In the locker room after Oregon’s 31-24 win over USC on Friday to claim the Pac-12 title and likely tied to the Fiesta Bowl, Ducks coach Mario Cristobal began a conversation the team held in March.
“We’ve said that whoever handles this pandemic better will end up holding on to this 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, the conference didn’t change much. And maybe there will never be such a strange path to a championship like the one the ducks completed on Friday.
Oregon (4-2) advanced to the championship despite not winning its own division. The official designation was for rival Washington (3-1), who closed out first in the Pac-12 North for not being able to play the Ducks last week due to a COVID-19 outbreak on the Huskies roster. . The Washington-Oregon game would have served as a conference semifinal. Instead, the Ducks were left inactive and the Pac-12 announced Sunday that they would play runner-up in the South Colorado Division (4-1), at USC.
Just over 24 hours after establishing the initial pairings, the Pac-12 announced that Washington would not be able to play – as had been widely expected – and that the Ducks were elevated to the conference’s main event. .
“We had three game plans done, I think it’s a matter of three, four days, just like the constant change,” Cristobal said Friday. “Can you imagine that?” Hey guys, we’ll see each other tomorrow at 6 and we’ll go to Colorado from 6 to noon and then we’ll take a five-minute lunch break and then we’ll go to USC Until a few hours later and then we’ll keep recruiting. “
Through madness, the constant battle was against complacency with the execution of COVID-19 protocols.
“We’re really regimented and we follow them all day to the point that sometimes we’re hard to deal with, but they managed to find a way to stay healthy,” Cristobal said. “Get all the games and I’m sure we found ourselves here in the Pac-12 championship and we got it. So there’s a huge merit for these football players.”
Oregon deserves credit for how it has treated the virus, but there is also an element of good fortune. California, one of two teams that lost Oregon, presented an example of how quickly the virus could wreak havoc in a season. The Golden Bears 1-3 saw two games canceled as a result of two positive cases in total.
Defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux was named game MVP Friday night.
“We fought this year,” Thibodeaux said. “So many trials and tribulations. So many things that were popping up. So many excuses we could have made, and we didn’t collapse. We stuck with the script and we did.”
For USC (5-1), who suffered three costly turnovers and several inopportune penalties in the title match, the loss ended their hopes of ending undefeated.
“There are a lot of injured souls in our locker room right now,” USC coach Clay Helton said. “And it’s that I know our kids really badly wanted to win a championship. And today we played a play too short.”