In the locker room, after Oregon’s 31-24 victory over USC on Friday to claim the Pac-12 title and probably a berth in the Fiesta Bowl, Ducks coach Mario Cristobal brought a conversation the team had in March.
“I said that whoever handles this pandemic best will end up supporting that trophy,” Cristobal recalled.
It wasn’t that simple, but in a year when the Pac-12 shortened its regular season to six games and didn’t even start playing until November, no conference has changed as much. And there may never be such a bizarre path to a championship as the Ducks completed on Friday.
Oregon (4-2) advanced to the championship game, despite not winning its own division. The official designation went to rival Washington, who blocked first place in Pac-12 North, unable to play the Ducks last week due to a COVID-19 outbreak on the Huskies list. The Washington-Oregon game would have served as the conference semifinal. Instead, the Ducks remained at rest, and Pac-12 announced on Sunday that they will play the sub-championship of the South Colorado division, at USC.
Just over 24 hours after the initial pairing was established, Pac-12 announced that Washington would not be able to play – as was widely expected – and the ducks were raised at the main event of the conference.
“We had three game plans made, I think a matter of three, four days just like the constant change,” Cristobal said Friday. “Can you imagine?” ‘Hey, guys, see you tomorrow at 6 and we’ll go to Colorado from 6 to noon, then we’ll take a five-minute lunch break and then we’ll go to USC in the wee hours and then we’ll continue recruiting. “
Through madness, the constant struggle was against complacency with the execution of COVID-19 protocols.
“We are really regimented and we follow them all day to the point where we are hard to deal with sometimes, but they have managed to find a way to stay healthy,” Cristobal said. “He gets to every game and I’m sure we were here in the Pac-12 championship and we succeeded. So these football players deserve a lot.”
Oregon deserves credit for the way it treated the virus, but there is also an element of luck. California, one of two teams in which Oregon lost, presented an example of the speed with which the virus could wreak havoc in a season. The Golden Bears saw two games canceled following two positive cases in total.
Defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux received the game’s MVP award on Friday night.
“We fought this year,” Thibodeaux said. “So many trials and tribulations. So many things that kept happening. So many excuses we could have made and we weren’t startled. We stuck to the script and we succeeded.”
For USC (5-1), which was hit by three expensive turnovers and several premature penalties, the loss put an end to hopes of ending undefeated.
“There are a lot of injured souls in our locker room right now,” said USC coach Clay Helton. “And it’s something I know that our kids really wanted to win a championship. And I presented a play that was too short today.”