Carroll, Neuheisel show their true colors

Timeout, USC.

Timeout, UCLA.

Never before have two small decisions decided so much. Perhaps never again will two short pauses be so enduring.

Who would have thought that after 77 afternoons of leaping at each other from atop the backyard fence, the kids in the USC-UCLA football rivalry would reveal the game's true meaning by just standing around?

This will happen Saturday, at the Rose Bowl, where both teams have agreed to sacrifice moments of strategy for years of tradition.

At a time in this country's sports history when the fan is being routinely forgotten, Pete Carroll remembered, and Rick Neuheisel agreed, and is this going to be cool or what?

For the first time in 26 years Saturday, both USC and UCLA will wear their home jerseys in the same game.

Carroll will be penalized one timeout at the start of the game for doing it. Neuheisel has agreed to immediately call a timeout to make it even. A brief pause for them, a historical procession for the rest of us.

Cardinal red. True blue. One field. A melding of our city's most enduring collegiate sports, a masterpiece of our city's most enduring colors, spread across a canvas for 90,000 to cheer and embrace and admire.

Some folks reading this column are too young to have any idea of the significance of any of this. Watch this game, kids. You will.

For the first time in 26years, in this country's best intracity college football rivalry, both teams will look like the home teams that they are.

Both teams will also look like the home fans who will be cheering for them, in their souvenir sweatshirts and scarves and caps; nobody ever buys visiting jerseys, do they?

Both teams will once again look like Los Angeles, colorful, clashing, human pastels brushed across the deepest of green.

"Isn't that great?" former USC coach John Robinson said when he heard the news. "The home jerseys are what made the rivalry unique. You could see a two-second clip of the game and know exactly what you were watching."

The tradition began in 1929 when both teams shared the Coliseum, then continued for one game after UCLA moved to the Rose Bowl in 1982.

Yeah, Robinson believed so much in the power of the home jerseys, his team wore them in that first road game.

"Walking into the Rose Bowl that day wearing our home jerseys felt so special," said Troy West, a linebacker and defensive back on that USC team. "When we all grew up, this is how the rivalry looked, it's what we believed it should be, there was no other way."