They leave on the best of terms
Two of this region's sharpest football coaches found themselves at the Rose Bowl this week, both soon to leave us, both bound for fresh responsibility, both moving to far-away schools mired in the sticky muck of losing.
Coaching his last game from the USC sidelines was Steve Sarkisian, for the last few years the architect of the Trojans' offense.
Not far away, up in the stands, was DeWayne Walker, for the last few years the defensive guru at UCLA.
As we turn the page on another season, Sarkisian now moves north to Washington, where he was recently named head coach, inheriting what has been one of the worst college teams of the last several years.
Walker, meantime, heads east, to New Mexico State, where this week he, too, was named head coach, inheriting what has been one of the worst college teams of the last several decades.
These two face long odds, and I'm sad to see them go. I know both to have keen football minds, sharp instincts, firm guts, and the determination to stick with their vision despite the critics. Both have the intangibles needed to be a great head coach.
In what was tantamount to a pair of exit interviews, the day following USC's 38-24 suffocation of Penn State, I spoke separately with Sarkisian and Walker about what went coursing through their minds during the 95th version of the Rose Bowl.
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"This was a special game, maybe the best in all my time here," said Sarkisian, driving home from the team hotel. All year, he said, his young and inexperienced squad had struggled to rein in its immense talent and play with discipline and consistency.
But the USC offensive coordinator said that during December preparations he felt a growing, steadying sense of maturity from his players, none more than from quarterback Mark Sanchez, whose season-long string of erratic performances ended on the highest of notes. Sanchez conducted the Trojans like Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic.
"Mark was just electric, not only his performance throwing the ball but his mentality. . . . This football team just fed off that."
It didn't hurt that Penn State, statistically among the nation's stoutest defenses, had a secondary with all the zest and creativity of stale margarine.
What did Sarkisian see from studying them?
"That there were big plays that could be made. . . . This was a defense that had not given up yards in chunks all year. We needed to do that, we thought we could. . . . Fifteen-yard gains, 20, 25 yards . . . and we did it."
