The rankings say the Trojans are the class of Pac-10, but they could win out and still be shut out of a Rose Bowl berth.
By Chris Dufresne
Consider these three schools competing for this year's Pacific 10 Conference football title:
* Oregon State (5-3 overall, 4-1 in conference play) opened the season with a league loss at Stanford, shook that off and headed for Penn State, got pounded there, 45-14, and lost a third game in Salt Lake City on Oct. 2 when the Beavers blew an eight-point lead to Utah in the final two minutes.
* California (6-2, 4-1) ventured cross-country Sept. 13 to play Maryland in a 9 a.m. Pacific time start, came out flatter than crab cakes, fell behind, 28-6, and couldn't catch up to a team that had lost the week before to Middle Tennessee State. A month later, Cal went to Arizona and got hammered, 42-27, by the only Pac-10 school that has never played in the Rose Bowl.
* USC (7-1, 5-1) is No. 7 in the Bowl Championship Series standings, boasts the nation's top defense, has shut out three of its last four opponents, and is still in the mix for a berth in the national title game.
So which school controls its Rose Bowl destiny? The answer is two schools do, and neither one is USC.
It's nice, though, that the Southland can host the destiny-controllers, Cal and Oregon State, in weekend contests against USC and UCLA. If Oregon State wins its last four games against UCLA, Cal, Arizona and Oregon, it goes to the Rose Bowl for the first time since Jan. 1, 1965. Beavers Coach Mike Riley is doing his best to quell premature speculation. "There's talk about it," he said on Tuesday's weekly Pac-10 coaches' conference call. "Mostly just questions I get through the media. . . . It's a very, very jumbled-up conference race and so the Beavers' motto is 'one game at a time.' I don't know if it was national cliche day yesterday or national cliche week but that's my national cliche of the day." If Cal wins its last four games against USC, Oregon State, Stanford and Washington, the Golden Bears will make their first Rose Bowl appearance since Jan. 1, 1959. "It is nice," Cal Coach Jeff Tedford said of knowing what has to be done, "but there's still a lot of football left. Our No. 1 focus is USC and we all know what a challenge that is. . . . Don't really talk so much about controlling our own destiny . . . the destiny is this week and that's it. That's the focus."
USC can all but derail Cal's dream by winning Saturday at the Coliseum, but there is nothing the Trojans can do about Oregon State other than pray the Beavers lose a game. USC can start by initiating an eight-clap for archrival UCLA on Saturday. Oregon State hijacked USC's Rose Bowl bargaining chip with a shocking win at Corvallis in September. Even if Cal upsets USC on Saturday, the Bears still have to beat Oregon State in Corvallis on Nov. 15 and then close with two more wins. Cal isn't a school that, when it comes to the Rose Bowl, can take anything for granted. In 2004, the Bears thought they were Pasadena-bound only to be boxed out by Texas in a BCS standings controversy. Last year, Cal was 10 yards from being No. 1 in the nation when it lost at home to Oregon State. Then the Bears lost five of their next six and ended up in the Armed Forces Bowl.
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