After more than five weeks of waiting, five weeks of anticipation, five weeks of hype, college football’s two best teams will meet tonight. No. 2 Oregon will play for a national title for the first time, meeting top-ranked Auburn in the BCS National Championship game at 5:37 p.m. PST in University of Phoenix Stadium.
The Ducks enter the defining moment in their history having gone 12-0 in the regular season, with a super-charged offense fueled by running back LaMichael James, and a defense compensating for what it lacks in size with speed and depth.
The Tigers went 13-0 in the fall, winning the SEC title game to remain unblemished and take the higher ranking into tonight. Auburn has the game’s best offensive player, Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton, and its best defender too, in tackle Nick Fairley.
Can Oregon’s pace and depth wear out Auburn, the way the Ducks have worn out so many of their opponents as the nation’s best second-half team? Can the Tigers win the battle at the line of scrimmage, and use another dual-threat passer to hand the Ducks another loss in another BCS bowl game? Those question have been waiting to be answered for 37 days.
And now it’s here. It’s finally here.
“It’s one of the biggest games of our lives,” said Oregon quarterback Darron Thomas, who could go on to a hall-of-fame NFL career and still be able to say that about tonight’s matchup.
Lost a bit in Newton’s shadow, Thomas could be the key to Oregon’s fortunes this evening. James, the nation’s leading rusher, figures to get his yards. If Thomas can complement him through the air the way the Ducks passed the ball at midseason, Oregon will be tough to stop, even if Newton can keep the Tigers in a shootout.
Oregon has been inconsistent out of the gate this season, not unexpected for an offense that relies so much on tempo and rhythm. Auburn does, too, albeit to a lesser extent. And so, whichever team hits its stride first tonight will have a huge advantage.
“We’ve got to come out and find our rhythm,” Thomas said. “We try that each game, but we’ve got to really do it this game.”
The last time Oregon outscored its opponent in the first quarter was back on Oct. 21, against UCLA. The last time it happened away from Autzen Stadium was Oct. 9 at Washington State.
The Ducks more than made up for their slow starts. But against the nation’s No. 1 team, that’s not something they want to count on tonight.
“Once we get in a rhythm, we get rolling,” tight end David Paulson said. “It’s just, when do we get in rhythm? Some games it’s been slower than others.
“It’s more about everybody doing their job the right way. In games we’ve been slow, it could be just one guy making a mistake — and it could be a different guy every play. When you get a rhythm, everybody’s doing their job and things are going right. And once we get some success, our team is able to keep doing the right things.”
The desire to start fast, difficult in its own right, is complicated by the long layoff. Auburn coach Gene Chizik, who at 6-0 in bowl games as a coach knows this sort of thing, expects a somewhat disjointed first quarter.
“They’re going to be so hyped, the adrenaline is going to be flowing, I don’t know that they settle down until after the first series when they really see the speed of the game, they understand the dynamics of the actual opponent they’re playing against, down in and down out,” Chizik said. “The game will take a minute to slow down.
“And as we tell our players all the time, when the game slows down for you, OK, then you can play football.”
For Auburn, that usually means turning to Newton, the national leader in pass efficiency who also happens to rush for more than 100 yards per game. The two go hand-in-hand, UO safety John Boyett said, as the Tigers typically try to establish their ground game, then go to the air.
“They try to suck the safeties and secondary up in the run game,” said Boyett, who played closer to the line of scrimmage in 2009 but has played farther off the ball this season. “It puts us in a bind. But we’ve got to do our responsibility first, which is to stop the pass.”
Make the Tigers one-dimensional, and Oregon’s defense will have accomplished a primary goal. Get off to a fast start, and the UO offense can do the same.
“I always say, really the only people that can stop us is us,” receiver Jeff Maehl said. “When we come out early and don’t make penalties, don’t turn the ball over, we usually get off to a fast start. I think that’s the most important thing for us.”
Because Oregon’s offense is unique, the Ducks rarely see from their opponents what those teams tried against more traditional offenses. Thus begins the process of adjusting to what they see. Sometimes that adjustment is almost instantaneous. Sometimes, such as Oregon’s 15-13 victory at Cal, at takes longer.
“You’ve got to be able to adjust,” Thomas said. “It’s on everybody’s shoulders, being ready for anything they throw at us.”
Now that the long wait is over, it probably won’t take long tonight to see which team put the month-long layoff to better use. Which team is able to sprint out of the starting block, and which doesn’t hit its stride until the back stretch.
Both Oregon and Auburn have shown strong finishing kicks in 2010. It’s what got them here, to tonight’s showdown, on college football’s biggest stage.
But with perhaps the nation’s two best offenses squaring off, neither wants to risk falling too far behind.
All that’s at stake, on this final day of the college football season, is the sport’s biggest prize. Which competitor, Oregon or Auburn, will be quickest to take the first step toward reaching it?