Bowl blowout leaves Ducks with questions.

Byline: Bob Clark The Register-Guard

U O f o o t b a l l

LAS VEGAS - Bowl games, for want of a better way to explain it, often come down to want and need as the difference between the two teams.

If not quite that simple, there was a definite sense of that in the wake of BYU's dominating 38-8 victory over Oregon in the Las Vegas Bowl on Thursday night.

`Our dream,' BYU quarterback John Beck told a Salt Lake City reporter, `has been fulfilled.'

If the Ducks had somehow won this game, does anybody think an Oregon player would have felt the triumph so important?

The difference was so clear as the game ended, and BYU fans rushed the field in celebration. Police officers mounted on horses couldn't stem that onrushing tide of blue.

And off to the side, there was an Oregon player, posing with a few friends for a picture, a smile on his face. Another Duck mugged in front of another camera.

Yes, other Ducks walked off the field looking disappointed, but most of them were simply searching for the exit to avoid being trapped in the crush of BYU supporters.

There was such a feeling of differences in the attitudes of the teams about the bowl that UO coach Mike Bellotti was asked whether he felt his team `showed up' for the game?

`You have to ask the players,' he responded. `I think they have passion, I think they have heart.'

Well, certainly they do. But this wasn't the Civil War Redux to them, nor anything of the kind. This was the bowl they were left with after finishing in a four-way tie for fifth in the Pac-10. That's a long fall from thinking they could be in the title chase.

Oregon players were here for a momentary memory in their college careers, in a city that offers good times at all hours and in a bowl that gets everybody home for Christmas.

The 19th-ranked Cougars were on a mission, to prove they belonged, both with the nation's elite teams, and surely the Pac-10, which they probably have a rightful feeling doesn't have a lot of respect for the Mountain West Conference, nor its champion.

Not even a 30-point drubbing changed the Oregon minds on that.

`The Pac-10 is a totally different conference than the Mountain West,' UO rover Patrick Chung said. `I don't know where they would end up. They can try if they want.'

Added linebacker Brent Haberly of the Cougars: `They'd probably get to a bowl game in the Pac-10. I don't think they'd run the table, but they'd compete.'

Yes, based on this 15th annual Las Vegas Bowl, they would do that. But again, this was a special game for the Cougars, the conclusion of their 11-2 season, and their first bowl triumph in 10 years.

This victory over Oregon, wrote the Salt Lake Tribune, saw this group `Securing its place among the program's greatest teams,' and that includes a national title in a bygone era for BYU.

As far as a bowl victory, `This one will go down for the ages,' opined Dick Harmon in the Deseret Morning News. `Better than the whipping over Oklahoma in the 1994 Copper Bowl, although the point difference was not as high.'

So while the Cougars and their faithful headed back up Interstate 15, the Ducks awaited flights home Friday morning, either the chartered aircraft back to Eugene for some, or commercial flights for the many headed straight home.

Where does this leave Oregon? Bellotti said his team could learn a lesson from BYU about making the most of its talent.

That would presumably include receivers working on catching the football, with at least five more dropped passes added to a season's worth for Oregon. One of those was by Jaison Williams, who had no catches and thus no more yards on a night when he needed but 16 to become the eighth Duck with 1,000 receiving yards in a season.

And surely for the coaching staff, there should be consideration of how to better use those great weapons in the backfield, Jonathan Stewart and Jeremiah Johnson, who combined for 13 carries against BYU, and but eight in the first half when the game was still competitive on the scoreboard.

Stewart, who only needed 40 yards against BYU for 1,000 this season, got just 21 and finished with 981. If Oregon is ever going to recruit another running back of his ability, the Ducks are going to have to show that this spread offense can produce a 1,000-yard rusher.

`When you get beat like that, you look at everything,' Bellotti said.

Recruiting, at least, shouldn't take much if any kind of hit from this. The Ducks already have a score of commitments, and the recruiting analysts judge this to be a class of quality.

`Each one will come in with the idea that they can play sooner now,' Bellotti said, in a light moment after the defeat.

Mostly, it was more lumps for the Ducks on the morning after, from both columnists in their home state as well as Utah and Nevada.

In Harmon's column in the Deseret Morning News, he wrote that `Oregon came to Vegas with a hoity-toity Pac-10 superior attitude, wearing Flash Gordon cosmic helmets atop uninspired defensive and offensive players who were more interested in talking smack than backing it up on the field.'

In the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Ed Graney wrote that `horrific doesn't begin to describe the Ducks ... the most appealing feature about Oregon was its uniforms, and you know what a disaster they are.

`Oregon offered some of the worst football Sam Boyd Stadium has seen in years - and we'll remind you this is where UNLV plays.'

Continued Graney: `Bellotti and his players gave BYU credit for its decisive victory, and there's no question the Cougars were intent on making some kind of statement.'

The Ducks? They were here for a long weekend and a final game. No more, and that was too much less than needed against BYU.