Dan Weber PE.com
LOS ANGELES – The goal is always the Rose Bowl, anyone around the USC football program will tell you.
But the Jan. 1 matchup the BCS dealt USC, against an Illinois team ranked the lowest of teams getting BCS bowl invitations Sunday, wasn’t exactly what USC was hoping for.
The two-loss Trojans (10-2) knew they had almost certainly knocked themselves out of any shot at the championship game with a loss to Stanford.
“Too many teams to jump,” USC senior Lawrence Jackson said.
But the Pac-10 champs were hoping for a higher-ranked opponent such as Ohio State or Georgia. Those were the teams USC coach Pete Carroll said he was looking at as he left the Coliseum Saturday night after beating UCLA.
Either would have given his BCS No. 7 Trojans a chance for an upbeat ending to a season that will finish below expectations no matter what happens in Pasadena.
“We’re going to make the most of it,” Carroll said of the traditional Big Ten-Pac-10 matchup he then described as “awesome.”
But the opponent, despite a handful of really talented players and an upset win at Ohio State, is not awesome.
The 13th-ranked Fighting Illini (9-3) aced out No. 6 Missouri, No. 11 Arizona State and No. 12 Florida, none of which got a BCS bowl bid. And they were chosen first by the Rose Bowl over the likes of Missouri, No. 8 Kansas, No. 9 West Virginia, No. 10 Hawaii and No. 14 Boston College in a nod to the two conferences’ historic relationship.
Rose Bowl chief executive Mitch Dorger explained that “of the teams available to us,” Illinois got the Pasadena invitation because the Sugar Bowl put a hold on No. 3 Georgia after losing SEC No. 1 LSU to the BCS Championship game.
“I’m not griping about it,” Carroll said of the way the BCS will play out this year. But he added that he always has been in favor of a playoff system “like they have in every other sport.”
In a Rose Bowl conference call with both coaches, the first five questions were for Carroll before the USC coach broke in and asked one himself of Illinois’ Ron Zook, who noted that this was his first Rose Bowl trip and the first bowl game for any of his players.
“It’s my fourth in five years here,” said USC senior center Matt Spanos, a Corona resident who was born in Chicago and has an extended family of Big Ten fans. “Not bad, not bad at all.”
He expects some may come out for the game.
This will be Illinois’ fifth trip to the Rose Bowl — USC has been there 32 times — but only its second in the past 43 years. The last time, in 1984, didn’t go so well when the 10-1 Illini were whipped 45-9 by a 6-4-1 UCLA team.
Source: Carroll says he’ll make the most of Rose Bowl consolation prize
