Cal coach: Easier to beat Grambling than USC

By Art Spander

BERKELEY, Calif. — The man is wonderfully forthright, which is to be admired, even if the results of his team’s last three football games are not. Cal won its opening five, which was both leading and misleading.

Now it’s on a losing streak.

Now the opponents are tough. “It’s easier to beat Grambling than USC,” affirmed head coach Sonny Dykes.

And the Golden Bears, indeed, beat Grambling 73-14 in their first game this 2015 season, then San Diego State 35-7, then — and these games were against better schools — Texas, Washington and Washington State. Up in the national rankings. A sense of satisfaction. Followed by disappointment.

Three consecutive defeats. Utah, UCLA and Saturday at Memorial Stadium, USC, the virtually unbeatable Trojans, with all that talent on the field, with all those band members in the stands, irritating and relentless in both cases. Rat-a-rat, rat-a-tat.

USC won again Saturday, 27-21. Not a rout, like two years ago when the score in Dykes’ first season as Cal coach was 62-38. A good game maybe. A close game certainly. But a 12^th straight loss for Cal for against USC and a first loss at home this season for the Bears.

Beautiful weather, a so-so crowd of 52,060, a rotten result for most. Again.

“We got all those turnovers earlier in the year,” reminded Dykes, who didn’t have to remind us that they came against lesser teams. “We just haven’t gotten them now. We couldn’t get USC’s offense off the field.”

There’s been chaos at USC this year: Steve Sarkisian removed as coach after reports of his drinking;  unhappiness with athletic director Pat Haden, who hired Sark, a 3-3 record after six games. But now that record is 5-3, the same as Cal’s, and with interim coach Clay Helton in control, the Trojans could run the table.

“They’ve got as good athletes,” said Dykes, “as anybody in the country.”

Those athletes bulled and powered and ran with spectacular efficiency at times Saturday. Trailing 7-0 in the opening minutes of the second quarter, second and nine at the Cal 13, USC did what any coach would love — blocked so well that literally no one touched Ronald Jones until he was into the end zone and the congratulatory pounding began. 

Those old NFL videos of Vince Lombardi talking about sealing off the defensive line? They came to life on this one.

Twelve in a row. There’s supposed to be a balance in college football. But USC-Cal is imbalanced. The team that started the season with takeaways, recovering fumbles and taking interceptions, on Saturday had all the giveaways, three turnovers (two Jared Goff interceptions and one fumble) to none for USC.

Dykes is an offensive specialist, but his offense Saturday hardly was special.

“I think we all are frustrated,” said Dykes. “We should be playing better.”

Oh yes, the shoulds and coulds and the might-haves, words of those who can’t quite get where they hoped to be. People look at how close they came to beating, say, Novak Djokovic or Jordan Spieth, or Ohio State or the Patriots or Warriors, and insist they should have done more. Dreamers.

As opposed to winners, who make the right play or the right shot or the big putt at the opportune time. Which USC did and Cal didn’t.

“We had them hemmed in third and one the end of the game,” Dykes said when USC had the ball on its own 42 with around two and a half minutes left. “I would have liked to have seen what would happen if we got them on the ground.”

But Tre Madden, seemingly trapped in his own backfield, broke free for 14 yards. First down. Last call. What he saw, what we saw, was Cal unable to stop USC when it was needed.

“I thought we played good defensively,” said Dykes. “They scored an offensive touchdown, and we let them get out on a couple of screens, but USC has some good players.

“Winning and losing has a lot to do with who you play. Our schedule has been backloaded the past two years. We have played some really good people this year, and we are trying to get to the point to where we can beat those really good people. Good teams are just harder to beat.”

Or as USC has been, impossible to beat.

‘UCLA now runs L.A.’

By Art Spander 

LOS ANGELES — They were in separate rooms — well, a room for one, a tent for another, the coach unsure of his future, particularly the way his USC team played against UCLA, the quarterback unsure of his future, particularly the way UCLA played against USC.

The game didn’t mean much, not compared to Auburn-Alabama, not compared to Ohio State-Michigan, but then again it meant everything, this Bruin victory over the Trojans, 35-14.

