Recalibrate?

It might be time to revise my expectations for USC football - for this season, obviously, but maybe also for the program itself. The last time I went through such a transition was in 2003 when the Trojans followed an outstanding season (11-2, Orange Bowl victory over Iowa, Carson Palmer’s Heisman) with a national championship. I started to believe that BCS bowl berths would be commonplace and national championships not infrequent.

Trojan fans have been spoiled by an unprecedented level of success over the last five years or so. We have come to expect that kind of success every year, and we have been lulled into believing that Pete Carroll has installed a system at USC that will perpetuate this success as long as Carroll remains the head coach. However, the loss to Stanford raises serious questions about this perception. Is USC returning to a more normal state for modern college football programs? Was this game the continuation of a negative trend that started with the 2006 Rose Bowl (Texas 41 – USC 38 if anyone needs a reminder), a trend characterized by losing to three unranked Pac-10 teams in less than a year, a trend in which last year’s dominating Rose Bowl victory over Michigan is an anomalous blip? Or, is USC football still on an elevated plateau with the loss to Stanford as a rare exception? I hope for the latter, but I fear the former.

The fact is there is no objective evidence this year’s team is any better than average, even though they have more talent than any other team in the country. USC has beaten four teams with a combined record of 9-14 (Idaho is 1-5; Nebraska is 4-2, barely beat Ball St., and got blown out by Missouri; Washington St. is 2-4; and Washington is 2-3) and lost to Stanford with its 2-3 record. It is unreasonable to expect the Trojans to never lose. It is not unreasonable, however, to expect the Trojans never to lose at home against a team the caliber of Stanford.

Carroll and the rest of the USC coaching staff have received excessive praise for reviving a slumbering program and building it into the dominant program of the decade. It was deserved. However, the fire and intensity with which Trojan teams customarily played during their amazing four-year run from 2002-2005 has only been evident sporadically since then. The extreme listlessness and total lack of intensity the Trojans displayed last Saturday against Stanford is impossible for me to fathom. Has all the success in the recent past led to arrogance and complacency on the coaching staff? It has sure looked that way lately. Hopefully, this loss is just what the team needed to prompt some recalibration of its own.

It’s time for the coaches to really earn their pay. Yes, Carroll is a recruiting fiend, but if this game proves anything, it’s that vastly superior talent does not guarantee wins. Apparently the Washington game wasn’t enough proof for the players that they have to do more than just show up to win, and for the coaches that they have to take every opponent seriously. Carroll has not had a Trojan team in this situation before. This team could feasibly self-destruct and limp through the rest of the season with 4 or 5 more losses (if Stanford can beat USC at home, then anybody can beat them). This team, players and coaches, needs to use this loss as a wake-up call to reevaluate, refocus, and rededicate to playing and coaching football like Trojan fans have come to expect. If that doesn’t happen, I will start having doubts about the health of the USC football program. Which will it be? Prove that the Stanford game was a fluke and USC still sets the bar for college football excellence!

However the rest of the season goes, it just got a lot more interesting, and I’ll be watching just as closely and enthusiastically as ever.

Fight On!

USC-UW

I knew our seats were probably nosebleed-inducing, but was surprised (and out of breath) to find they were in the absolute top row.


Our view of the field standing up. The support post did not actually obstruct our view when sitting.


Looking east over Lake Washington toward the Cascade Mountains. The mountains are not visible due to the weather.


Second quarter

Even though we were sitting in the top row, it was a great vantage point and we still had a good view of the action.


Fourth quarter. This play was Jake Locker's one-yard sneak for the Huskies' last touchdown of the game. The visitors' section, Spirit of Troy, and contingent of four Song Girls are in the background.

You probably can’t make out the numbers on the board displaying team statistics near the top of the above photo. This was one of the last plays of the game, so they should read something pretty close to: Huskies 190 total yards (100 rushing/90 passing); Trojans 460 total yards (224 rushing, 236 passing). Yeah, USC dominated the game statistically. So why was the final score so close? Trojan mistakes from start to finish.

