USC Football Pre-Game: Customer Service

As you know, we aim to please here. That is, we aim to please USC Football fans here. But if others like to read Displaced posts that’s fine, too. Even ugla and Domer fans are welcome. It’s all good.

If anyone wants to leave a comment about anything written here, that’s all good, too. There have been a few of those recently, some that are complimentary, some not so much. Supposedly, research has shown that for every comment received, there are at least 25 other people who feel the same way.

I’m not sure this principle actually applies here, since we already know there are thousands of Trojan fans who would agree with most, if not all Displaced posts – whether they actually read them or not. And conversely, we know there are thousands of ugla and Domer fans who would disagree with much of what’s written here. However, this idea might make sense when taking into account the ability (read: knowledge and intelligence) of those ugla and Domer fans who take the time to leave comments on this blog.

For instance, it might be tough to find 25 Domers who are capable of engaging in knowledgeable debate about USC vs. ND issues, without inadvertently exemplifying the various elements of the Domer Mind we like to expose.

A case in point is this comment left by “Anonymous” on a Displaced post from Wednesday about statements Charlie Weis made at his weekly press conference:

You obviously dislike the Irish, almost as much as Gallo. Can't quite understand the venom...other than the fact that ND stands for everything that USC does not - such as football players that actually graduate. Bottom line is you're simply jealous that USC cannot match ND in any category and therefore have no other resort than to cut them down. Go to church and beg God for mercy!

Now, I’m a relatively inexperienced blogger, so please excuse me if posting a reader’s comment from another post isn't kosher. Either way, here’s my response:

Anonymous,

To the contrary, I have much respect for the “Irish.” Real USC Football fans feel the same way. We have respect for the greatest intersectional rivalry in college sports. We also have respect for the fact that USC victories over the Irish help add to our national stature, not to mention our Heisman Trophy collection. (Heisman Trophies, by the way, are one of several categories in which we do, in fact, match: USC 7, ND 7. Please get your facts straight.)

However, as a Trojan alum and fan, I enjoy pointing out examples that illustrate the dichotomy between the myth that Domers attempt to perpetuate and reality. It’s all just for fun and a way to exercise our brains while enjoying USC Football. It’s really not life or death. No reason to pull your God into it. I would hope He has other, more important things to worry about.

Still, if you don’t like what I post here, and you really want to make an impression on me, then come with a point of view supported by facts that refute what I write. At the very least, give us something more entertaining, if not intelligent, than the weak effort you’ve provided this time. Most of all, write something that doesn’t prove me right!

I know you don’t quite understand this, Anonymous. But it’s okay if you don’t get it. Trojan fans who read this blog understand, and that’s all that matters.

God bless you.
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Thursday Twirl III

For the third straight Thursday in a row, we’re taking a Twirl. Again, no promises on how long we can keep this up, but since the demand has been so great, the request for repeated encores so overwhelming, we feel compelled to deliver. But first, we must digress …

What’s with all these southern schools calling themselves Tigers? A quick search of the Google, turned up this list of college nicknames, which shows that more than 45 schools are Tigers, no less than half of which are in the south. This includes Clemson, Memphis and even two in one conference: LSU and Auburn of the creatively challenged SEC. Maybe this is part of that population distribution thing, but it does make you wonder why so many schools fancy themselves as Tigers. Of course, USC Trojans know the story behind our nickname.

Another less trivial question: Where does Lou Holtz get his information? It seems as though Holtz’s brain is shoved pretty far up the Axis of East Coast Bias. Reading through last week’s ESPN The Magazine, a piece on college football’s overrated players included this curious quote from the lispy one.

Nobody’s more underrated than USC’s Rey Maualuga. He’s the next great Trojans linebacker – very physical, always lining up big hits. He reminds me of A.J. Hawk. Maualuga’s athletic ability is similar to Hawk’s, but the infectiousness of his free spirit make him even more valuable to his team.

Interesting how everyone in the west knows that Rey is the next Junior Seau, but Lou has no clue. Granted, Maualuga may also be known for being required to attend anger management classes, but he’s been getting more hype than anyone on USC’s defense. This includes accolades from various places in the blogosphere, among the voters of the Butkus Award, and in the preview issue of ESPN The Magazine, no less. In fact, at least some of those out west – including Pete Carroll, apparently – think Keith Rivers has performed best on defense so far this season.

Obviously, Holtz has been spending too much time with Beano Cook. Which reminds me …

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Weis Gets His Answers

It’s great when we encounter intelligent life out on the internets, and it’s even better when that intelligence comes from our “Fourth Branch” of government. We have found writers that we like before, but this DJ Gallo dude deserves some serious Displaced props.

