Dave C

For the second straight game, the USC Trojans will play OSU, only this time, they’re playing on a Thursday night, on a specialty channel, in front of a signficantly smaller, less curious audience.

The Trojans visit the Oregon St. Beavers of the Pac 10 in a game they’re fully expected to not only win, but win big. And they’ll have to win big.

USC’s BCS fate will depend heavily on how badly they beat their Pac 10 competition. There’s no room for error and there’s no room for three-point squeakers against teams that don’t have nearly as much talent. The Beavers qualify as one of those teams, but those Beavers are the same squad that pulled off what’s known in Corvallis as “The Upset” two years ago, ending USC’s 38-game regular season winning streak.

In retrospect, that game sent shockwaves through the Pac 10 and proved to the nation that USC’s players were actually human. Prior to that game, they hadn’t lost a Pac 10 matchup since the 2003 season, when the Trojans dropped an overtime thriller at Berkeley to Aaron Rodgers and Friends. The Beavers, like the rest of the Pac 10, started treating the USC game like their annual Super Bowl and the Trojans found themselves on the wrong end of the scoreboard on three other occasions.

Do I think the Beavers will win tonight? No. Do I think it will be close? No. Do my predictions matter? No, because I also didn’t think the Trojans would lose at home to Stanford last year! Sure, this may be a better Trojan team, especially defensively, than what USC put on the field in 2007, but college football is known for upsets, even when the odds are heavily stacked in one team’s favor.

The bottom line is USC can’t take this team for granted. Jacquizz Rodgers has done a fine job out of the backfield and is looking more and more like the back the Beavers had in Steven Jackson back in 2001. Mike Riley will do whatever he can to try to establish Rodgers early to best defend the Trojans offense by keeping them off the field.

In any event, USC has everything to lose in this game and I’m sure Pete Carroll knows that. If they win big, the pollsters and media will laugh it off saying “It’s only Oregon St.” If they win by a close margin, those same people won’t credit Riley for solid game-planning but will say USC is flawed. If they lose, their season comes to a grinding halt.

And that’s how it’s going to be for USC until their season finale in Pasadena against UCLA.

Pressure much?

DC

Dave C

I originally intended on breaking down the Oregon St. Beavers today as they prepare for their toughest test of the year against the top-ranked USC Trojans. However, recent e-mails and expert columns have prompted me to write a plea to anyone who is involved in selecting the top two teams in the country when the 2008 regular season comes to an end.

Background

Barring a monumental upset, the Trojans will finish this regular season with a perfect 12-0 record. Their conference opponents are considerably weaker than Oklahoma’s foes in the Big 12 (Texas, Missouri) as well as whoever comes out of the SEC. There is rumored concern that we could be headed for another BCS disaster-a la-2004, when USC, Oklahoma and Auburn all finished their regular seasons with perfect records and only the Trojans and Sooners ended up in the Orange Bowl. In reality, I don’t expect the SEC champion to finish the regular season with an unblemished record again, but it could happen so let’s for argument’s sake say it does.

The experts are saying they wouldn’t be able to leave out Oklahoma or an SEC team with a perfect record from the BCS Title game, despite the fact that the consensus is that this USC team is better than its two championship squads from earlier in the decade. They say USC’s schedule in the “Slack 10″ will ultimately hurt them, even if they rout their opponents in the same manner that they annihilated the Buckeyes on Sept. 13. Ultimately, USC might get screwed just because the people who live on the left coast have more important things to worry about than football 24/7. The Trojans, in other words, are geographically undesirable, compared with the ole south and the heartland.

Reality

Under no circumstance am I going to argue the obvious. The Big 12 Conference and Southeastern Conference have stronger teams than the Pacfic 10. That is a fact and it was confirmed when Georgia walked into the blistering heat of Tempe, AZ and humiliated the Sun Devils.

Here’s another fact, though. Up until Sept. 13, the pollsters had Ohio St. ranked 5th in the country. Prior to that day, those same pollsters had Ohio St. ranked as high as first in several polls. The USC Trojans, knowing this, had the guts to schedule the Buckeyes as one of their non-conference games. They game-planned, executed and ultimately, whipped the Bucks. Ironically, the post-game chatter was more about how over-rated OSU was than how dominant USC was. Their 35-3 win was more of an afterthought as the “experts” insisted that the Buckeyes never deserved the high ranking to begin with.

