Consider Stanford's football team the windshield.  If only for a week.

 

In the half-empty glass that is college football this year, one of the biggest upsets in history has mostly been about the team that got upset and not the team that did the upsetting.  Forget David and the miraculous shot he had to make against all reasonable odds when you can talk about what a chump Goliath was for getting smacked between the eyes with that rock.  So, when the Stanford Cardinal, a 41-point whipping boy in the Vegas sportsbooks, stunned the BCS-lavished USC Trojans in USC's house last Saturday, it sadly came as no surprise that few, if anyone, had much to say about victors and plenty to heap on the vanquished.

 

Division 1-AA Appalachian State's stunning season-opening win over Michigan in Ann Arbor was treated in much the same manner.  Few wanted to celebrate the win.  Most wanted to ridicule the defeat.  And so it goes, grave dancing somehow trumps giving the underdog his lone moment in the sun.

 

And it's a shame, because the underdog side of the Stanford-USC story is a pretty interesting one.

 

Cardinal sophomore QB Tavita Pritchard had never started a collegiate game before last Saturday but was pressed into the role when T.C. Ostrander suffered a seizure only days earlier.  Luckily, for Ostrander, the seizure was not life-threatening.  Still, that stunning and unnerving chain of events couldn't have made Pritchard's emergency immersion into the starting lineup any easier, for him or the team.

 

However, Pritchard did have some football pedigree that likely gave him some much needed moxie going into the game.  His uncle, Jack Thompson, was one of the great college QB's in his heyday at Washington State.  Nicknamed "The Throwin' Samoan", Thompson led the Cougars from 1976-1978 and left the college ranks as the one of the most prolific passers in NCAA history with 7,818 yards.  And with the heavily favored Trojans looking to make his NCAA starting debut a miserable one, Pritchard needed every last shred of inspiration he could find.  

 

  

On the other hand, Stanford senior WR Mark Bradford had all of the inspiration he would ever need and a heart-breaking reason for it.  Two weeks earlier, his father, Mark Sr., had a massive heart attack and passed away.  He was only 48 years old.

 

So, when the inexperienced QB who wanted to live up the family name and the grieving WR who wanted to make his late father proud took the field against USC, forces stronger than football seemed to take hold.  When the mighty Trojans began to self - destruct, the hopelessly overmatched Cardinal dug deep.  In a game that they never should have been competitive in, Stanford somehow stuck around.  When they should have been knocked out, they dodged the big punches. 

 

Though, all the while, Stanford's young QB wasn't doing much to help his team.  However, he wasn't doing much to hurt them, either.  And the longer a young QB keeps from imploding - from making the kind of crippling mistakes that seem an inevitable by-product of inexperience - the more likely it is that he will somehow find his legs.  When the Cardinal finally needed their young QB to stand on his own, he stood remarkably tall, and, in one instant, turned the college football world on its ear.  

 

  

Down 23-17 late in the 4th quarter, Pritchard and his teammates faced a seemingly insurmountable 4th-and-20 on the USC 30.  With the cool of a cat burglar, Pritchard fired a dart into traffic and hit Richard Sherman for a miraculous first down.  With the clock winding down and the Cardinal facing another 4th down at the USC 10, the young man with the famous uncle made the play of his life.  With Stanford's last hope riding on his shoulders, Pritchard lofted a perfect alley-oop pass into the corner of the end zone.  

 

  

Later, Mark Bradford would remark that one of his late father's football mantras was "It's all about the catch." 

 

To which, Bradford added, "I just knew I had to go up there and get the ball."

 

And he did.  Hauling down Pritchard's perfect pass, Bradford landed just inside the back corner of the end zone.  Score one for sheer, utter improbability and the ultimate underdog.  Stanford's wild upset was made all the more remarkable considering the dizzying, downward spiral that the program had followed over the past few years.  The Cardinal hasn't had a winning season since 2001, with things hitting rock bottom in 2006 when the team staggered through a humiliating 1-11 season.

 

Will Stanford's stunning win over USC turn the program around?  Will Tavita Pritchard find collegiate stardom after this?  I don't know that it really matters, because for just one moment in the glare of the national spotlight a raw, inexperienced QB and a WR with a broken heart helped a wounded football program rediscover the simple joy of a big win.

 

So you can choose to mock USC if you want, but you're missing out on a heck of story on the other sideline by doing so. 

 

Stats:

http://msn.foxsports.com/cfb/gameTrax?gameId=200710060062

http://msn.foxsports.com/cfb/boxscore?gameId=200710060062

http://msn.foxsports.com/cfb/story/7302370

 

Other:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(football_player)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/08/SPL7SLTFP.DTL

http://gostanford.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/archive/stan-m-footbl-sched-2006.html