USC committed three turnovers, two of which led directly to Husky touchdowns (one 14 yard drive after a fumbled snap and one pick-six). A blocked punt and return to the USC nine yard-line led to the third Husky touchdown. UW’s field goal concluded a 10-play, 22 yard drive that was jumpstarted by a 15-yard penalty for interfering with the punt receiver and extended by two 15-yard pass interference calls. USC was penalized for 161 yards and five of the Huskies 15 first downs were due to penalties.

That is the litany of negatives, aside from Booty’s inconsistency. The positives? Well, the last time USC made this many mistakes, in Corvallis in 2006, they dropped their first Pac-10 game in three years. The fact that the Trojans escaped Husky Stadium with a road win after that much sloppy and mentally-deficient play can be thought of as a positive. All the credit goes to the defense, which was truly dominant. UW’s first drive of the game was its longest at 67 yards, but ended with a Thomas Williams interception. Only one other Husky drive was longer than 30 yards.

This week’s Stanford game arrives at a fortuitous time. USC has suffered a rash of injuries. Hopefully, the next couple of games will give LB Brian Cushing, LB Clay Matthews (Cushing’s back-up), C Kristofer O’Dowd, RG Chilo Rachal, OG Alatini Malu (Rachal’s back-up), CB Cary Harris, CB Shareece Wright (Harris’s back-up), and TB Stafon Johnson time to rest and heal before the meat of the schedule begins on October 27.

UW Tailgating Photos

Cat and I flew to Seattle early Saturday morning for the USC-UW game. We landed at noon, rented a car, and drove straight to the U District. After parking north of campus, we met up with my cousins who are sophomores at UW for a few hours of tailgating with another cousin, who is a USC fan. I tailgated with Anne at the last USC game I attended in person.


Anne, Cat, and Marnie

Marnie is not actually a USC fan; she apparently lost a bet to Anne the previous weekend when USC played Washington State.


Cat was definitely the MVP of our mixed Husky-Trojan flip cup competition.


Husky Stadium, north side

The clouds over Husky Stadium looked ominous, foreshadowing the mistake-riddled play of the Trojans throughout the game.


Our tailgate hosts: Zach and Anne, Marnie and her husband.

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.

Not Nervous

I'm at a loss. I haven't really felt nervous the past month and today is no different. Last year at this time I could hardly contain my anxiety. This is especially strange when contrasted with how I felt before some of this season's regular season games, especially Oregon, Cal, and especially Notre Dame and fUCLA. Like I said, I can't explain it.

I'm wearing the same shirt I wore last year, just in case.

Welsh Rugby Fan Cuts Off Sack

My thoughts after reading this story:

• Maybe deals like this only help your team if God knows you're actually willing to hold up your end of the bargain.
• This guy is clearly . . . nuts, but I have to give him his due. I mean, people say stupid shit like that all the time, but how many people actually have the . . . balls to follow through.
• No wonder the Welsh population growth rate is four times less than the world population growth rate. Perhaps the Welsh should start rooting against their national rugby team. Or just ban wire cutters.
• No doubt this guy has the world's highest pain threshold, which reminds me of an anecdote about a friend's roommate (yes, I have met the roommate and verified the veracity of the story): So, the roommate is riding his freestyle bike at a terrain park when he slips off the pedals and racks himself on the frame. It hurts. However, he continues with this activity until he notices some blood. Being of sounder mind than the Welsh rugby fan, he decides it is time to go home. He rides his bike several miles back to my friend's house. There, he relaxes on the couch watching TV. It becomes apparent everything is not right, so his girlfriend convinces him to go to the hospital. He ends up receiving stitches at the ER to sew up his scrotum. Men know that there is no worse pain, qualitatively speaking, than getting hit in the balls. When I heard this story I was in absolute awe that my friend's roommate was able to function at all after this incident.

