Flashback: That Rose Bowl Trip
I loved Les Miles.
Still do.
I’m sure I’ve said it before, but this flashback series reminds me, over and over.
Miles was great, great for us sportswriters – not as much for the TV folks, as he was different on camera – and Miles was great for OSU.
Just when the football program needed it most, coming out of a three-year run of continuingly worsening losing seasons under Bob Simmons, Miles arrived to infuse some toughness and swagger into Cowboys football.
It marked his four-year stay in Stillwater, and it was on full display Sept. 4, 2004, inside the Rose Bowl against UCLA.
The setting was perfect: bright and sunny, according to the official box score, high of 95 degrees, although it felt much more mild than that – and get this, also from the box score, Wind: nil – the San Gabriel Mountains within full view in the distance.
And it was the opener for OSU, the lid-lifter to a season holding much promise, in a far-away and dreamy place unknown to the Cowboys and their fans, against a fabled opponent with so much style and appeal.
Keith Jackson called the game for ABC. So perfect.
An aside, I had called Jackson’s office for an interview the week before the game. The phone rang, and he answered. Not a secretary or answering service. The legend himself. And we had a great conversation, about his career and football and the game. Like I said, dreamy.
It was a clash of styles in every way, West Coast vs. the American Midwest. Pac-12 vs. Big 12. Soft Rock vs. Hard Rock.
Glam vs. Grit.
Miles played up the Glam vs. Grit angle, game-planned for it, too.
Pac-12 teams were viewed as soft, a collection of finesse teams, built around fancy-boy quarterbacks and gliding receivers. Real or not, that was the perception.
And Miles was all in on that angle.
With Josh Fields gone to start his pro baseball career, the Cowboys were debuting a new quarterback in Donovan Woods. Unsure how Woods would respond, on the road in his first start, Miles decided to go macho, and secretly he let some of us in on the plan during the week leading into the game.
He, too, thought they were soft, and he was dead set on proving it.
And did he ever.
Woods attempted but eight passes, completing two for 23 yards. But the Cowboys ran 67 times – 67 TIMES! – for 426, with Vernand Morency gashing the Bruins for 252 and two touchdowns.
“It's an honor to be playing in the Rose Bowl,” Morency said afterward. “We all decided to go out here and play physical and have fun.
“The holes were big. All I had to do was make a man or two miss.”
UCLA led 14-7 after the first quarter, but OSU’s defense dug in from there, producing four turnovers, getting interceptions from Vernon Grant and Jamie Thompson and fumble recoveries from Paul Duren and Robert Jones.
And the Cowboys just kept pounding on the ground, averaging 6.4 per carry, in a butt-kicking that played to perception, bringing Gary Busey to the sideline from somewhere, presumably a suite, to add some wildness to the celebration as the final minutes ticked off the Rose Bowl clock.
UCLA fielded a talented team, too, featuring Maurice Jones-Drew and Mercedes Lewis, among others.
“We felt like if we played defense and ran the football, we could control the game and win,” Miles said. “Certainly, that's what we did."
Woods, who ran for a touchdown, valued the win more than any limitations to his role.
“We just took care of business,” he said. “We kept pounding them and pounding them.”
For a grasp on Morency’s performance, he ran for more yards against the Bruins than the greats of their noted rival of immense running back tradition: USC.
None of Marcus Allen, Mike Garrett, O.J. Simpson, Anthony Davis or Charles White ever rushed for as many yards as Morency.
One other fun fact from Morency’s big day: he slept in his cleats the night before the game.
Ready to break out a new pair of Nikes, he hoped to break them in first, wearing them in the hotel, to the team meal and, finally, to bed. Guess it worked.
"I just wanted to break them in,” he said. “I just wanted to feel comfortable out there today.”
