Classy Bruins

Here's an interesting bit of news from Scott Wolf about UCLA's "elegant" handling of the basketball rivalry.

More Crushing on Pete Carroll

Here's a link to a mind-blowing article on Pete Carroll from Los Angeles magazine: 23 Reasons Why a Profile of Pete Carroll Does Not Appear in this Space. This guy never ceases to amaze me. Halfway through, I'm very happy to read the following:

His first task: Turn USC into the grandest college dynasty ever. Not this week’s number one team but history’s. “To win forever,” he says . . . .

Sounds impossible, right? Unrealistically ambitious? Read the article and you'll have a tough time not believing he can pull it off.

Even after almost seven years at the helm of USC football, you'll learn things about the man that sound like they were lifted out of a movie script, like this:

Along the way [Bo] Taylor tells me that he and Carroll do this often. They make late-night journeys through the dicey precincts of Los Angeles. Alone, unarmed, they cruise the desolate, impoverished, crime-ridden streets, meeting as many people (mostly young men) as possible. The mission: Let them know that someone busy, someone famous, someone well known for winning, is thinking about them, rooting for them. The young men have hard stories, grim stories, about their everyday lives, and at the very least Carroll’s visit gives them a different story to tell tomorrow.

[. . .]

We start in east South-Central, a block without streetlights, without stores. Broken glass in the gutters. Fog and gloom in the air. We hop out and approach a group of young men bunched on the sidewalk. Glassy-eyed, they’re either drunk, stoned, or else just dangerously bored. They recognize Carroll right away. Several look around for news trucks and politicians, and they can’t hide their shock when they realize that Carroll is here, relatively speaking, alone.

Carroll shakes hands, asks how everyone’s doing. He marches up and down the sidewalk, the same way he marches up and down a sideline—exhorting, pumping his fist. At first the young men are nervous, starstruck , shy. Gradually they relax. They talk about football, of course, but also about the police, about how difficult it is to find a job. They talk about their lives, and their heads snap back when Carroll listens.

This anecdote from Carroll's tenure with the NY Jets also caught my eye:

And at the end of my talk I say, ‘As we get through it, I’ll explain it more to you, and I know this to be true so much right now that thunder will strike—’” At that moment, Carroll says, he struck a table with his fist and a clap of thunder shook the building. His coaches, he says, turned white. I turn a little pale myself. “At bed check,” he says, laughing, “I found guys curled up, reading their Bibles.”

Read it.

HT: TrojanWire.

I Still Miss Norm

At about this time in 2006, I lamented the absence of Norm Chow and expressed my belief that USC was worse off without Chow. I had hope after the Nebraska game that USC might finally be learning to fill the void, but the 2007 season since then has killed that hope. This column by Jon Wilner makes many of the same points I made in 2005 to argue that USC has not adequately replaced Chow's skill sets:

USC should not be scoring 23 points against Stanford, 20 against Arizona and 17 against Oregon. It should not be committing 10 turnovers in those three games (the Trojans are last in the league in turnover margin). There’s too much talent, way, way too much talent on the USC side of the ball. And those other teams, Arizona, Oregon and Stanford — they aren’t very good defensively (fifth, seventh and ninth in the Pac-10, respectively).

[. . .]

In Year One A.N. (After Norm), the Trojans had arguably the best array of offensive talent in Pac-10 history, and there have been some pretty good offenses in this league:

A Heisman-winning quarterback, the best tailback of his generation, another tailback who scored 26 touchdowns, plus two NFL receivers and three first-team all-league linemen. The Trojans averaged 49 points and almost 600 yards per game and play-callers Steve Sarkisian and Lane Kiffin looked like they were little Norm Jrs. But you didn’t need to be an offensive mastermind to Get the ball to Reggie.

The past two years, the Trojans have gotten progressively sloppier, more predictable and far less effective. Some of the decline has to do with personnel, but not all of it — not even close to all of it.

[. . .]

