The atmosphere after the final whistle was one of absolute collective euphoria.
Andrew, who was standing on the sideline because Oregon State had one last chance that amounted to nothing with only a few seconds remaining, smiled as he exchanged high-fives and hugs with everyone around him.
"Great game, son!" Jim Mora said, pulling him into a firm hug and patting him on the back.
"Thanks, Coach!" Andrew replied, returning the pats with equal enthusiasm.
Mora then moved on, clapping and congratulating the other players. Andrew shifted his gaze toward Norm Chow, his offensive coordinator. The man was extremely methodical and rarely showed emotion, but at that moment there was sweat on his forehead and what looked like a small smile.
When their eyes met, Chow gave him an approving nod, and Andrew nodded back.
He clearly remembered that before the start of that final 65-plus-yard drive, Chow had been shouting intensely at him, not scolding him, but caught up in the magnitude of the game, the moment, and the pure adrenaline, explaining exactly what needed to be done.
Andrew had even seen a vein bulging in his neck as he gestured.
Almost immediately, another arm wrapped around him. It was Rip Scherer, the quarterbacks coach, with whom Andrew had a great relationship since they worked side by side all week long, often spending even more time together than he did with Chow, who oversaw the offense as a whole.
"You've played a historic game, kid!" Rip said, laughing loudly as he ruffled Andrew's hair.
Andrew smiled and thanked him before Rip walked away, still laughing.
'A historic game? I don't know about that...' Andrew thought as he looked up at the scoreboard towering above the stadium.
31-30
It had undoubtedly been a heart-stopping game. There was no question about that. They had won by a single point, and it had taken everything they had.
Still, when he thought about it, maybe there was something historic about it after all.
First, they had faced a Top 25 team with an incredibly difficult defense. Andrew himself felt that Oregon State's defense had been far more complex to read than Nebraska's, despite losing that game the previous week.
On top of that, they were coming off a painful defeat. Losing again in back-to-back weeks would have dealt a massive blow to the team's morale and effectively eliminated any mathematical chance of competing for the BCS Championship.
And finally, they had done it in prime time, with the entire nation watching, coming from behind and winning the game in the final seconds.
Andrew stood quietly now, taking in the noisy atmosphere of the stadium.
A few yards away, he could see Steve celebrating wildly alongside Amari, Alexander, Jordan, Faria, and the rest of the guys who had made their way over to the student section, which was roaring with noise.
Steve, true to form, wouldn't stop shouting things like, "Go Bruins!" while also directing plenty of comments toward Oregon State, yelling at them to talk now and throwing out similar remarks.
He wasn't the only one venting that way. Early in the game, the Beavers' defense had spent plenty of time talking trash and provoking them after UCLA's rough start, trying to get under their skin. Steve's comments were more than justified.
It was part of the game.
Then Andrew's gaze drifted toward the section where his family was seated.
His parents were there, along with his little sister, Jay, Gloria, Alex, Luke, and everyone else.
Standing with them, he also spotted Monica and Rachel, both wearing UCLA jerseys with his number, 19.
Monica had always owned one, but seeing Rachel wearing the jersey caught Andrew's attention since he had never seen her wear it before.
'She looks like a model,' Andrew thought, staring at Rachel as she waved and smiled down at him from the stands.
Her blonde hair, the model aura that naturally followed her everywhere, and the powder blue and gold jersey gave her a flawless appearance that made her stand out completely from the crowd.
As for Leonard and Howard, they had decided to experience this game from the student section, where the atmosphere was complete chaos, constant jumping, chants, and deafening support.
It still surprised Andrew to think about how passionate his two friends had become. Seeing them care this much about football was something he never could have imagined when he first met them.
Back then, the thing the three of them had shared was purely geek culture and video games.
It had never crossed his mind that he would one day see a guy with an IQ north of 170 and another who would, in all likelihood, end up working at NASA as an engineer someday, jumping around and cheering this intensely at a football game.
