Vandals in deep at USC
Nathan Enderle and his teammates are trying to keep things in perspective.
Idaho’s redshirt freshman quarterback is set to make his first collegiate start. In theory, the opponent is secondary.
“It’s mostly exciting because I haven’t played football for a year and a half,” Enderle said. “You always want to get back in the game.”
It should be quite a return to competition for Enderle and the Vandals, who play top-ranked Southern California tonight at 7:15 in front of more than 90,000 fans at the Los Angeles Coliseum and a Fox Sports Network audience tuned in to see the Trojans start their march to the national championship game.
“Anxiety isn’t there – anticipation is there,” first-year head coach Robb Akey said. “It will be a great experience for our guys. I don’t have to get this team wound up. We have to make sure they don’t burn it all up before the game.”
Enderle isn’t the only Vandal making his debut. Of the 46 names listed on Idaho’s two-deep roster for offense and defense, 15 are freshmen (10 redshirts) and another eight are non-lettermen.
“It could be a fifth-year senior, if he’s starting for the first time he’s still a rookie,” Akey said. “There are going to be growing pains. I hate to say you’re going to live with mistakes, but we’re going to live with growing pains … but it should pay off for us later, obviously in future years but later this season is what I would expect.”
That won’t help tonight against a team that sounds almost good enough to contend for a NFL playoff berth.
“It’s a great team, in a great stadium, it’s an honor to be there,” junior center Adam Korby said. “We have to put that aside and play as hard as we can.”
Sophomore receiver Max Komar added, “The thing that I’ve told the young guys is we’re all college athletes. Maybe they’re the No. 1 team in the nation, but we’re all human. They don’t have super powers. You can’t look at them as superior, you have to go down there and fight, go 100 percent, go every play like it’s your last.”
Akey said he had no reason to disagree with a spread that is more than six touchdowns, but he isn’t talking about it.
“We’re going to go into the game with great confidence in what we’re doing,” he said. “The first game, whoever you’re playing, you’re not going to do everything right. One of the things we’re looking to is how they respond in a competitive situation when there’s adversity.”
What if the game turns into a worst-case scenario for the Vandals, as in the last meeting in 1929 when USC won 72-0? Akey first cracked a joke.
“What I’m worried about is going into the Cal Poly overconfident because we just beat the No. 1 team in the nation,” he said. “How are we going to be able to handle Cal Poly?”
But the truth is there is a danger the Vandals could come out of their first game mentally and physically damaged with 11 games remaining.
“There’s a fine line right there,” Akey said. “We’re not talking about the ability of USC, we’re talking about what we have to do going into the ballgame to give ourselves a chance to win. I cannot and I will not talk to this football team about bad experiences. If the worst case happens, then us coaches will have to deal with it.”
For the long-term success of Akey’s building project, Enderle’s performance is going to be an important gauge.
“I like what he has done,” Akey said. “He’s a freshman, but he’s had a redshirt season practicing against this level of people. He had a spring ball with us. He’s also had a spring ball with the prior staff because he graduated high school early and came out here. He’s not an absolute snot-nosed pup.”
But the competition gets a lot tougher, beginning tonight.
“There’s no question it’s going to be a tremendous challenge for our offense, just as it is for our team,” offensive coordinator/quarterback coach Steve Axman said. “We’re playing the No. 1 team in the country, we’re playing a great defense and we’re doing it with a freshman playing his first college ballgame. I really have tremendous confidence in Nathan. He has progressed real well, he’s very bright, he’s learned an awful lot. But just like our offense, he has a long ways to go. He knows it, I know it.”
USC is the starting point, not the final test, and Axman is eager to see where the 6-foot-5, 233-pound Enderle is at.
“I’ve coached lot of different quarterbacks,” he said. “It’s amazing how some guys can be great practice players but they go into a game and they’re not performers. Sometimes it’s just the opposite … you just never know.”
Enderle has prepared for the test since winning the starting job in spring camp.
“I’ve been trying to prepare myself for that the whole summer, because I really expected myself to come in and have another good camp and really secure my position,” he said. “So I’ve been thinking about it a while. I don’t read the magazines. Coach says what matters the most is what we do as a team, how we feel about ourselves.
“The best way to put it is our linebacker David Vobora says he dreams about seeing himself on the cover of SI with his finger up. The worst-case scenario is we lose a game.”