Chow would never run when everyone knew a run was coming, he’d never call all those swing passes and bubble screens, all those quick outs that are easy to see coming and even easier to defend. He’d be throwing downfield – and doing it effectively.

I believe that Steve Sarkisian is a smart coach, and I believe that he will learn from his mistakes, but he is relatively inexperienced and it is hard to not think of what might have been had Pete Carroll conducted a nation-wide search to find a replacement for Chow. I hope that promoting first Lane Kiffin and now Sarkisian to Chow's former position pays off in the long run for USC, but the USC football program should not be in the business of providing on-the-job training!

Cursed?

Are the 2007 Trojans cursed?

The Trojan line-up has been devastated by injuries. This is the situation as far as I can tell, based on attrition to the depth chart since the season opener:


Affected players’ names are followed by a number indicating the number of games he has missed so far this year due to injury and his status for the Notre Dame game.
Strikethroughs indicate players who are out for the year.

The offensive line and the secondary have been hit especially hard. At one point, Josh Pinkard, Cary Harris, Shareece Wright, and Vincent Joseph were all out at the same time, leaving virtually no CBs to play opposite Terrell Thomas. Safety Mozique McCurtis filled in. It’s even worse than it looks on the offensive line. According to USC’s 2007 media guide, Nick Howell was Matt Spanos’s original backup. However, Spanos injured his triceps prior to the opener, so USC opened the season with true freshman Kristofer O’Dowd at center. O’Dowd played commendably for the first three games. Then, O’Dowd and RG Chilo Rachal both injured their knees during a single play at Washington. It looks like USC will start Butch Lewis at LT, Jeff Byers at LG, Spanos at C, Alatini Malu at RG, and Drew Radovich at RT for the Notre Dame game.

I know that injuries must be expected during the course of any season, but this is ridiculous.

Add this to the adversity with which the team has had to deal. Many of the passengers on the team’s charter flight to South Bend were thrown from their seats, putting the fear of death into some of the players, when the plane dropped abruptly during its landing approach. The pilot aborted the landing and circled around for a repeat attempt.

Welcome to Notre Dame. I’m sure the jungle grass and the green jerseys will help calm your nerves.

A tip of the hat to Student Body Right.

UPDATE: I know the graphic is unreadable, but if you click on it, you will be linked to a full-size version.

I Live in Cavalier Country

. . . or maybe Hokie country. It's tough to say for sure. I commonly see stickers from both schools displayed on vehicles in northern Virginia. Just across the river is definitely Terrapin country, though. The map below attempts to divide the United States into areas based on the consensus team supported by the areas' inhabitants.

I'm a map junkie and a college football junkie, so I couldn't resist posting this map.



The map is located at the CommonConsensus Map Project, which hosts similar maps for the four major U.S. professional sports in addition to NCAA 1-A football. I found this website via strange maps, a fantastic site for map junkies like myself.

I'm off to add my vote now.

Warp Speed, Scotty!

I’m already sick of hearing how the SEC is light-years (as in the top speed of SEC defensive linemen) better than the Big Ten because Florida beat Ohio State in the BCS Championship. The only thing that game proves is that Florida was better than Ohio State on January 8, 2007.

If people are going to point to the results of bowl games as an indicator of the relative strength of conferences, shouldn’t they include all the bowl games played between the two conferences? Including Florida’s victory, the SEC was 1-2 versus the Big 10. Yeah, they’re definitely a better conference.

It seems like the mainstream media would have us believe that kids in the South are genetically programmed to grow up faster than kids in the Midwest, and kids in the Midwest are genetically programmed to grow up bigger and stronger than kids in the South. Yes, I know that programs recruit countrywide, but these maps (HT: The Wizard of Odds) show that Florida and Ohio State, at least, get most of their talent regionally, just like the Trojans, who enroll a handful of recruits every year from across the country, but fill the vast majority of their roster with players from California and other western states. Maybe Urban Meyer is recruiting players from Alpha Centauri.

I am no partisan of either the Big 10 or the SEC. It just annoys me when the media delivers shoddy analysis and expects their audience to accept it without question.