When the group noticed Andrew looking at them, they all started applauding even harder and raising their arms proudly. Andrew smiled to himself and lifted his right arm, clenching his fist and giving it a small shake in their direction as if to say: we did it.
For Andrew, winning the game and receiving that reaction from his people finally allowed him to let go of an invisible weight.
It was that dull, persistent discomfort he had been carrying ever since the loss to Nebraska. Although his mood had started improving on Wednesday after speaking first with Sean and then opening up to his parents, that competitive thorn was still lodged deep inside him.
It wasn't just about wiping the slate clean. It was about that overwhelming need to compete and win, to prove what they were capable of, and, above all, to keep the dream alive for UCLA's fans, for his own supporters, and for everyone who had placed their faith in him. With this victory, the flame was still burning.
Andrew began making his way toward the rest of the players as the noise grew louder and louder near the stands, where the team was celebrating with the crowd.
Amid the chaos, he spotted Shaq's back and tapped him on the shoulder. The receiver turned around with a huge smile on his face, sweat dripping from every inch of him.
He had played a great game: he caught a deep pass from Andrew for more than forty yards, finished as the team's leading receiver for the night, and had put in tremendous physical work drawing defenders and opening up space for others.
"There you are, Andrew! Come on, join us!" Shaq shouted, raising his voice over the deafening roar surrounding them.
"In a second, but..." Andrew said, giving a slight nod to indicate they should step away from the center of the celebration.
Shaq understood immediately and followed him a few steps toward a quieter area, "What's up, man?" he asked curiously.
"About that last huddle..." Andrew began, referring to the tense meeting before the game-winning touchdown, when there were fewer than twenty seconds left on the clock.
At the time, Shaq had seemed rushed and anxious, glancing repeatedly at the scoreboard as the seconds slipped away and the memories of the Nebraska loss crept back into everyone's mind.
Andrew hadn't literally told him to shut up, but he had been extremely blunt when he said that he was busy figuring out what to do so Shaq wouldn't have to worry about it.
He hadn't meant to come across that harshly, but when he entered competition mode, he became more direct, especially in a pressure-cooker situation where he had to decipher the right play against the clock.
Now that the danger had passed, he didn't want that small technical disagreement to leave any lingering effects or create problems in the locker room, no matter how minor they might be. After all, Shaq was a veteran senior.
Andrew understood perfectly how egos worked inside a locker room, and despite being the star freshman carrying the team under the brightest spotlight, the last thing he wanted was tension or cracks forming between himself and his teammates.
Shaq immediately understood what he was talking about. He shook his head and let out a genuine smile.
"Don't worry about that, bro! You did what you had to do," he said, giving Andrew several firm pats on the shoulder. "I got a little ahead of myself in that moment, and you already had enough on your plate trying to come up with the game-winning play with ninety thousand people screaming and all that noise around us."
Andrew smiled faintly and nodded, feeling much more relieved and, in a way, a little surprised that the veteran receiver hadn't been bothered by it at all.
'Being talented has its advantages,' Andrew thought to himself, realizing that the respect earned on the field erased any friction from the moment.
Then Shaq grabbed him by the shoulder and exclaimed enthusiastically, "Come on, let's celebrate with the boys!" not giving him any chance to argue.
Andrew laughed and joined the group, prompting thousands of fans to cheer even louder the moment they saw him.
The marching band raised the volume of its instruments, and the cheerleaders waved their pom-poms through the air with even greater enthusiasm.
The entire fanbase was celebrating. While it wasn't a championship game, it was still a crucial victory over a ranked opponent, achieved through a comeback.
The result kept them firmly in the race for the Pac-12 South division title. And best of all, looking ahead at the schedule, considerably easier opponents were coming up over the next two or three weeks.
Meanwhile, in the stands, Mitchell wore a huge smile, looking far calmer and more relieved as he held Lily in his arms. She was still in full celebration mode, clapping her little hands enthusiastically.
Mitch glanced over at Cam, who was practically collapsed in his seat. He looked completely drained, as if every ounce of life had been squeezed out of him by the tension.
