DNA beats NIL in Pac-12 championship

Utah's clubbing of USC moves idle Ohio State into playoff position.

A football team beat a card collection in Las Vegas Friday night, and did so for the second time this season. Utah’s collection of home-brewed head-knockers scored 44 of the last 51 points of the Pac-10 championship and blew out the Traveling Wilburys, a/k/a USC’s supergroup, by a score of 47-24.

The immediate upshot is that the Wilburys’ 2022 All-Star Tour will not be appearing at any College Football Playoff location. USC is out, leaving Saturday’s conference title games to finish the tale. Again, there does not appear to be six teams capable of winning a national title, let alone 12.

It might have been different if USC’s Mahomesian quarterback, Caleb Williams, hadn’t hurt his hamstring on a 59-yard first quarter run and thus lost his omnipotence, but, hey, it’s football. If you want the safe life, try Pickleball. Or play Colorado. Williams valiantly stayed in as USC found itself in a hole and, in defiance of physical laws, kept digging.

Regarding the playoff, Georgia appears safe even if it loses the SEC game to LSU Saturday. Same for Michigan, which plays Purdue in the Big 10 game. TCU? A Big 12 showdown with Kansas State, which had the Horned Frogs in trouble until quarterback Adrian Martinez was hurt, is the most interesting matchup of the day, but a loss would be TCU’s first, and everyone else is too damaged by this regular season to contradict the Frogs’ case.

What you can argue is the issue of Ohio State, sitting at home eating Funyuns in front of big-screen TVs, moving into the No. 4 slot vacated by the Wilburys.

Ohio State is immune from defeat because it isn’t playing Saturday. When it was spanked by Michigan last week, it fell to second place in the Big Ten East division. The Pac-12 and Big 12 match their top two finishers in the title game. The Big Ten does not, preferring to go with a clash of division champs even though Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State are the perennial top three, and they’re all in the East.

If the Big 10 used the other format, there would be a Michigan-Ohio State rematch Saturday night and wouldn’t that be lovely?

Some have suggested that the CFP committee lock in the top four finishers after the end of the 12th game, and use the conference title game results only for seeding among the four. The flaw in that reasoning is as gaping as USC’s defense. Can you imagine the screaming from Columbus, Tuscaloosa and other precincts if USC took such a traumatic beating, yet stayed in the playoff?

But it is a loophole that the CFP should address before the final four-team playoff next year.

Back to TCU. The Frogs’ non-conference slate was tasty ambrosia: Tarleton, Colorado and SMU. They did beat everyone in the Big 12, including Texas. Alabama also beat Texas and Ole Miss, which is better than anyone else TCU beat, and suffered both its losses on the final play on the road (Tennessee and LSU). I’d keep TCU in, but just be prepared for the argument.

Anyway, the Pac-12 comes up empty, yet again. In nine CFPs they have placed only two teams. USC looked primed to be the third when it charged ahead, 17-3, as Williams threw impossibly precise drones while leaning back or running laterally. But he had only one significant run after his 59-yarder, in which he bounced off the entire Utah defense and the Osmond family. He did finish the game, even as a sitting duck in the fourth quarter, as the Utes piled up seven sacks. That was unnecessary and even cruel. With Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud both on the sideline Saturday, Williams still looks like the Heisman guy, and unlike them he will return in 2023.

But Utah’s defense, dancing around like popcorn in a microwave before the snap, snuffed Austin Jones (15 carries, 35 yards), and receiver Jordan Addison caught only five passes for 65 yards.

On the other end, USC seemed progressively disinterested in tackling the Utes, even when it got within 27-24 in the fourth quarter. The Utes responded with a 20-yard run by Micah Bernard and a 50-yard TD play from Cameron Rising to tight end Thomas Yassin, a rugby player from New Zealand who had never played football until he got to Salt Lake City. Yassin spent the final 10 yards or so running through Calen Bullock, although Bullock was not the only mannequin in Cardinal and Gold.

USC’s defense has been dragged through the street before, but it always seemed to get the takeaways — three against UCLA, for example — to justify itself. In the Utah losses the Trojans were a net-zero in turnover margin.

There’s no question Lincoln Riley applied the defibrillator to USC’s program. It’s difficult to go from 4-8 to 11-2. More credit should go to president Dr. Carol Folt, athletic director Mike Bohn and his assistant Brandon Sosna, now departed. They saw the future: A glamour coach with untold riches, persuading the best available transfers to love L.A.

But don’t compare this turnaround to others in football history, because this was the first in the free-agent era. Williams came because he had already played for Riley at Oklahoma in 2021. He and Addison, last year’s Biletnikoff Award winner at Pittsburgh, were the top transfers at their positions. Then came Jones from Stanford, Travis Dye from Oregon, receivers Brenden Rice and Mario Williams from Colorado and Oklahoma, and cornerbacks Mekhi Blackmon and Latrell McCutchin from Colorado and Oklahoma. This was more like the construction of the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks than anything you can find in college football.

Riley was not walking into an unfurnished room, either. There to greet him were meaningful holdovers like guard Andrew Voorhees (who didn’t play Friday), center Brett Neilon (who got hurt in the second half), defensive tackle and All-American Tuli Tuipulotu and nickelback Max Williams, among others.

Add that to a watery schedule that didn’t include Oregon or Washington, and the Trojans’ success shouldn’t have been a surprise. The way they lost Friday is the way Riley’s Oklahoma teams have normally lost in postseason, in full defensive retreat.

Utah has now won back-to-back Pac-12 championships and will return to the Rose Bowl, where they nearly jolted Ohio State on New Year’s Day. They had significant transfers, too. Rising was briefly at Texas, along with Ja’Quinden Jackson, who was there for one year as a quarterback but has become a running force at Utah, with 105 yards on 13 carries and two TDs Friday. Tight end Dalton Kincaid, who tormented USC in the October win, came from Division III San Diego. Linebacker Mohamoud Diabate started 17 games at Florida.

But Bernard was a 3-star who was redshirted. Defensive tackle Connor O’Toole was a 3-star recruit. Safety Cole Bishop was, too, from Peachtree City, Ga. Gabe Reid was a 3-star from American Fork, Utah who first went to Stanford. Reid and Diabate had two sacks apiece Friday.

Together they, and coach Kyle Whittingham, have fashioned a Utah brand. Player development is most of it. Butt-kicking is part of it, too. There’s an esprit de corps based on all the times they’ve been rejected or overlooked or underrated, and that unlocks all the hard blocking and tackling. Whittingham spoke freely on Tuesday about how the world had already buzzed the Trojans into the CFP and sculpted the Heisman in Williams’ image. He said the Utes loved all the slights and, when necessary, invented some. On Friday night, identity was far superior to costume.

Losses to Florida, Oregon and UCLA kept the Utes out of the national picture, but they will be playing in the Granddaddy, in front of more New Year’s eyeballs than anyone else. Perhaps the viewers will enjoy that Caleb Williams commercial, in which he’s throwing longballs to cheerleaders and custodians. When there are associate producers in your face instead of pass rushers, the money is easy.