Effin' Hilarious

I missed this while watching the game live, but laughed my ass off when I saw it on YouTube. Keep an eye on Henne as he is rapidly removed from the scrum.



HT: RCollier27 at Conquest Chronicles

Consensus

Somewhat of a consensus has emerged among the fans (or bloggers, at least) of the three teams in contention to face Ohio State in the BCS Championship game: Florida, Michigan, and USC.

Orson at EDSBS, which is always an entertaining read, does not concede that USC deserves the spot over Florida, but acknowledges that Florida fans don't have a leg to stand on if they complain about USC getting the nod:

"This is something Florida fans cannot do, since in the anarchic world of college football, the team with the biggest heads on their pikes wins. At the moment, an unbelievably tough Florida team loses this comparison with USC, who laughs at the lolling tongues of the midget skulls of UCF and Western Carolina we’re carrying around in our schedule. If you don’t care about the national picture, fine; yet if the sports bar discussion turns to a Gator claim on a title shot, take the stool you sit on and saw one of the legs off before you begin, since you might as well begin where Jeremy Foley’s [Florida AD] put us schedule-wise."

Brian at mgoblog actually conducts a side-by-side analysis of the three teams' resumes [entire schedules] and argues that USC deserves to make the BCS Championship game over Florida and Michigan:

"Michigan has a narrow advantage in "best win" but after that it's all Trojans until you get to the loss category. They clearly lost to the least intimidating opponent, but unlike their competition they battled back and had a chance to tie at the death. Also, OSU benefited from a panoply of freak plays: a punt return touchdown, USC turnovers, etc. I think the most astounding thing about USC is this: they played one team worse than 5-7. When they rolled on to the field this year, all but one of their opponents was capable of beating them.

"If you really think that Michigan's Notre Dame win was superlative enough to override USC's season of wins against solid opposition and that their Oregon State loss was an unforgivable sin, you can make a case for Michigan. But let's give it up, guys. USC's tiebreaker is Arkansas and Nebraska versus our Vanderbilt, Central Michigan, and Ball State. They took on two above-average BCS teams. We took on the worst team in the SEC and two MAC teams, though one of them happens to be okay this year. Set aside the Michigan fandom and look at the big picture: if USC has this season and does not make the NC game, no one will ever schedule anyone again. It's time to take the bullet."

This all presumes USC will beat UCLA tomorrow, so you can be assured everyone in both fan bases will be pulling hard for UCLA.

GO 'SC! BEAT THE BRUINS!

Trojan Envy?

From a Domer? Yes, indeed, and expressed in a public forum, no less. What is the world coming to?

What has to be even more painful (if you're a Notre Dame fan), is the realization that your hoodie-wearing, crew-cutted, robot genius coach with all the Superbowl rings may not be the savior of your storied football program after all. I wonder if anybody in South Bend is having second thoughts about giving Charlie Weis that multi-million dollar 10-year contract extension after his seventh game as a collegiate head coach.

What planet ya from, Charlie?

Ooooooo, I liked this. Best quote:

"Hey, care to know what befuddles me, Charlie? How the head coach of Notre Dame, a program which has consistently been overrated and ranked higher than it deserved to be for more than a decade -- and for most of the past century -- has the audacity to complain about polls. I mean … wow! That more than befuddles me."

Be careful, Charlie - remember what happened to the last coach who complained about the BCS standings, Tommy Tuberville (Arkansas 27 - Auburn 10).

HT: Student Body Right.

Update: Stewart Mandel of SI.com chimes in with some hard numbers.

World Cup Previews

For the most comprehensive and entertaining team-by-team preview of the upcoming World Cup I have come across, check out That's On Point:
The Draw;
Angola; Argentina; Australia; Brazil; Ivory Coast; Costa Rica; Croatia; Czech Republic; Ecuador; England; France; Germany; Ghana; Iran; Italy; Japan; South Korea; Saudi Arabia; Mexico; The Netherlands; Paraguay; Poland; Portugal; Serbia and Montenegro; Switzerland; Sweden; Spain; Togo; Trinidad and Tobago; Tunisia, Ukraine, and USA.