"You'll be hoarse all week," Mitchell commented with amusement, looking at him out of the corner of his eye.
Cam looked back with half-open eyes, weighed down by exhaustion. He had spent the entire game on his feet, cheering, suffering, and yelling through every second and every minute of the contest.
In the opening minutes of the first quarter, when the sack, the interception, and then Andrew's slip had sent the ball rolling straight toward the end zone, Cam had nearly suffered a heart attack.
He hadn't been the only one.
The rest of the family was now seated as well. After cheering nonstop throughout the game, the tension had finally faded away, leaving them relieved by the victory but emotionally exhausted from the ordeal.
"That's not funny, Mitchell," Cam said with a small huff, his face still covered in beads of sweat and reflecting pure exhaustion. "I feel like I aged ten years in three hours."
Not even Mater Dei's state championship game against De La Salle had made him, or the rest of the family, suffer this much. Especially considering this was Andrew's first game after a loss.
The entire family had followed Andrew's football career ever since he played in elementary school. For people accustomed to seeing him win, watching him lose the previous week in Nebraska had been just as strange and unprecedented for them. The feeling of relief now was absolute.
A few seats away from Mitchell and Cam, Rachel kept her eyes fixed on the field, staring in the exact direction where Andrew had waved to them moments earlier.
'Is it just my imagination, or was he looking at me for a few seconds...?' Rachel wondered, feeling her stomach flutter as she tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear.
Almost immediately, she noticed her pulse quicken slightly.
Rachel had long since accepted that she liked Andrew.
When she saw him last Sunday night, she had genuinely felt bad for him.
Seeing him so downcast had pushed her out of her comfort zone for the first time. She had taken a step she never would have dared take with any other boy, since Rachel had always been the type to wait for the guy to make the first move.
Fortunately for her, everything had gone well.
She hadn't been rejected.
They had eaten ice cream, watched Star Wars, and although Andrew had completely fallen asleep during the second movie, he had thanked her afterward. Nothing romantic had happened between them, but Rachel felt as though she had grown much closer to him.
Monica had enthusiastically congratulated her the next day, pleasantly surprised by Rachel's courage and by the sweet gesture. Monica knew her friend extremely well and understood that Rachel usually had a rather romanticized and passive view of love.
"Hey, Mon, do I look good?" Rachel suddenly asked, turning toward her while smoothing out her powder blue and gold jersey.
Monica gave her a strange look from head to toe, raising an eyebrow and silently wondering where such a random question had come from in the middle of the stadium's celebration.
Down on the field, reporter Heather Cox was interviewing Jim Mora.
"Coach, congratulations on an incredible victory. A heart-stopping finish here in Pasadena. A week ago, your team suffered a tough loss in Nebraska, and tonight they showed tremendous character by defeating the number twenty-three team in the rankings. What does this win mean for the program?"
Mora, still breathing a little heavily from the adrenaline of the finish, looked at her and answered firmly.
"It means everything to these guys. We have a very young offense, and a lot of people doubted whether we could bounce back after losing in Lincoln. But tonight we proved that this team has resilience. We battled through adversity. Oregon State is an excellent football team that surprised a lot of people at the start of the season. But we beat them. I'm extremely proud of this group."
Heather nodded, taking in his words before asking the inevitable question of the night.
"I can't not ask about Pritchett. The game started in the worst possible way with his early interception. Then your offense was pinned at its own five-yard line and the ball slipped out of his hands into the end zone... all of us thought it was going to be a safety or something even worse. Instead, Andrew picks up the ball and runs ninety-five yards for a touchdown. What was going through your mind on the sideline at that exact moment?"
Mora laughed softly and shook his head as he remembered the play. Running a hand across his face, he showed the same mixture of disbelief and relief he had felt in that moment.
"I'll be honest with you. When I saw the ball rolling toward our end zone, I was already mentally drawing up the next series after the safety, and crossing my fingers that Andrew wouldn't freeze up, that he'd at least get to the ball and fall on it. But no, Andrew didn't do any of that."