Fact #2: In 2003, the USC Trojans finished the regular season ranked #1 in both the AP and coaches poll, yet the BCS selected LSU and Oklahoma as its teams for the championship game, citing the weak schedule as its reason for dropping USC to 3rd in the BCS standings. USC was relegated to the Rose Bowl, blasted Michigan and earned a split of the national championship, while the National Chumps, the Oklahoma Sooners, were beaten by LSU. Pete Carroll tried to hide his disappointment with the selection to this game by saying that the only thing the Trojans can control is winning the Pac 10 and playing in the Rose Bowl. While this is true, I’m sure he would have liked a chance to play LSU and I think LSU would have loved a shot at USC that year.

Fact #3: In 2004, USC, Oklahoma and Auburn all finished the season undefeated, but since USC and OU opened the season ranked first and second respectively in the polls and never lost, they retained their rankings and got the invite to the Orange Bowl, while Auburn was relegated to New Orleans. Again, those National Chumps, the OU Sooners, were destroyed on the national stage and Auburn of the SEC (despite running the table in that nightmare of a conference) was left on the outside looking in.

Theory

In retrospect, USC (Pac 10) was screwed in 2003, Auburn (SEC) was screwed in 2004 and Oklahoma (Big 12) was destroyed in both of those seasons! In a perfect world, the fair matchup would be USC and the SEC champion in the BCS Title Game if they, and the Sooners go undefeated this year. The Sooners had two tries in this decade and blew it both times. The 2004 and 2005 ultimate revenge bowls can all be settled in one, tempered-filled evening in South Florida.

To those who would use the Pac 10’s weaknesses as a reason to leave out USC, consider the fact that USC has owned its nonconference opponents since 2003 (except for that one loss to Texas in the 2005 Rose Bowl — a game that was decided on the final drive). They’ve beaten Auburn, Notre Dame, Michigan, Virginia Tech, BYU, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Virginia and Ohio St. Find me an SEC or Big 12 school that has stepped it up and played nonconference opponents like that in the past five years. I dare you. You won’t find it.

Conclusion

A pollster who has the audacity to knock USC because its conference doesn’t match up to the others doesn’t understand college football. If they run the table, they deserve to be there. They’ll even win with style points.

FIGHT ON!!

Dave C

On Thursday night, the unanimous number-1 USC Trojans begin conference play against Pacific 10 opponents who have failed to live up to expectations thus far. The conference that began with four teams in the top 25 has been reduced to just number-1 USC in the AP Poll, while Oregon holds the 22nd spot in the Coaches Poll, despite losing at home to Boise St. last week.

To say that the weakness of the Pac-10 favors USC is an understatement, especially considering their “tougher” conference games (Oregon, California, ASU) will be played at the Coliseum.

But since when has conventional wisdom ever held true in college football!

Two years ago, the #2 USC Trojans were undefeated on Oct. 28, heading to Corvallis, Oregon to take on the unranked, three-loss Beavers. The Trojans were not only undefeated, but had won 38 consecutive regular season games and 27 straight games against Pac 10 teams. They looked poised to head to a third straight BCS Championship Game.

Things didn’t go as planned. The Beavers took an early lead and USC was forced to try and come back from down 33-17 in the 4th quarter. A USC touchdown and two-point conversion cut that lead to 33-25 and a late TD cut the lead to 33-31. That’s as close as USC would come though, as Jeff Van Orsow batted down John David Booty’s two-point conversion pass and the Beavers upset the conference bullies.

Looking back at that gigantic upset, I still think USC was prepared heading into that game. They executed on offense and special teams and played fairly well on defense. The difference was the Beavers treated this game like it was their BCS Title Game. They pulled out all the stops and took down the mighty Trojans.

This is the mentality that each Pac 10 team brings in their annual games against the Men of Troy. And it’s a smart mentality because in all likelihood, they won’t play a tougher team than USC.

These USC Trojans have been labelled by more than one expert as the best team of the Pete Carroll era. That’s a bold statement for a team that has only won two games - one against unranked Virginia, the other against overrated Ohio St. Granted they’ve annihilated both the Cavaliers and Buckeyes, but as far as I’m concerned, Carroll’s best team is still the 2004 Trojans — the team that went undefeated and obliterated Oklahoma in the championship game (ironically, the Sooners are number two again…). As good as quarterback Mark Sanchez has been, he’ll be the first to tell you that he hasn’t accomplished a thing yet. If it were up to him, he’d like to one-up Matt Leinart and not only go undefeated and win an outright title, but destroy everyone along the way. What he does realize, however, is teams like the Oregon St. Beavers will not just crown USC. They’re conference foes, not doormats.

More on the Beavers tomorrow.

FIGHT ON!!

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Meanwhile, the Trojans will be without their top coverman for the next few weeks. Shareece Wright suffered a hairline fracture in his vertebrae. Head Coach Pete Carroll called the incident unfortunate and expects Wright’s recovery to be “long.” Josh Pinkard will start in his place.