“This win,” said the quarterback, UCLA sophomore Brett Hundley, “really validates what we did last year. You can wear your UCLA stuff proudly now. UCLA now runs L.A.”

An overstatement, an exaggeration, an emotional outburst. And well understood.

There at the other end of the Coliseum, the oversized replica jerseys of the six USC Heisman winners, spread out on the stairs below the glowing fire of the Olympic torch.

There on the walls of the tunnel that leads from the locker rooms to the field, the huge painted tributes to Trojan national championships and All-Americans.

It’s been a USC town, Los Angeles. Even with eight straight Bruin wins in the 1990s. Hadn’t the Trojans won 12 of the last 13 from UCLA before Saturday night? Hadn’t the Trojans won seven straight from the Bruins at the Coliseum?

Now the streak is severed. Now UCLA, 9-3 overall, with a quarterback who is going to consider entering the draft — even though he’s not ready — has won at USC’s home after in 2012 winning at its own home, the Rose Bowl.

A non-sellout crowd of 86,037 was there, the majority USC partisans who glumly began to file out with five minutes to play, cheers from the small UCLA group painful to their ears.

Not since 1997 had UCLA won at the Coliseum, and nobody in blue, players or spectators, was going to leave quietly. Some didn’t want to leave in any manner.

“This is a big win for us,” said Hundley.

How big a loss it was for USC (9-4) is yet to be determined. Under interim coach Ed Orgeron the Trojans had won five straight and six of seven. His players are so intent in having him named permanent coach that moments before kickoff they formed a circle, an “O” for Orgeron, to show their support. Had USC won, he would have had the job. He still might have the job, but the defeat was a negative.

“It’s our worst performance since we’ve been back together,” said Orgeron, a roundabout way of saying since he had been elevated to the position at the end of September, replacing Lane Kiffin.

“We weren’t able to run,” he conceded. “We couldn’t stop Hundley on the quarterback draws. We tried everything. We started blitzing; they started sprinting past the blitzes. Nobody played well enough tonight to beat a rival team, and that was my responsibility.”

His counterpart, Jim Mora, can take responsibility for bringing UCLA out of the sporting wilderness. Mora took control before the 2012 season, and while the Bruins are far from what he wants — they haven’t beat Stanford, they couldn’t slow Arizona State — UCLA Mora is 2-0 against USC.

“The stuff he brought to the team,” said Hundley, who in his own way brought plenty of stuff, “and the way he flipped around against USC, 2-0, the aura of the program has changed. Everything’s changed, and we’re seeing it.”

What Mora saw was a vision of the past.

“That was a heck of a game and a lot of fun,” said Mora. “It reminded me when I was a kid coming here when my dad was coaching at UCLA (as an assistant in 1974) and watching both teams in their home uniforms.”

That, certainly, was a great part of the game, allowed, finally, by the Pac-12 and NCAA.

“I had flashbacks,” said Mora. “What a great night. Both teams were so competitive . . . to come in here on a Saturday night and get this win tells you where this program is headed.

“We’ve had some good wins. The Nebraska wins have been big. We beat Southern Cal last year. But this one, on the road and coming off the ASU game (a 38-33 loss eight days earlier), to come in here where they’ve won and where Coach O has done a great job, I’d agree this is our biggest win ever.”

Hundley ran for 80 yards net and two touchdowns, and passed for 123 yards net. UCLA had 396 yards to USC’s 314, but USC also had a 15-yard punt, and UCLA's Ishmael Adams had 130 yards in kickoff returns.

“It’s been a while,” said Orgeron, asked when the last time an opposing quarterback had played as well as Hundley did. “Especially a quarterback running the ball. It seemed like everything we tried, they countered.”

Orgeron said he had no idea about his future at USC.

“We set out to go eight weeks in a row, one week at a time, one game at a time,” he explained. “Obviously we are disappointed, especially when you don’t beat UCLA and Notre Dame. That is what a head coach at USC is supposed to do.”

