How fitting that the highlight of the final Cotton Bowl as we know it featured Texas Tech mascot Raider Red duking it out in the end zone with a Southern Cal saxophone player.
Naturally, the sax player landed the scuffle's only punch, a solid right to Red's rather prominent if well-padded nose. It was a confrontation straight out of Saturday morning cartoons, but then, so was the game.For that matter, the entire Southwest Conference should have moved its venue to Saturday mornings a long time ago.
Call the 59th Cotton Bowl "Roger Rabbit Does Dallas," in USC cardinal and gold. And if you're an SWC fan, it definitely was X-rated.
Texas Tech head coach Spike Dykes and his players spent much of the past two weeks trying their best not to apologize for representing the SWC in Monday's Cotton Bowl.
Let the "mea culpa" begin now.
USC 55, Tech 14, was an embarrassment to the school and to the conference, but then, that's exactly why the SWC is about to cease to exist. Tragically, but mercifully, this was the last time that the conference's champion is scheduled to be host of the Cotton Bowl, which becomes part of the bowl alliance next year.
A year after that, and the SWC will merely be a footnote in college football history.
"Anytime you get in situations where you get a little egg on your face or get embarrassed a little bit, you lose sight of a lot of things," Dykes said in a postgame media briefing that had the macabre quality of an autopsy. "It's disappointing that you get in a big game like this and you look forward to it for so long and you cherish it for so long and then you play the way we played. It's disheartening. But the only way you can fail is to try. A lot of folks in this world never try, so they never fail."
If trying means showing up for the game, then the Red Raiders, who finish at 6-6, tried.
Sort of.
It would be easy to get bogged down in the grim and bloody numbers, the total USC domination, the obvious befuddlement of the Raiders and quarterback Zebbie "Doesn't Do Dallas" Lethridge, but that would be like analyzing holiday traffic statistics. Why be morbid?
Better to attack this with typical press-box black humor, which made its appearance early and often on a day when the Trojans scored three touchdowns within 76 seconds and led, 28-0, at the end of the first quarter.
In the second quarter, even the press-box play-by-play announcer was caught giggling over the PA while announcing a short gain by the Raiders.
"Show a little respect for the dead!" implored a Texas wag.
By the end of the first period, reporters were wondering why the SWC hadn't tried to tag-team the Trojans, letting each of the five co-champions play a quarter. One too many teams? Hey, this conference needs all the help it can get.
By halftime, someone suggested phoning A&M's R.C. Slocum. "All is forgiven. Please come home."
Tech fans, who sailed thousands of tortillas onto the field before the game and on rare occasions after that, were forced to take consolation in small victories: a clever decision by a Tech return man to down a kickoff in the end zone rather than run it out and risk decapitation or another fumble; a third-quarter touchdown scramble by Lethridge, cutting the Trojans' lead to 41; and, best of all, Raider Red's skirmish with the belligerent Trojans sax player, which earned the cartoon character a police escort to the locker room "to cool off," according to a press-box announcement.
"I think Spike wishes it was him," a Tech official said with grim humor.
Raider Red returned, twirling his papier-mache guns, to a standing ovation and a rain of tortillas from the Tech fans after the third quarter began.
Hey, he'd shown more fight than anyone else in red and black.
Dykes, with typical class, apologized to the conference, to the fans and even to the media.
"We must have had 50,000 (Tech fans) out there today, and that's what makes you so sick," Dykes said. "That's what leaves such a sour taste in your mouth. They deserved better than that. But the sun's going to come up tomorrow. There'll be another day and another time."
Not for a Southwest Conference champion. Or co-champion.