Gunslingers is also posting in-depth previews of each team.

I have some notes I collected four years ago on a system for running a pool not unlike March Madness or the college football bowls, but I'm not sure how much interest there would be in participating among my friends. Most of the people I know will watch as many games as they can regardless of their rooting interest. A pool might add an additional layer of interest for some.

Fill in the Blanks

The map below indicates graphically the countries of the world that I have visited (red). It's my aspiration to fill in as much of the white space as possible. The lack of any red in Africa and South America is particularly conspicuous, but there are multiple locations on both continents that I would like to visit as soon as possible.



Create your own visited countries map.

U.S. states I have visited:

create your own visited states map or check out these Google Hacks. I am not counting layovers in airports as visits.

Thanks: HeyDudeWhoa!

My Thoughts Exactly

by Mr. Two Cents via EDSBS

After winning 34 straight, this is a relatively accurate representation of my, and I assume many other Trojans', gut reaction to losing to Texas in the Rose Bowl. I laughed out loud at this.

The Gods of Football

Nothing would please me more this evening than to see the outcome of the Rose Bowl virtually decided in the first quarter, à la this pious post by Orson at EDSBS, who has clearly seen the light of Trojan football, so that I can enjoy the rest of the game in joyful celebration.

Three Reasons . . .

This seams to be a popular format for analyzing the USC-Texas Rose Bowl match-up:

• Stewart Mandel's three reasons (each) why the 2006 Rose Bowl will and will not be different than the 2005 Orange Bowl blowout.
• Heismanpundit addresses the same question.
• Burnt Orange Nation gives three reasons why USC will win and three reasons why Texas will win.

Rose Bowl Debating

For some fun Rose Bowl debate, check out the Texas blog Burnt Orange Nation. Unsurprisingly, there's a strong pro-Texas bias in the comments, which makes it all the more entertaining. The administrators of the blog have shown admirable balance in their postings, especially since December 4. This, of course, was the day it suddenly became a reality that their beloved Longhorns would actually have to back up Texas fans' smack talk on the field. Don't look for any USC victory predictions here.

Bush Highlights

Here's a link to a fun video of Reggie Bush's college highlights (hat tip: The Sports Pulse).

Here's The New York Times article with a link to Bush's bootleg high school highlights video.

This is USC's Bush Heisman candidacy video.

A friend accused me last weekend of having a man-crush on Bush. I didn't really have anything to say about that.

What Kind of Rival Is UCLA?

USC has two big football rivals: Notre Dame and UCLA. However, the two rivalries are different. The Notre Dame rivalry is characterized by mutual respect. Both USC and Notre Dame have suffered more losses to each other than any other school. The game against Notre Dame almost always takes place in the national spotlight with victory often serving as a launching pad for national championships and Heisman trophies. The rivalry with UCLA, on the other hand, is characterized by mutual dislike (many would say hate, and that would not necessarily be inaccurate). A win over UCLA is nice simply because it keeps the folks across town out of our faces for another year and puts the Bruins in their proper place. I know, I know . . . UCLA fans will point to this sentiment as an example of typical Trojan arrogance; but it’s true.

UCLA players and fans seem to view the cross-town rivalry somewhat differently. College Football Resource gave his take on each side’s perspective a couple weeks ago:

Two rivalries stand out to me as almost comical. Those are the ill feelings between Auburn and Alabama and USC and UCLA.

Most rivalries have both schools on some kind of level ground. That is, Michigan fans can make a lot of claims that they're the best, but so can Ohio State fans. But with these two specific rivalries, there's a certain big brother/little brother feel to them that cracks me up. Not surprisingly, USC and Alabama play the big brother roles. They've had a lot more success over the years, have owned the rivalries and their fans approach the rivalry a little different than those on the other side.

