Memo to McKnight from USC Trojan Nation: Thanks for Everything, Fumblin' Joe

I will be honest here. I told my buddy Matt after Joe McKnight's man-like performance in the Ohio State game this year that I would never turn on him again or boo him from my season seats. He would perpetually be on my "good" side.

I am here to say I lied, I guess.

Joe McKnight is possibly the most overhyped player in recent USC football history, and that is quite a feat—possibly his greatest feat at USC.

McKnight arrived at USC as the "next Reggie Bush," and don't get me started on how little that actually means.

"SportsCenter Trojan Fans" think Bush was the greatest running back in USC history. Real fans know he was probably not even in the top 10. He was a highlight player that provided explosive plays on an offense that was explosive without him and was able to score at will because of the superior play-calling of Norm Chow.

The fact that an NFL team thought that the "dash to the sideline and hope to outrun the defense around the corner" style that Bush perfected would translate to the NFL is insane, and at least one NFL GM was smart enough to pass on Bush, and I believe that nonetheless got him fired.

I digress. Back to McKnight.

McKnight is not even 50 percent of Bush. And as you can tell, that is not much in my book, anyway. McKnight was never the best back on his team at USC. Before Stafon Johnson ended his own career, he was not even one of the two top running backs on this USC team.

Stafon was the engine to the USC offense. Things took a serious downturn when he was lost for the year. Enter McKnight and his run-from-contact approach to carrying the ball, and USC's offense just fell apart completely.

Sometimes an offense needs an explosive player who can break huge plays. Of course, that is never bad, but it was all too obvious all year that USC was just desperate for McKnight to break a 70-yard touchdown because the offense lacked that from anywhere else. In the end, this begging for breakaways killed the USC offense.

USC was better than most of the teams it played this year but never played like it was. Had the Trojans just run the ball with workhorses Johnson and Allen Bradford (both of which are MUCH better backs than McKnight), they would have controlled a couple of games and pulled off another win or two for sure.

However, USC offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates (who seems to just throw darts at the playbook when calling a game), was just too desperate for some explosiveness, so drive-killer McKnight would get in the game and stall drives with poorly executed runs that would lose yards because he was trying frantically to break the big one.

When USC’s offense was at its best this year (which was not often), it was when big backs Johnson and Bradford were churning up yards seven or eight at a time, and then-freshman quarterback Matt Barkley was able to hit on easy play-action plays that fooled everyone in Trojan Nation into thinking that USC was an offensive powerhouse. 

USC is not an offensive powerhouse and will not be again unless Pete Carroll drops his power trip and hires an O.C. who is skilled, rather than just a guy who is his buddy, or the son of his buddy. USC has zero national championships without Norm Chow, and it will stay that way unless Carroll sheds some ego and shares a little power.

I digress again.

McKnight has some brilliance. This is not disputable. But, at the same time, his flashes of brilliance have been countered in his career by fumbles and lacks of judgment that have been much more detrimental to the Trojans than his brilliant breakaway runs in games that USC wins 35-3 or 52-14.

Fumblin’ Joe fumbled away the Oregon State game in 2008 and, with it, a probable national championship for USC. That feat alone can only be made up for by winning a national championship, which ain’t gonna happen.

McKnight has been hampered by very questionable injuries and has used them as excuses for his woes. Do I even need to bring up the headaches he used to get because he claimed that looking up into the Coliseum lights gave him migraines, and that it may be that he could not play in any night games? Ugh.

Now Fumblin’ Joe has decided that since he could not hold Reggie’s proverbial jock on the field, he will instead try and leave a mark like his idol by darting the program and leaving USC faithful with another pointless NCAA violations magnifying glass on them.

Just what the Trojans needed, too. Their feet were already burning from all the magnifying glasses on them, so let's add one more.

I, as a true Trojan fan, hope that we never see McKnight in that No. 4 jersey ever again. I hope he hops to the NFL and some team is stupid enough to pay him millions with his wannabe-Bush running style (something he's not even good at, anyway).

Good riddance, Joe, and take your girlfriend’s Range Rover with you. We will somehow move on without you.