Stanford's win with backup QB is story worthy of big screen

Jack Thompson got the word Tuesday that his nephew would be getting his first start at quarterback for Stanford in four days.

"Uncle Jack, I couldn't write a better script," Tavita Pritchard told Thompson, the "Throwin' Samoan" of Washington State lore. "This is like in the movies. I wouldn't want it any other way."

Huh? First start against USC at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, against a defense that prefers its meat uncooked? This is nirvana?

Off first impressions, the kid has a feel for the dramatic, throwing the fourth-down touchdown pass that upended the Trojans, 24-23, ruining a seemingly inviolate 35-game home winning streak and inserting one more eggbeater into a wacko college-football season.

And oh yes, nothing against Stanford, but the game (a) undoubtedly sent a lot of Pac-10 people looking to find a high ledge, and (b) prompted the history-minded to grope for a comparison — like there is one.

There's no finite way to measure the greatest upset in the annals of college football, just as there's no way to say which is the best Renoir or Rembrandt. But you can put a star next to this one and be certain it won't be rubbed off in a few years or a few decades.

By point spread, the biggest upsets are generally conceded to be Oregon State's 21-20 win at Washington in 1985; UTEP's 23-16 victory over No. 7-ranked and defending national champion BYU, just seven days after the OSU shocker; and Syracuse's 38-35 surprise of Louisville on Sept. 22. All had 36- to 37-point spreads, depending on whom you were betting with both hands to lay the points.

Although it wasn't listed by Las Vegas, Appalachian State's Sept. 1 victory at Michigan also has to be recognized.

The USC-Stanford line rose to 41 when it became known Pritchard, a Clover Park High grad, was going to replace T.C. Ostrander.

For perspective, the biggest known spread in a Pac-10 game — never mind an upset — was the 42 ½ by the Washington national champions of 1991 against Oregon State. (The Huskies obliged, 58-6.)

This was the Pac-10's most downtrodden program of recent years — 17-43 since 2002 — against the pre-eminent program in the country since '02 (63-6).

"And you put in your backup quarterback, who's completed one pass," said David Pritchard, talking about his son's college career, "and that skews it pretty heavily."

Of course, the Richter scale of upsets doesn't register immediately; you have to let it age a little. The Washington team of '85 turned out pedestrian, at 7-5, and evidence is mounting that Louisville '07 is fraudulent.

But while USC has looked vulnerable (and also injured) since it buried Nebraska, it doesn't seem likely to fall off the map.

It could even get back into the national-title picture, but USC's loss hurts the Pac-10's chance of having two teams in BCS bowls, which would cost each conference school several hundred thousand dollars.

That didn't matter at a Stanford news conference Sunday, where Pritchard said, "During that whole [winning] drive in the huddle, there was a sense that we couldn't be stopped. It was surreal. There was never a moment of panic. We just knew we were going to get it done."

Pritchard had sounded that way over the phone when he called his dad before the team meal Saturday, calm and focused. In fact, he had to soothe David Pritchard, who shed some tears at not being in L.A. himself. He's an ordained minister and had a wedding.

Soon, the skills Jack Thompson talks about were in evidence. Pritchard was a modest 11 for 30 for 149 yards, but this was USC, remember.

"Nobody has better feet than he does," Thompson said. "He's got a gun for an arm, but he has great feet. Check out how deep he gets on his drop and how fast he gets back."

David Pritchard managed to steal away intermittently to a friend's house near the church to watch the game. In Pullman for the Arizona State-WSU game, Thompson and another WSU quarterback great, Jason Gesser, found a watering hole and a TV.

Three hundred miles apart, they cheered for Tavita Pritchard. The roars are still echoing.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com