Cedars, Chaos, and the Coliseum
I spent most of the day struggling with other people’s issues, the kind that test your patience and your faith in humanity. Brunch with my family was a full-on cluster. We hadn’t seen each other in years, and trying to catch up while our kids were watching was like performing stand-up in church. We couldn’t share half of what we actually did in our childhoods. My family looks like one of your favorite reality shows, loud, dramatic, full of love and chaos, and somehow still on the air. I left that table thinking the hardest part of my day was behind me.
I was wrong.
On the way to the game, one of my child’s friends, twenty-one years old but still “a kid” in my book, suddenly needed to go to the emergency room. So instead of heading to the Coliseum, I was heading to Cedars-Sinai, trying to figure out how my perfectly planned game day had turned into a triage unit.
I spent the first half of the game in the hospital waiting room, checking the score on my phone and waiting for the child’s dad to arrive so I could leave. There’s nothing quite like trying to balance maternal instinct, football loyalty, and bad hospital Wi-Fi.
By the time I finally made it to the stadium, the fourth quarter was just beginning. The energy was unreal, a mix of desperation and destiny. You could feel it pulsing through the stands like electricity.
It was 2014, the fifth game of the season. The road had already been rough. We had lost our star quarterback, Taylor Kelly, to a broken foot in the Colorado game. Mike Bercovici stepped in, the backup who stayed when everyone thought he would leave. He had lost the starting job years earlier but stuck it out. That kind of loyalty says everything about who he was and who we were trying to be.
Heading into USC, no one picked us to win. We had not beaten them at the Coliseum since 1999. They were stacked. We were the underdog. But belief has its own kind of swagger.
By the fourth quarter, Bercovici had thrown for more than 400 yards and several touchdowns, with Jaelen Strong catching everything that came his way. The game was slipping away, but there was something in the air that refused to quit.
We missed an onside kick. USC scored again. Two touchdowns down. The clock was bleeding out. Then Cameron Smith broke free, seventy yards to the end zone. One-score game. Another onside kick. Missed again. But our defense held, forced a three-and-out. Forty seconds left. No timeouts. No kicker. We needed a touchdown.
I still tear up every time I think about the beginning of that moment, with seven seconds left. The crowd was holding its breath. The entire stadium was frozen between hope and heartbreak. Bercovici rolled right and launched the ball high into the dark Los Angeles sky. It hung there like faith itself. Jaelen Strong went up, reached through history, and came down with it in the end zone.
I was standing at the back of that same end zone, tearing up. Not just because we won, but because I had seen everything that led to that moment — the hard work, the heartbreak, the belief. It felt like life itself had been waiting for this exact play.
The Jael Mary.
We won at the Coliseum. With our backup quarterback. On the last play of the game.
That night was not just a football win. It was a reminder that chaos and grace often share the same field. My day started in a hospital and ended in an end zone.
And maybe that is the real lesson. Sometimes you do not get to choose the order of your miracles. You just show up for them, whether it is at Cedars-Sinai, around a family brunch that feels like a reality show reunion, or standing at the back of an end zone, watching one unfold right in front of you.
