PASADENA, Calif. -- At least they went to Disneyland.

Otherwise, Penn State's staggeringly overmatched Nittany Lions were going to fly home from the 95th Rose Bowl, a place where college football's best traditions are honored and many of its enduring legends made, with no more meaningful a memory than having the coin toss handled by Frau Blucher from Young Frankenstein, the one and only Cloris Leachman.

Oh, they managed a first-quarter touchdown and a couple of academic fourth-quarter scores including an insane field goal with 7:22 to go in a classical blowout, but in the middle there was more than enough incompetence to trigger a virtual laser show of Southern California brilliance unlike any in Rose Bowl history.

The Trojans scored as many points in the second quarter, 24, as Penn State had allowed in any full game all year, streaking to a 31-point half, a fatter first 30 minutes than in any of its iconic performances in 32 previous Rose Bowls. The 31-7 halftime score represented the worst 30-minute whipping USC has put on any victim since it led Pitt, 26-0, at intermission less than a month after Joe Paterno's third birthday.

Paterno, who took his ailing hip to the press box for the eighth consecutive game, probably wished he'd watched it from Hong Kong, or somewhere farther away. Maybe from there, Tom Bradley's defense might have given some illusion of -- what's the right word? -- ability.

Lions middle linebacker Josh Hull, fishing off the Santa Monica pier last weekend, provided the enduring metaphor for Penn State's bowl performance. He caught nothing. Yesterday, Trojan receivers crisscrossed the Penn State secondary like a school of reef sharks, chomping 20 yards at a time out of what had been masquerading as a great defense.

"I told the team to hold their heads up," Paterno said after nightfall. "They had a great year. We didn't play our game in the first half, but we hung in there. They have nothing to be ashamed of."

Perhaps not, but I wouldn't be real proud of that second quarter, in which USC piled up 236 yards and scored on every possession.

Trojan quarterback Mark Sanchez, whose celebrity in Southern California's vast Mexican community now rivals that of Fernando Valenzuela, directed the USC band in the moments after orchestrating a 38-24 victory, but his virtuosity was established from one of end of the Rose Bowl's Bermuda grass to the other.

"As a coach, you've got to admire a kid who makes plays like he did under pressure," said Paterno. "The USC receivers were very good, but be careful they don't get more credit than the quarterback. He made some super throws. Our secondary was a little tentative, probably because they got hurt early and then they fell asleep on one in the second half, but the quarterback just played a great football game."

Sanchez completed 28 of his 35 throws -- 80 percent -- for 413 yards and four touchdowns, and while there is simply no way to diminish numbers like that, Penn State helped him via every method at its disposal.

The Lions managed only one sack, and rarely hurried Sanchez. Aaron Maybin was offside the only time he reached the passer, but it was not the only time he was offside, and two penalties were pretty much the length and breadth of his contribution. Safety Anthony Scirrotto played dreadfully, but was still hard to distinguish in a secondary where traffic flowed with fewer obstructions than at any time since O.J.'s ride.

No one enjoyed it more than junior flanker Damian Williams, who caught 10 of Sanchez's strikes for 162 yards.

"The receivers and Mark were really on top of it all night," said Lions corner Lydell Sargeant, whose California homecoming went something like 1/100 as well as could be expected. "On a lot of their routes, he was throwing before their breaks. They just had a good connection. They were mistake-free. Mark just did a really good job of reading our coverages."

There was no lack of supporting evidence for the fact that USC has won seven consecutive Pac-10 championships and 86 of its past 96 games. There will be no empirical evidence, however, for the sprung-to-life notion that USC is the best team in America, as that will allegedly be determined in next week's Florida-Oklahoma sprint-off. This is an unending shame, that college football, such fabulous theatre, ends not in a championship tournament but just another tiresome argument.

I don't know if USC is the best team in America, but I'm fairly certain Penn State isn't. If nothing else, this Rose Bowl dissuaded anyone who thought the Lions were a mere couple of points at Iowa removed from a possible national championship. They were removed, but by a continent.