The day the music died

By Art Spander

The radio in my TR4, a British sports car, couldn’t always be heard clearly over the noisy four-cylinder engine, but I sensed from the gravity of the announcer’s voice that something was wrong. I pulled over to the curb and turned up the volume.

“ . . . The president has been taken to Parkland Hospital in Dallas,” was the somber message. “We are awaiting word on his condition . . . ”

Fifty years ago, Nov. 22, 1963. America’s age of innocence was at an end. Camelot had fallen.

It was the weekend of the college traditionals, and the next day I would be covering the USC-UCLA game for the Santa Monica Evening Outlook, a publication no longer in existence. I was driving to the office, three blocks from the Pacific.

I stopped. So did America.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president, had been assassinated. And nothing would ever be the same.

In the half century that followed, other leaders would fall, the World Trade Center would be brought down with a massive loss of life, one horror after another. This was the beginning.

They still argue about the killing of JFK, still posit conspiracy theories, still insist it was more than a single shooter, still point out that everything we’ve been told and seen has either been fabricated or whitewashed. The New York Times the other day had a story and photo of the blood-spattered pink suit worn by Jackie Kennedy as she sat with her dying husband.

Fifty years ago the scenes were of the Texas School Book Depository, of Dealey Plaza, of a country in mourning and sport in a muddle.

The nation didn’t want to play. It needed to weep.

The Outlook was a p.m., a pure afternoon paper. The advance story for a Saturday afternoon game was Friday. The first edition was on the streets. I changed a few words, and the revision made it for the late editions. Then we waited.

The Big Six, as the conference of Cal, Stanford, USC, UCLA, Washington and Washington State was known, announced postponements. As did the Big Ten. As did the American Football League, which was three years from a merger with the NFL.

But not Oklahoma or Nebraska. Or any games of the NFL.

At first, it seemed as if USC-UCLA would be held, if without card stunts — remember card stunts? — or bands or any type of normal celebration. Just football.

But John McKay, then the Trojans' coach, was opposed. “I can’t believe you’d play a football game," he said, “where there was only half the enthusiasm.”

We didn’t. For a week.

I composed a story that only a few hours earlier never could have been imagined, about a game that was so important now so unimportant. Then I went on the streets, a reporter, and interviewed people whose disbelief was no greater than mine.

Color television was only for the wealthy in the early 1960s. Most of us sat, numbed, watching the repetitive images in black and white, the widow helped on to Air Force One, the caisson rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, the world leaders from Charles de Gaulle to Haile Selassie in the procession, 3-year-old John Kennedy Jr. saluting as the coffin moved past.

Pete Rozelle was the NFL commissioner and was unsure of staying the course, allowing the usual Sunday grouping of games to be played 48 hours later, or deferring to reality.

Rozelle, who died in 1996, and Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s press secretary, had been classmates at the University of San Francisco. They talked. Although it was more complex than that, Salinger persuaded Rozelle that to play games as scheduled would provide a sense of normalcy and perhaps relief to a country desperate for both.

The teams played. Rozelle rued his decision. “It’s the one thing I would change,” he later said of his 30 years as commissioner. “If I could do it again, we wouldn’t play.”

The games were not televised. They were reported. And criticized. Pete Rozelle, more for his suspensions of Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, would be selected Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year.

The following Friday, Nov. 29, in a repeat of sorts, I created another advance story for the game, rescheduled for the next day, Saturday, Nov. 30, suggesting a 40-6 USC victory — hey, those were the Trojans of “Student Body Right” — but the final score was 26-6.

What do I remember about the game? Virtually nothing. It was anticlimactic. We had been through a torturous few days that for our generation would stay forever. As Don McLean’s song of the early 1970s would remind us, it was the day the music died.

Cal coach: ‘I knew it wasn’t going to be all rainbows’

By Art Spander

BERKELEY — It was an interesting comment from Sonny Dykes, on the day of his 44th birthday, on the Saturday afternoon his Cal football team was beaten — no, embarrassed — by USC, 62-28, at home.

“I expected to walk out after halftime,” said Dykes, “and see nobody in the stands. The fans stayed. It was really inspiring.”

