Notre Dame vs. USC: Is Matt Barkley in a Position to Talk Trash?

The USC Trojans won last week over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish by a score of 31-17 and ever since they have been running the mouth.

Head coach Lane Kiffin said that Notre Dame was treating the game like it was their Super Bowl and was "shocked" that Notre Dame didn't use any timeouts towards the end of the game.

Well, with all of the bickering going on from USC, you'd think they're the ones that are a little excited about the victory. It seems like the Trojans are the ones that took this game a little more seriously than it really was.

"At the end there, when they didn't call those timeouts, they just quit," USC linebacker Chris Galippo said Saturday. "And that's what Notre Dame football's about. They're not anything like USC."

Galippo is absolutely right, Notre Dame is nothing like USC. You Google USC football and all of their rule-breaking infractions and players that have academic problems pop up. Google Notre Dame and the news at least has to do with the football program.

The trash talking gets even better as quarterback Matt Barkley felt the need to chime in.

"I would agree with that," Barkley said on Monday during an interview with Max Kellerman and Marcellus Wiley on 710 ESPN. "I was shocked that they didn't use the (fourth-quarter) timeouts because we got on the field with...about seven minutes left, and I thought they were planning on stopping us and saving their timeouts for the end when they had the ball."

USC had a 31-17 lead and the ball with a little over six minutes left. It was apparent that the Irish couldn't stop the Trojans' running game as they totaled over 200 yards on the ground. There's really no point in calling timeouts in that situation.

If your team is in no position to get the ball back, there is no point in calling a timeout.

He added: "It seemed from our sideline and our perspective that they did give up. It seemed uncharacteristic of Notre Dame. I wouldn't have wanted to have been on that sideline."

It's kind of funny how Barkley comes out and talks about giving up because in last year's loss against Notre Dame, he was on the sideline with an injury. Just to come back and play the next week against UCLA. I guess he gave up in that game.

Or what about in 2009 when he suffered a shoulder injury against Ohio State and missed next week's loss against Washington? Barkley came back the very next week against Washington State like nothing happened.

He must have quit.

It's also funny that Barkley is doing the trash talking when he's thrown an interception to every two touchdown passes throughout his career.

Barkley must think he's in the same class as Carson Palmer or Matt Leinart, but he's not. Just because you play quarterback for USC doesn't mean you're automatically a good quarterback. Just because you put an apron on doesn't make you a chef.

He has bust written all over him and hasn't really impressed anybody in the three years he's been under center.

I guess everything is good now in Trojan land, but I didn't hear much talking when they barely beat Minnesota and Utah. They were really quiet when Arizona State used them to mop the floor.

We'll see how much talking there is next week when they play Stanford or in a few weeks when they matchup against Oregon.

Right now, those two teams are on another level than this USC team is.

We could just say they are the better team or we can just always accuse the losing team of quitting.

Randy Chambers is a B/R Featured Columnist that covers College Football and the NFL. You can contact him @Randy_Chambers or [e-mail]

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