USC’s all –too predictable loss to Oregon State last night was a real shock to the casual college football fan. But for anybody outside of the Jonestown-like environs of Bristol, Connecticut, it was just the latest laughable failure of The Dynasty That Never Was.
Watching the Paper Trojans sleep walk through another loss to a conference team with a losing record, was just more evidence that not only is USC nowhere near the top of the college football world, they will be fortunate to finish atop their own conference, the pitiful PAC-10.
With mighty Stanford and Wazoo right around the corner, this could be a long season for the self-anointed kings of college football.
Since 2003, when USC fans stuck their fingers in their ears and said “la- la- la –la- la- la" every time the letters LSU were used in a sentence, USC fans have been in a delusional haze, wherein their football supremacy is taken as an article of faith, damn the contradictory evidence. The college football chattering class, lead by cheerleaders like Mark May, Craig James and Lee Corso act moderately annoyed when confronted with evidence to the contrary.
Meanwhile since USC won its last National Championship, LSU has quietly won its second BCS championship, Florida and Texas the others. Many other teams, Georgia, Missouri, and Alabama among them, appear to be ascending. Watch the brawl this Saturday between the Georgia Bulldogs and the fighting Gumps of Alabama if you really want to see college football at its most urgent and competitive.
Also prepare yourself for the bone-headed narrative that will soon be presented by the football talking heads. It goes like this:
Oregon State is really pretty good, better than Stanford was last year. Heck, they might win nine games. Plus, USC plays Notre Dame and that is always a big game. Why, the 2005 USC v. Notre Dame game might have been the best in history. It’s true, I heard Tony Kornheiser say it and he once actually went to a college football game, although I think that was probably Hofstra and Stony Brook. And don’t forget, they lost first, before anybody else. So they still have a shot at the BCS championship, because everybody is going to lose a game. Heck a one-loss USC team is better than a one-loss Big 12 team anytime. So really, nothing actually happened last night, it was a non -event. In fact, I can’t even locate Corvallis with my GPS.
Back in the real world however, we are left with a clear vision of this USC program. They consistently lose to a strawberry cupcake. They unmercifully pound down-on-their-luck big-name teams that were good twenty years ago. They get it together at season’s end and beat an over-matched Big 10 team in the Rose Bowl.
Finally, twenty “experts” with microphones and word processors trip over each other in their rush to explain to us poor, uneducated rubes in flyover country that USC is really the best team, everybody knows that. Maybe the best team in the history of college football. They could’ve taken Stalingrad in twenty days, and they shoot lightning bolts out of their fingers and all the rest…
Being potentially the best program in arguably the seventh best conference in college football just isn’t what it used to be. Maybe they should join a conference that they can more easily dominate, say, maybe the Mountain West. Or then again, maybe that, too, is a bad idea. After all, isn't the PAC-10 zero for five against the brutish behemoths of that conference this year.
2 comments Last one added 9 months ago — Leave a Comment
J. Michael Morris 9 months ago
The last sentence was the most acurate one, without the sarcasm. But LSU wouldn't know because they will never schedule a MWC team.
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Scott Redlich 9 months ago
True enough. LSU is too busy with Auburn, Bama, Georgia and Florida. Sometimes LSU plays creampuffs like Louisiana Tech. And LSU endures criticism for such matchups. Meanwhile USC schedules tough teams like Fresno State. And then La. Tech plays Fresno State and waxes them the week after they take USC to the wire. See how it works ?
Those SEC teams are all in the Top 10. And if I recall correctly, LSU regularly dispatches with PAC-10 teams- in the last five years they have beaten Arizona twice, Arizona State once, Oregon State once, and have UW scheduled in Seattle next year. I guess you could say LSU looks to the PAC-10 for their rent-a-wins.
LSU plays an infinitely harder conference schedule and USC plays a marginally harder out of conference schedule. By my estimation USC plays one quality opponent (OSU) this year. Last year they had none. The year before that they had one. Seriously, if USC wants to hang their hat on quality out of conference opponents, they might want to schedule more than two of them in three years.
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