The logical thing to do in that situation, the safest option and what any coach would have demanded from a quarterback, would have been to accept the mistake, get to the ball, and simply fall on it to cover it on the ground.
The play would have ended immediately there and been ruled a safety.
That would have meant two points for Oregon State, making the score 0-9. UCLA also would have lost possession, effectively killing the drive on its very first play.
It would have been a tough blow and a major hit to morale, but it still would have been a far better outcome than allowing a defender to reach the ball first inside the end zone, which would have resulted in an automatic touchdown, the extra point, and then the ball right back in Oregon State's hands.
Mora continued in a more serious tone.
"But Andrew isn't a normal player. He picked up the ball, looked up, slipped past a defender by inches, and ran with a speed and instinct that simply can't be taught. When he crossed midfield and I realized nobody was going to catch him, I thought, 'This guy is crazy, but he's a genius.' That play completely changed the energy of the stadium and gave us life when we were backed into a corner. That's where the comeback began."
Heather nodded, fully agreeing with the description of genius.
"Last question, Coach. Your archrivals, the Trojans, suffered a surprising loss to Stanford a few hours ago. What do you make of that? Is the South Division more wide open than ever?"
Mora couldn't help but smile slightly at the mention.
Perhaps the only game in the country drawing more attention than UCLA's thriller was USC's matchup against Stanford. The number-two team in the nation had traveled to face the number-twenty-five Cardinal, and on their home field.
Stanford had defeated the national powerhouse and championship contender by a score of 21-14.
It had been a complete shock, and it had happened less than four hours earlier.
Stanford's ferocious defense had completely shut down the supposedly brilliant Matt Barkley.
The USC quarterback, who until that very moment had been considered the overwhelming favorite to win the Heisman Trophy, suffered a devastating blow to his campaign. He failed to throw a single touchdown and, to make matters worse, tossed two costly interceptions.
The Pac-12 was divided into two divisions for the purpose of determining the conference championship game: North and South.
North Division:
Oregon Ducks
Oregon State Beavers
Stanford Cardinal
California Golden Bears
Washington Huskies
Washington State Cougars
South Division:
UCLA Bruins
USC Trojans
Arizona Wildcats
Arizona State Sun Devils
Utah Utes
Colorado Buffaloes
How was each division champion determined?
The only thing that truly mattered was a team's conference record. Non-conference games, such as UCLA's trips to Nebraska and Rice, neither helped nor hurt a team's chances of winning its division.
Only the 9 games played against fellow Pac-12 opponents counted.
This game against Oregon State had actually been UCLA's first conference matchup of the season.
And it had been anything but easy, considering they were facing a dark horse team that had just broken into the Top 25.
With the victory, the Bruins opened conference play with a strong 1-0 record while already getting one of the five toughest games on their schedule out of the way.
By contrast, USC began conference play at 0-1.
At the start of the season, absolutely nobody would have imagined such a scenario. Virtually every analyst had assumed the Trojans would cruise through the South Division and punch their ticket to the Pac-12 Championship Game without breaking a sweat.
Because the goal was a national championship. That was why Barkley had returned for another season, and why USC had pushed so hard with all the publicity surrounding the slogan: "Unfinished Business."
As for non-conference games, the three games played outside the Pac-12, they still mattered for climbing the rankings and earning favorable postseason bowl selections. They also carried a great deal of prestige when facing and defeating a historic program from another conference.
"It's a surprising loss for them," Mora replied, returning to a serious tone and carefully choosing his words in front of the microphone. "But in this conference, you always have to respect Stanford, whether they have their star quarterback under center or not. As for us, I've always said that the Bruins are going to compete for everything. There's hunger in this locker room, and if there's an opportunity, we're going to fight until the very end. Nobody has the South Division locked up, especially not now."
Stanford had entered the season with relatively little national hype after losing its star quarterback, Andrew Luck, the perfect quarterback prototype and the number-one overall pick in the NFL Draft just a few months earlier.
