USC makes its claim as best team in land

There was a connection of sorts for Neuheisel. Illinois hadn't played in the Rose Bowl since 1984, when it was destroyed by UCLA, quarterbacked by Neuheisel, 45-9. The next time the Illini get invited, they may want to reconsider.

"We felt like we were ready to play," Illinois coach Ron Zook said. "But we didn't play the way we were capable. USC is an awfully good football team."

Arguably the best football team in the land at this moment.

"I don't know if it was the atmosphere, or that it was our first time in a bowl," Zook said, "but we didn't play well."

For a while, the Illini barely played at all. And were it not for a 79-yard touchdown run by Mendenhall early in the third quarter, when USC was up 21-3, this would have been a perfectly awful game.

The temperature was good enough, 70 degrees, and even though clouds drifted over, the view back to the mountains was spectacular -- indeed, more impressive than the Illinois offense.

"No one really wants to play us," USC cornerback Terrell Thomas said.

You could understand why. Here was the team that stunned Ohio State getting whipped from here to there.

The Trojans theoretically would have problems with the Illinois options, the pitchouts, the sweeps. It was Illinois that had the problems.

"The way we prepared," Carroll said about stopping Illinois, "there wasn't a big question mark in my mind we would do it. We got it right. We really wanted to come out and do it. We stopped their offense. We put up 630-something on offense."

It was linebackers coach Ken Norton who got the dousing from the Gatorade bucket, because it was Norton who helped design the schemes to shut down Illinois.

"We killed them with our pass rushes," said Carroll, living large, "This is how we dreamed it for Rey-Rey (Maualuga). To see it come true is awesome."

A very good word to describe this USC football team.