Ted Miller and T.J. Simers Are Morons: The Response From a USC Alum

I've had it with all of the "Pete Carroll displayed poor sportsmanship" crap.

I've particularly had it with reading the articles being published by the so-called "experts" over at ESPN and with the L.A. Times who don't use any logic to justify their claims.

Their argument is simple:

USC should not have thrown a deep, bomb pass on second down because the game was out of reach for UCLA.

Really?

I'll counter this stupid assertion by looking at Carroll's other options.

He could have, in an effort to continue running the clock, gone to the hand off on second and third downs with the hope of getting ten yards with an offense that had struggled all game.  If that failed, he would have had to punt the ball back to UCLA with about 45 seconds left in the game.

He also could have gone to the intermediate pass and risked having the ball intercepted and returned for a touchdown or batted away incomplete (thereby stopping the clock and saving Neuheisel a timeout).

Either way, he had two plays to get ten yards with an offense that had been largely ineffective.

Now let me just hypothesize that he would have ended up punting the ball on fourth down, and being a smart guy, he directs the punt out of bounds to prevent a return.

In such a situation, UCLA COULD HAVE thrown a deep pass in broken coverage and snuck in for a touchdown or simply gotten a touchdown through some other means.

What would follow would have been an onside kick with 30 seconds remaining, and if UCLA recovered, that would leave them plenty of time to move down the field for another score.

The game would have been tied.

So there goes the theory about the game being out of reach.  It was definitely not over by any means and recovery for UCLA was quite possible, particularly after they duped Carroll into wasting his first down.

What would the Ted Miller and TJ Simers be writing if that happened?

Oh and by the way, a QB kneel usually loses a yard, so he actually had 11 yards to go in 2 plays.

What Pete did was actually brilliant.  Not only was it brilliant, it was epic because it worked.

Pete sent is offense back onto the field and called the one play that no one was expecting.  Damian Williams was wide open, USC scored a touchdown, and then the game was out of reach.  The UCLA coverage breakdown indicated how AWESOME the play call was.

The UCLA response?

To leap-frog USC linemen on the extra point and draw about 8 or 9 penalties in frustration while acting childish and silly.

As for the USC taunting from the sideline, if laughing and jumping up and down in a rivalry game is a problem, maybe UCLA should only play competitive Chess.

I thought it was a football game.

If Carroll's next move had been to put the USC kicking squad out to attempt an onside kick, recover it, and then complete another bomb pass to the endzone, then people might have a little bit of something to complain about.

But he didn't do that.

And my response to that (if he had done it) would be the Barry Switzer philosophy: If they didn't want to lose that badly, they should have gotten better.  We came to play sixty minutes of football.  What were they there to do?

But having that attitude is one of the main reasons a guy like me respected Harbaugh's decision to go for two.  The rules allowed it and he wanted to, so what was the problem?

Ted Miller and TJ Simers live in a sad, strange little world.  Its a world of such unabashed political correctness that it is correct in their minds to give a football back to your rivals in one of you most heated games of the year so that they can have another chance at winning.

Its a world where the man's sport of football is dominated by pundits and critics who live on the sidelines because they aren't good enough to live on the field.

Are you reading this Mr. Miller?  Are you reading this Mr. Simers?  Grow a pair and watch football like a man again.

And next time tell UCLA to play for 60 minutes because I know we will.