CURT McKEEVER / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Friday, September 15, 2006 7:00 pm
LOS ANGELES — Bill Callahan was marveling earlier this week about the way Southern California’s defensive linemen use their hands. Said the Trojans show enough skill and technique to make some NFL coaches envious.
Now, most of us give no thought to such things when trying to figure out how a pair of nationally ranked college teams might match up. You want to talk wide receivers or tight ends or running backs having NFL-caliber mitts, fine. We’re all ears. But a defensive lineman?
Any way, the point of this tale is that Callahan was making the challenge his 19th-ranked team faces tonight against No. 4 USC in the Coliseum out to be one of NFL-sized proportions.
He stopped short of that, of course, because he knows better. He knows that while the Trojans have more thoroughbreds than his club, it happens all the time in the college game when mightier horses get outrun.
Besides, the last thing Callahan would want from the Huskers would be for them to head out for warm-ups thinking they were about to do battle with the Pittsburgh Steelers. I’m certain if that were the setup they wouldn’t enter it with nearly the same kind of verve or chirpiness.
“Anything could happen, NU cornerback Cortney Grixby said when asked to visualize such a scenario, “but pros are pros. That’s the most elite level. The Pittsburgh Steelers? I mean. . . “
Yeah, it does sound ridiculous, wouldn’t you agree?
And so they’ll settle for the more realistic hope of taking down the best college football program in the nation, which, to me, doesn’t sound like that much less severe of a sentence.
USC has won its last 27 games in the Coliseum — scoring at least 40 points in the last eight, and 15 of the past 17.
And all the Trojans did in their season opener, with a first-time starting quarterback and the first freshman ever to start at tailback, was put up 50 on Arkansas. At Arkansas.
“It’s going to be athlete on athlete, and they have some very, very talented players. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be in the position that they are,” Grixby said. “We’ve just got to go out and play — like a team, because it takes 11 on defense, 11 on offense to win.”
I appreciate how the Huskers aren’t afraid to talk about winning. It’s why they’re at their level, after all.
And last December, they gave a more-talented Michigan team more than just confident pre-game talk. They beat the Wolverines in the Alamo Bowl.
But think of Southern California as a Michigan with a killer instinct.
Week after week, the Trojans routinely pound their foes into submission — if not by halftime, it’s usually just a matter of time.
In Peter Carroll’s five-plus seasons, USC has more than doubled the score of its opponents in the second half of games (1,247 to 560). The difference at Arkansas, thanks to the offense converting three turnovers by the Razorbacks into 20 points, was 34-7.
“There’s just more of them,” Callahan said when trying to assess kind of athleticism on the Trojans.
Let’s not forget, too, that they’ve had an extra week to prepare for Nebraska. Nor that tonight’s game will be the first time the folks in L.A. have seen the Men of Troy play at home since their two-year reign as national champions ended at the hands of Texas in the Rose Bowl.
It’s a lot to ask Nebraska to handle, and then expect the Huskers to muster something extra in their competitiveness.
The last time a Callahan team faced this kind of game was at Oklahoma in 2004. Simply put, the Huskers didn’t expect to win that one.
“We weren’t that good of a ball club at that time,” defensive end Jay Moore said. “This time, the energy’s a little higher.”
And so is the interest level. So let the Huskers believe what they will.
“We think we can beat them,” quarterback Zac Taylor said. “I promise you, if we have no turnovers, we’ll have a chance.”