Don't Panic

I finally added a subtitle to the blog. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference will immediately be clear to fans of Douglas Adams. No, you won’t see me at a Hitchhiker’s Guide convention with a prosthetic second head and a fish stuffed in my ear, but I am a big fan of the books. I read them (the first four, anyway) during elementary school, and they surely influenced my sense of humor and contributed to my appreciation of British comedy.

Click this link to play the BBC’s 20th Anniversary Edition of Infocom’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – The Adventure Game. I remember playing the original version of this game on my family’s Apple IIe.

In case you were wondering, I usually know where my towel is.

League Champs!

My soccer team, Postgame FC, clinched first place in the CCSL Premier Division yesterday morning with a 3 - 1 win over Booters FC. We will be the #1 seed in the play-offs, which begin in two weeks against a semifinal opponent TBD. This was a significant achievement for our team, which has never finished this high in Premier Div. league play. I've only been with the team for two years, but according to the old-timers, Postgame FC started out five or six years ago at the bottom of the bottom division in the league (hence the team name; post-game apparently being the only time the team could post impressive performances).

This result definitely made up for having to get up at 6:30 on a Sunday morning for our 8:00 game.

Homecoming Photos

Here are some pictures from last week's Homecoming game against Wazzu.


First stop was my cousin's tailgate. Her husband is the one in the Leinart jersey (lucky bugger is a current student at USC).

Pre-game festivities. (photo courtesy of Boomer)

Update: EDSBS was impressed, too.


This band rocks!


Awesome!




My boys, post-game and post-sober.

USC-Wazzu

55-13. This may have been the most boring 50+ point performance of the year. That's a good thing. I grew up in southeastern Washington (in fact, I had multiple youth track meets at WSU) and this one's always nice to win so I don't have to worry about folks back home giving me crap (or more accurately, so I can wear USC apparel around at Christmas with a smirk on my face).

It was my pleasure to attend this game, my first of the season (it was Homecoming). The atmosphere was awesome and I'm very jealous of my friends in L.A. who have season tickets. I'll have to make a habit of weekenders like this.

USC-ND

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a USC Trojans fan – I have been since my freshman year, the fall ’92 season.  That means I had the good fortune to experience the worst decade of USC football in the last 40 or 50 years.  I say good fortune because now I understand how special this current run is.  Anyway . . . .

USC’s last loss was to Cal on September 27, 2003.  I remember a sense of dread building as that game wore on; I just knew we were going to lose (to the annoyance of those around me watching the game).  I haven’t experienced that feeling since.  If memory serves, that Cal game was USC’s only close game in 2003.  There were a number of relatively close games in 2004, but only one was in doubt in the final moments.  This year’s game in South Bend was easily USC’s closest and hardest fought game during the current 28-game winning streak.  Still, even at 4th and 9 from the USC 26 with 1:32 to go, I wasn’t panicking.  Don’t get me wrong, I was realistic about the Trojan’s chances at that point, but I hadn’t lost hope.  As soon as Leinart completed that 61-yard reception to Jarrett, I knew we were going to win.

For me, the most impressive thing about USC football over the past 2+ years has been their character; they’re confident, they never give up, and given the opportunity to seize victory, you can be sure they will take it.

By the way, check out these must-see videos of the last moments of the USC-ND game, recorded and shared by the Irish Trojan.  They almost brought tears to my eyes.  Amazing.

Go

The title of this blog is derived from my high school nickname. Nearly all of my friends, the soccer team, and at least two-thirds of the student body referred to me as "Crazy". I'm not sure I earned that moniker, but that's what they called me nonetheless.

One of our graduation-related events was a dinner with seniors and their parents. The students who organized and MC'd the event came up with dozens of original "awards" for the seniors. These weren't voted on like those traditional yearbook designations, "Most Likely to Succeed", "Class Clown", "Most Athletic", etc.; they were just thought up to highlight the unique characteristics of some of the graduates. I was set to attend USC in the fall, which was rare for our high school in eastern Washington State, so I was given the "Crazy Trojan Award".

Nobody has called me "Crazy" since then, except when I run into high school classmates from time to time. I find it amusing.