All week the debate around college football has been whether Appalachian State over Michigan was a bigger upset than Stanford over USC.
Was a good NCAA Division I-AA (excuse me, Football Championship Subdivision) team beating No. 5 Michigan a bigger deal than a perceived Division I-A (er, Football Bowl Subdivision) bottom feeder beating what many thought was the best team in the country?
My answer to the great App State vs. Stanford debate: Who cares?
Enjoy them both. Those are the types of games that make college football unique, and so much fun.
Never in the NFL do you see a 41-point underdog, as Stanford was last weekend. Even bad teams in the NFL have so much talent that an also-ran beating, say, the Patriots or the Colts, would be at least partially explainable, and only somewhat surprising. But Stanford winning at USC? That one elicits genuine, you-must-be-kidding-me shock.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Washington offensive coordinator Tim Lappano said. “I didn’t see it, but I heard it on the radio and I said, ‘There’s no way. With a backup quarterback on the road?’”
Coaches and players around the Pac-10 have said there is more parity in the league this year than ever before. “There’s no telling who could end up at the top this year,” Washington tight end Michael Gottlieb said.
The usual explanation for the competitiveness of college football is scholarship limits. Once schools were limited by the NCAA to 85 scholarships, the traditional football powers could no longer stockpile talent just to keep players away from their competitors. But that’s been the case for over a decade now, and the upsets seem to get crazier each year.
Another explanation is television. As more cable companies carry more games (how many channels does ESPN have now anyway?) athletes can go just about anywhere and still get plenty of national exposure.
“Along with the scholarship limitation, I feel like television is making a huge difference,” Washington coach Tyrone Willingham said. “Last week, if I am correct, with the exception of Monday night, there was a college football game on every night. To me that’s a total … change in the landscape, that now a parent can see her child at one of the lesser known universities in the country, and before you couldn’t do that, that was almost impossible… I think that has had a lot of impact on where guys go, what they do.”
Oregon coach Mike Bellotti theorizes that more sophisticated offenses also have helped even the playing field. He think offenses such as the spread attack the Ducks use can make more teams competitive, but he’s not exactly sure how much.
“Whether that has lessened the divide between the No. 1 and the No. 120, I don’t know,” he said.
Still, parity doesn’t seem to explain Stanford’s shocker against USC. Scholarship limits or not, USC had more talent on its bench last weekend than Stanford had on the field at most positions.
Stanford was playing with a backup quarterback who had completed one of three career pass attempts coming into the game — a guy the team had considered playing at receiver and had used on special teams last season. Tavita Pritchard, a graduate of Clover Park High in Lakewood, was making his first start because Stanford’s usual starter, T.C. Ostrander, suffered a seizure earlier in the week.
On the final drive, which he capped with game-winning touchdown pass on fourth-and-goal, Pritchard had to shoot from the hip when he couldn’t hear the play call on fourth-and-20.
“Tavita was about five feet away from me and I was screaming the play call to him,” Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh explained. “‘All go special” was the play I wanted, which he heard as ‘all go,’ and he ended up calling ‘double go.’ The difference between the two plays is that in my version, the tight end is out in the pass route, in his version, the tight end is in blocking for protection, and I think I liked his version better.”
In Pritchard’s version, he connected with Richard Sherman to keep the drive alive.
Stanford came into the USC game as a team that was not only struggling with wins and losses, but with both its physical and mental health. Starting linebacker Fred Campbell suffered a career-ending fracture of C-1 vertebra earlier in the season. The team’s projected starting fullback, Emeka Nnoli, is missing his senior season because of a blood disorder. Mark Bradford, the guy who caught the 10-yard, game-winning touchdown pass, was playing with a heavy heart in his hometown of Los Angeles. Less than two weeks earlier, his father died of an apparent heart attack.
Yet there Stanford was, shrugging off too many ugly losses and too much heartbreak, beating big, bad USC. How can you not love a story like that?
As for explaining it, sometimes what happens on Saturday afternoon can’t be explained, only enjoyed.
Take a look again at that photo of Pritchard, taken after Stanford’s historic win. Football in his right hand, helmet in his left, the quarterback looks skyward with a huge grin that seems to say, “I can’t believe it.”
Neither can we, Tavita, which is exactly why college football is so great.
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington athletics, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog.
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