenkins, who holds a highfalutin title as official historian of the College Football Hall of Fame, has been watching high-stakes college football since 1935, when he accompanied his father, a dyed-in-purple TCU fan, to one of the first Games of the Century, SMU vs. TCU in 1935, with the Southwest Conference title and a Rose Bowl berth on the line.
"I thought SMU had niftier uniforms," Jenkins said. "My dad told me to shut up."
So Jenkins' opinion in this matter, as in most, is not to be taken lightly. And his opinion is USC doesn't have to beat Texas in the Rose Bowl to be ranked at the top of the list.
"Even if it loses a close one to Texas, this USC team over the past three seasons will rank up there with the best — Army in the '40s, Notre Dame from '46 through '49, Oklahoma during Bud (Wilkinson), Nebraska in the '90s, Miami in the late '80s," he said.
What Jenkins hasn't seen in 70 years watching college football, Keith Jackson probably has. The veteran ABC announcer, who will call the Rose Bowl on Wednesday, in typically terse fashion puts the 2005 Trojans in their place, but in an exalted place nonetheless.
"This matter of rating teams is a really difficult thing to do and an almost useless exercise," Jackson said. "When they freed the arms of the offensive linemen (to block), that changed the game. And so the teams of the 1930s, '40s and '50s in my mind are different than those that followed. I've always felt the 1972 USC team was the best I've ever seen, and 1995 Nebraska joined them. If this USC team beats Texas, they are right there with the other two."
Both of Jackson's favorites are linchpins of dynasties that have been ratified by the test of time and, in a sense, by the NCAA. In the late 1990s, the NCAA record book included a list of two dozen bona fide dynasties, dating to the early days of the 20th century. That list included the USC teams of the 1970s and the Nebraska teams of the mid-1990s.
NBC Sports analyst Pat Haden, the quarterback of the 1972 USC team, said the Trojans of that era were close-knit but loose, much like this squad.
Players such as Haden and Lynn Swann garnered most of the attention, but the real heart and soul of the squad were players such as offensive lineman Pete Adams, who was accompanied to virtually every team function by a dog known in print as Turk but whose real name wasn't suitable for a family newspaper.
Trojans a classy act
"Chemistry is often a hackneyed and overused term, but we had it," Haden said. "But in terms of talent, we couldn't touch these (2005) guys.
"What strikes me the most about them is that they seem to be egoless, even though they have two Heisman Trophy winners. In an era of boorish behavior by some athletes, that's refreshing to see."
Texans kicker Kris Brown was a freshman on the 1995 Nebraska team led by quarterback Tommie Frazier that won the Cornhuskers' second consecutive title.
"We were so dominant from start to finish," Brown said. "We trailed only 13 minutes, 20 seconds — less than a quarter — for the entire season. No one came close to beating us.
"We didn't run a conventional offense, which was one reason we were so hard to stop. But we had the players to pull it off, too. When Ahman Green's your backup running back, that tells you something. If we played USC, I think we'd win by, say, 38-24."
So USC isn't a unanimous choice as the greatest, even if it beats the Longhorns next week. Patient historians might wait to pass judgment as well. The dynasties cited by the NCAA lasted no less than six years, and some as long as 16.
Some might prefer to wait a few years, and a couple of more recruiting cycles, to put USC at the top of the heap.
As for the signature team of USC's run, ESPN analyst Lee Corso thinks it came last year.
"They smacked that Oklahoma team (for the national title) in what was the single most impressive one-game performance I've ever seen," Corso said.
Is it even USC's best?
Others might rank the 2003-2004 Trojans behind the 1972 team of which Washington State coach Jim Sweeney said, "USC's not the No. 1 team in the country. The Miami Dolphins are better."
That team, led by Haden, Swann, Sam Cunningham, Richard Wood and Charles Phillips, was 5-0 against ranked teams and never allowed a run longer than 29 yards.
But that was another era, in the final days before scholarship limits were imposed in 1973. In this era of limits, if the Trojans aren't the best, they're on the way.
"It would be a tough argument not to put them there," said Ron Franklin, who will call the Rose Bowl for ESPN Radio. "There's more parity across the board, and this team has won in just absolutely grand fashion."
If there is a common denominator between the current Trojans and teams of the past, Jackson said, it's between the ears of the players.
"They are not disturbed that they're down two at halftime." he said. "They look at the clock and it says a minute to go and they're 80 yards away, and it doesn't disturb them. They watch each others' backs, and they do it together."
Chronicle staff writer John McClain contributed to this report. david.barron@chron.com