USC Fans: TGIF (Thank God It's FOOTBALL) Trojan Style!

Whew!  It’s finally over.  The worst offseason in the storied history of USC football has finally come to an end.

Thank God!  Thank Allah!  Thank the Buddha!  Thank your lucky stars!  And no thanks to Reggie Bush, Paul Dee, or the NCAA.

At least for this year, we can put the sanctions, the transfers, and the releases from scholarships behind us and move on to what all of us want to see and hear—Trojan football!

It’s that wonderful, mystical time of year when all 119 Division I teams are undefeated, and expectations are high and all our worries and cares seem to fade at least until our favorite team suffers its first defeat.

For USC fans, the hope is this euphoria will last through all 13 games in pursuit of that quest which has eluded us since 2004—the perfect season.

I know most of us USC fans have felt robbed so far this year. 

It hasn’t been like the Pete Carroll era when you could just walk up to the doors of Howard Jones field and enter the magic kingdom of college football for an up-close, first-hand look at your Trojans competing for playing time.

You could hear the pads crunching, the bodies banging, the coaches yelling.  You could walk up to your favorite player afterward and get an autograph or wish him luck at the next level.

Those days are gone forever thanks to Paul Dee and the NCAA.

This year, we had to suffer through spring practice and fall camp without even a glimpse of our favorite players.  We had to depend on newspaper and fan site reports for their meager tidbits to quench our hunger for how the team was progressing under the new coaching staff.

And as horrible as it has been for us, think how worse it has been for the players, themselves.  They haven’t even been allowed to hit one another less the ranks be depleted even more than they were by the transfers and releases.

But now we finally get to see for ourselves how those touch football scrimmages and the extra sessions in the weight room and in position meetings have shaped up our guys mentally and physically.

We get to see how they are ready to bust out and hit someone not wearing a cardinal and gold jersey.  We get to see how the sanctions have honed this team into an Us Against the World gridiron army.

At last, this Thursday night from Hawaii, we get to see them block and tackle for real.  We get to see and hear them smash into their opponents and show the college football world that USC will not lay down and die no matter what.

Yes, we get to see all that finally this Thursday night!

Uh…that is unless you are a Time Warner cable customer like I am.  Thanks to the Magic Kingdom that runs ABC and the Evil Four Letter Network, my magic kingdom of Trojan Football could be blacked out.

Yes, I know!  I have choices.  And one of them will be to head to a nearby bistro that has Direct TV.  The other will be never to watch a Disney movie ever again.

Gosh!  Whoever thought Mickey Mouse could be as mean and despicable as Paul Dee?