For simple proof, I present to you two blogs, one by a USC fan and the other by UCLA fans. The USC fan is his usual cool cucumber, relaxed about his place in the world and oblivious to the presence of his rival. The UCLA fan, however, has worked himself into some kind of lather, absolutely frothing three whole weeks before the game against his big brother. This stuff is hilarious . . . . It's like to one side they're just happy with the obligatory win just to shut the other guys up, and on the other side their whole existence is built into the outcome.

USC’s take on the two rivalries is encapsulated by Matt Leinart and fullback Brandon Hancock in today’s Los Angeles Daily News:

Leinart: “We respect Notre Dame. It's a classy rivalry.”

Hancock: “We respect Notre Dame and at the end of the day it's a pretty healthy rivalry. But all bets are off with these pansies. We don't want to just beat them. We want to hurt them. We're not going to call the dogs off in the third or fourth quarter. We want to send a message.”

Music to my ears.

P.S. USC has played Notre Dame 77 times and holds a record of 30-42-5 against the Fighting Irish. USC is 40-27-7 against UCLA.

Reality Check

Here is a link to a video clip from Iranian TV promoting car bombing. (hat tip: HeyDudeWhoa!)

Poll Fiction

Freedom Dip takes exception to USC’s claim to a 2003 national championship in football (hat tip: Burnt Orange Nation):

Let's get something straight with USC and the rest of the college football world.

USC is NOT going for a 3-peat!!! Period.

Who won the national title in 2003? Wasn't it LSU?

If fans say, "Well, USC should have been in the title game." Then I say tough. The BCS is the system agreed upon by the coaches, and the coaches voted the Tigers No. 1 after the Sugar Bowl that year. Ap's vote doesn't even count anymore. BCS is the accepted system for now.

If USC claims half the title in 2003, then Auburn should claim half of the 2004 title.
End of story.

Well, allow me to retort.

Does Tommy Trojan look like a bitch?

I said, DOES TOMMY TROJAN LOOK LIKE A BITCH?

No? Then why are you trying to f*** him like a bitch, Freedom Dip?

Seriously, this is a tired argument and the only people trying to make it are LSU fans and other Trojan-haters. USC’s claim is that it is defending two consecutive AP national titles. Yes, there is a distinction. No, USC does not deny that LSU was a co-national champion in 2003 (I seem to remember some kind of ceremony on the south lawn of the White House with both teams present). Why are some LSU fans so determined to reject USC’s equally legitimate claim?

The NCAA does not recognize an official national champion in Division I-A football. Even the BCS itself concedes that there was a split national title in 2003: “For the only time since the BCS was formed, there is a split national champion.”

SI.com’s Stewart Mandel lays it out in his May 17, 2005 College Football Mailbag:

I'm getting sick and tired of all of you people saying that USC is going for a three-peat. Just being No. 1 in the AP poll does not mean you won the national title. Some people may think this is just an (even after five months) angry Sooners fan ranting, but it's crazy to say the Trojans are going for a three-peat.
--Seth Points, Haskell, Okla.

Tell you what, Seth: We'll stop referring to USC as two-time defending national champion just as soon as Oklahoma renounces its 1950, '55, '56, '74, '75 and '85 national championships. This may come as a shock to you (and to everyone else who has written in with the same complaint), but the Sooners won those titles the same way USC won its 2003 crown: By finishing No. 1 in the AP poll.

You may also be unaware that the crystal trophy handed out at the end of each year's BCS title game is not technically bestowed for winning the game but rather for finishing No. 1 in the coaches' poll (which, conveniently, is required to vote the winner of the game No. 1). So, unless for some reason you think the coaches' poll is somehow more legitimate than the AP poll -- and, as far as I know, they've been considered pretty much equals for about 70 years -- then there's really nothing "crazy" about it.

Let’s not forget that the AP poll was legitimate enough in the eyes of the BCS people that they completely revamped their ranking system after the 2003 season to preclude the recurrence of a unanimous #1-ranked team being excluded from their title game.