From the day he was hired as head coach at Oregon, Rich Brooks believed he could get the Ducks to the Rose Bowl. It took him 18 years to do it.
Perhaps no bigger longshot has made it to Pasadena than these Ducks, and they'll be longshots again when they meet No. 2 Penn State on Jan. 2.ABC may be wishing it had a big-name team from a big market playing in its marquee game. Penn State, trying to win a national title, may wish it had a higher-ranked opponent than the No. 12 Ducks. And the nation's sports talk show hosts will continue to make fun of that Northwest school with the funny nickname.
But there's no denying the Ducks their first Rose Bowl appearance in 37 years after they won the Pac-10 title with a 17-13 come-from-behind victory over Oregon State in Saturday's 98th "Civil War" game in Corvallis.
In wet, 38-degree weather with blustery winds, Oregon won with a late five-play, 70-yard touchdown drive. Meanwhile, Pac-10 co-leader Southern Cal was beaten by UCLA 31-19, leaving the Ducks with their first conference title outright in the school's history.
"We did what we needed to do to win this game, and that's what we've done all year long," Brooks said. "I'm very, very proud of how they've handled every situation that's come up this year."
Oregon students began lining up Sunday for Rose Bowl tickets, even though they didn't go on sale until Monday morning.
Preseason forecasters picked Oregon anywhere from seventh to 10th in the Pac-10. When the Ducks got off to a shaky 1-2 start, with ugly, mistake-filled losses to Utah and Hawaii, the heat was on for Brooks to be fired.
Now he's a leading candidate for coach of the year.
"I think this is good news for everybody else in this league who doesn't live in those big cities like Los Angeles and Seattle," Brooks said.
Oregon won eight of its last nine games and its last six in a row to finish 9-3 overall and 7-1 in the Pac-10. It's the first time the Ducks have won nine games in a season since the 1948 team, with Norm Van Brocklin at quarterback, went 9-2 and lost to Southern Methodist in the Cotton Bowl.
"We didn't have any idea we were going to go this far," wide receiver Dameron Ricketts said. "Coach Brooks put a lot of emphasis on one step at a time, one game at a time. We did that, and finally all of those steps added up and we made a big old stairway to the Rose Bowl."
Oregon didnt't exactly storm into postseason play. The Ducks' offense struggled all afternoon against the Oregon State defense, and the Beavers led 13-10 when Oregon got the ball on its own 30 yard line with 4:42 left in the game.
Danny O'Neil had just been knocked woozy, and Brooks considered taking him out of the game. But O'Neil talked him out of it.
"I thought we took O'Neil out of the game," Oregon State defensive back Reggie Tongue said. "But he came back at us. We just simply couldn't make the play when we had to. We were stuffing them and stuffing them and stuffing them. We just needed to stuff them one more time."
O'Neil, who was 7 for 20 passing up to that point, completed four of five on the touchdown drive, three to Cristin McLemore, who had returned to the game after taking a golf cart ride across campus to have X-rays taken on his injured left hand.
A 19-yard screen pass to Dino Philyaw with 3:43 to play gave Oregon the victory.
Brooks knows how difficult the next challenge will be.
"Penn State is almost on a different level in college football," he said. "They're one of four or five teams that are just outstanding at every position."
The teams played two common opponents, Iowa and Southern Cal.
Penn State hammered both at home, beating Iowa 61-21 and Southern Cal 38-14. Oregon beat Iowa in Eugene 40-18 and beat Southern Cal in Los Angeles 22-7.
Still, the Ducks have confounded the odds for about two months now, and Brooks thinks they can do it one more time.