Barkley and Forcier growing up before our eyes

Published Sep. 16, 2009 1:04 a.m. ET

Peter Schrager

In the two biggest games of the college football weekend — both of which were held in tradition-rich Midwestern stadiums thousands of miles from the West Coast — it was a pair of fair-haired 19-year-old kids from Southern California stealing the show.

It'd been two years since Michigan Stadium rocked like it did following Saturday afternoon's Michigan victory over Notre Dame. And if the 110,000+ crowd was rocking in Ann Arbor, Wolverines freshman quarterback Tate Forcier was their Bono. Or Metallica. Or Led Zeppelin. Or, all of them combined. Hell, he was a virtual Rock Band. And with the elusiveness and precision he showed under pressure Saturday, he might as well have been Madden, Pac-Man and Halo, too.

If Tate Forcier resembled a human video game on Saturday, USC freshman quarterback Matt Barkley was a master scientist. Smart, methodical and patient — the 19-year-old from Santa Ana, Calif. played the role of Niels Bohr, plodding along on an experiment for 53 minutes before finally putting it all together and producing the magic elixir to cure USC's offensive ills.