The first season at Cal for Dykes. An awful season at Cal for Dykes, a team with too many freshmen and not enough self-belief, a team lacking a defense and even now, after losing eight of its nine games, lacking experience.

The Trojans, always the curse of the Coast no matter how competent Stanford or Oregon or even UCLA become, had their own troubles early in the schedule. So athletic director Pat Haden changed coaches, ousted Lane Kiffin and replaced him for the rest of the season, at least, with Ed Orgeron.

USC again looked like USC, maybe not right but full of speed — the Trojans returned three punts for touchdowns Saturday, tying an NCAA record — and agility.

Cal looked like a lost cause, even after cutting an immediate 21-0 deficit to 21-14. At least to our vision. But Dykes saw something else, a future, and reasons for that future. He’s a realist, certainly. A 1-8 record is unacceptable, even if it is understandable.

He’s also an optimist.

“I knew when I took this job,” said the man who replaced Jeff Tedford, “it wasn’t going to be all rainbows and puppy tails. Did you watch Stanford beat Oregon (Thursday night)? Stanford had 15 seniors on defense. Of our top 44 players on offense and defense, we only had three seniors.”

Maybe the numbers are not specifically accurate. Maybe there are a couple more Cal players or fewer Stanford players, but the idea stands. Championships are won by veterans, athletes who know the whys and wherefores. Mistakes are made by freshmen.

“Experienced grown men win football games,” Dykes said for emphasis.

Fewer than two minutes into this football game, USC’s Nelson Agholor, a letterman last year, took a punt return 75 yards into the end zone. In the second quarter Josh Shaw would pick up a partially blocked punt and run a short 14 yards for a score; then, still in the second quarter, Agholor would return yet another punt for a touchdown, this run 93 yards.

“I’ve been dong this a long time,” said Dykes, “and that (punt coverage) has always been a strength of ours. Our team last year at Louisiana Tech led the entire nation in net punting. We start three practices every week with our punt returns. We’re using freshmen. At Louisiana Tech we had one freshman who played half a game, that’s all.”

There are no excuses in sports, even when excuses are allowable. If someone goes down, it’s next man up. Or next kid up. Dykes doesn’t want sympathy. Only perception, which from the reaction of the Cal fans who stayed to endure, he already has.

“We were forced to play a lot of young players before they were ready,” he said. “We were decimated by injuries. A young team, and we lost games early. We lost confidence. It’s OK. It’s been a tough year, but it’s going to pay off.

“They are going to get tougher and have been game tested. In a weird sort of way, the experience they have gotten this year and the hard luck will help our team respond faster.”

Cal has a freshman quarterback, of course, Jared Goff, although it could be argued that after nine games he’s almost a sophomore. The trouble is Goff hasn’t had the reassurance of success.

He’ll play well a few downs — he did throw three touchdown passes Saturday, two to Kenny Lawler, also a freshman — then sputter.

“We try not to look at the scoreboard too much,” said Goff. But looking at the scoreboard is what everyone else does, on television, at Memorial Stadium, from the flanks of Tightwad Hill.

The coaches and players rate progress. The rest of us judge results.

Goff threw for 288 yards, Cal gained 483 yards running and passing, not too far behind USC’s 499 yards. Then there were the three Trojan punt returns for touchdowns not included in that total.

It is defense where Cal has faltered most. The Bears were last in the Pac-12 in scoring defense before USC. Then they gave up 62 points more. 

“Hardy Nickerson went down early,” Dykes said about the starting middle linebacker — who is a freshman but also a star. “He makes all the (defensive) calls for us. We were down to one middle linebacker, Chad Whitener. We were trying to make contingency plans. We missed a lot of checks and rolled coverage the wrong way.

“But we are going to get this thing right. I feel more strongly about that right now then I did December 5 when I was hired.”

Campus Insiders: USC Will Fight On

By Art Spander
Special to CampusInsiders.com

This is what you must know about the University of Southern California, which could only score seven points against Washington State but allowed 62 against Arizona State: The football media guide admonishes journalists never to call it Southern Cal.

Nor of late, will it be referred to as Southern Comfort.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2013, Campus Insiders