His seat had been left vacant, and the Cardinal began the year ranked twenty-first in the preseason polls.
After Week One, however, they dropped to twenty-fifth, not because they lost, but because they had only beaten a significantly weaker opponent by three points. Despite winning, the media punished them by dropping them four spots in the rankings.
Yet their defense had just proven against the Trojans that they were still a legitimate threat, throwing the South Division race wide open.
That didn't mean USC had already lost the division.
As long as the Trojans avoided another conference loss and defeated UCLA in the head-to-head matchup, they would still control their own destiny and likely win the division. But the defeat made one thing clear: they were no longer the unbeatable powerhouse everyone had portrayed them as at the beginning of the season.
"Thank you, Coach," Heather said, and Mora stepped out of camera frame as the interview concluded.
Heather Cox scanned the field for her next interview subject and quickly spotted someone who immediately caught her attention: Steve Rice, the WR3 who had just caught the game-winning touchdown pass for the Bruins.
Steve looked completely energized after celebrating like a maniac. Sweat covered his entire face, yet somehow his thick, voluminous hair still looked absolutely perfect despite the physical battle he had just endured.
'How the hell is that hair still perfect?' Heather thought with a touch of feminine envy before quickly returning to her professional mindset.
"Steve!" Heather called out, waving him over.
Steve immediately turned his head and flashed a huge grin when he spotted the professional camera. Without hesitation, he jogged over enthusiastically.
"We're live for the entire nation!" Heather said. "You became the hero of the night with the game-winning touchdown just eighteen seconds before the final whistle. Tell us, what does it feel like to silence all the doubts after such a difficult week?"
"It feels freaking incredible!" Steve replied, pointing directly at the camera and speaking at a rapid pace. "All damn week we've been hearing the same garbage on television! 'Oh, they're just kids.' 'They're going to fall apart after losing in Lincoln.' 'The Bruins' offense is too inexperienced.'"
He spread his arms dramatically.
"Well, look at us now! We beat the number twenty-three team in the nation, and USC couldn't even beat number twenty-five!"
He finished with a grin stretching from ear to ear.
Steve was fully aware of his archrivals' loss. Even though he had been at UCLA for less than three months, he already deeply hated the spoiled rich kids at USC and embraced the rivalry with the same intensity as any lifelong Bruin.
As for the criticism he was referencing, that had been the main talking point surrounding UCLA over the previous seven days: the alarming lack of experience across their offensive unit.
The analysts and reporters were already being generous enough by putting Andrew on a pedestal, since nobody was criticizing him on television. His numbers were brutal, and everyone could see that he was carrying the team on his shoulders.
Heather smiled at the receiver's overflowing energy.
"Let's talk about the final play. There were less than twenty seconds left. What was that play like from your perspective?"
Steve, fully aware that he was appearing on national television for the entire country, gestured enthusiastically and was extremely descriptive with his answer.
"A chemistry forged back at Palisades and carried directly to the Rose Bowl. Thank you, Steve, and congratulations on the win," Heather said.
Steve winked at the camera with complete ease and pointed a finger at it.
"You! Go Bruins!"
After wrapping up the interview, Heather followed Steve with her eyes as he headed briskly toward the locker room. It was obvious that her coverage of the night was still missing its centerpiece, the undisputed star of the game, and she wanted to interview him at all costs.
Just days earlier, Andrew had declared that the fans needed to trust this team, and he certainly hadn't let them down.
Finally, amid the sea of photographers and security personnel, she spotted him walking calmly toward the tunnel.
"Andrew! Andrew, one second for ESPN!"
Andrew, who was already savoring the peace and quiet of the locker room, turned his head when he heard his name.
'Here we go again...' he thought to himself, holding back a slight sigh.
Having to give mandatory interviews after every game, especially after endings this chaotic, was a bit of a nuisance to him.
He found it tiresome.
Even so, he walked over to Heather.
He answered each of her questions and eventually turned around and entered the locker room, leaving behind the deafening roar of the Rose Bowl.
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