In a recent espn.com Page 2 piece, Gallo rips into Charlie Weis like an Islandic whaler, taking the “Irish” coach to task for opening his mouth about the BCS rankings. The set-up piece is AP’s coverage of Weis’s Tuesday press conference, which showed that Weis may be less of a genius than he is a southern prophet. Let’s roll the tape (or just the AP coverage, if you’re lacking high bandwidth to see ESPN’s video) …

Charlie Weis isn't sure Notre Dame is a top 10-caliber team.

He's convinced, though, the 11th-ranked Fighting Irish didn't deserve to be jumped in the polls and the Bowl Championship Series Standings after a last-minute win over UCLA.
"One of the teams [Tennessee] that jumped us had the same game that we had. They're down, they're playing at home and they win by a field goal," Weis said Tuesday.

"Another team [Florida] that jumped us wasn't even playing. They were home eating cheeseburgers and they end up jumping us. That befuddles me."

Clemson jumped ahead of Notre Dame in The Associated Press Top 25 poll with a 31-7 victory over Georgia Tech, a team the Irish struggled to beat 14-10 in the season opener. The Irish dropped two spots to No. 10 in the coaches' poll after Florida, which had a bye, and Tennessee, which came back from seven points down to beat Alabama 16-13 with a touchdown with 3:28 left, moved ahead of the Irish.

Texas, which needed a 22-yard field goal to beat Nebraska 22-20 with 23 seconds left, passed the Irish in the BCS standings, dropping the Irish to No. 9.

"Tell me how that works?" Weis said. "Maybe I'm just stupid.”

Wow. Talk about putting himself on a huge tee for us non-believers to take a swing. Of course, any tee that would fit Weis would have to be huge given his girth, but he propped himself up pretty good nonetheless. Keeping with this golf metaphor, we’ll “let the big dog eat” …

Wrote Gallo:

Hey, care to know what befuddles me, Charlie? How the head coach of Notre Dame, a program which has consistently been overrated and ranked higher than it deserved to be for more than a decade -- and for most of the past century -- has the audacity to complain about polls. I mean … wow! That more than befuddles me.

And do you want to know what else befuddles me? How you were able to dupe Notre Dame into giving you a 10-year contract worth nearly $40 million after starting your career 5-2 without a single win against a team that finished the season ranked in the Top 25. That's a bit befuddling. As is the fact that you are regarded as some sort of football god even though the next good team your Fighting Irish beat will be the first. In your tenure you have played three good teams (so much for the perception that Notre Dame plays a brutal schedule, huh?): USC last October, Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl and Michigan five weeks ago. You were blown out in two of those three games. But, yeah, you almost beat USC. Congratulations. Heck of a moral victory there. That's exactly why you were hired. For moral victories.

Let's see … what else befuddles me? Oh, yeah: How you claim to hold everything about Notre Dame sacred, yet spend every Saturday afternoon on the sideline dropping F-bombs every other word and cussing out officials, all in the shadow of "Touchdown Jesus" and with a priest standing a few yards away. Sure, that's being a bit picky, I suppose, but I'm #^&*ing befuddled by it nonetheless.

Excellent. I just love how Gallo calls out multiple subjects here, including the Domer Hype Machine, the Domer desperation that drove Weis’s ludicrous contract extension, and the hyprocrisy of the Domer holier-than-thou attitude. Gallow goes on to dress Weis down – which we know takes tremendous effort given that Weis’s pants are as big as my pool cover – for his Bizarro World view of his team’s “accomplishments” and its “thrilling” win over ugla. Next, Gallo answers both of Weis’s questions directly …

Voters watch college football games and then at the end of every weekend rank the teams from best to worst as they see fit. Based on this week's polls, the average voter thinks your team is currently no better than 10th or 11th. Understand how it works? It's really quite simple. And, in all honesty, Notre Dame probably is not even deserving of being that high, but the polls are still adjusting to having your team ranked way too high to start the season -- which is sort of a rankings tradition.

And one more thing, since you asked -- no, you're not stupid. But you know you're not stupid. You just think everyone else is. That's why you are so incredibly condescending when you speak. It's part of your "charm."

Awesome! Again, exposing the holier-than-thou Domer Mind. Gallo finishes strong …

Yes, Charlie, I'd say there's a chance [for ND to play for the national championship]. I mean, geez, look at your schedule over the next month: at Navy, home versus North Carolina, at Air Force and home against Army. And maybe if you're lucky, you can even fit Temple in there somewhere on a Wednesday. So you should easily get through your next four games and be 10-1 and right in the thick of the national title hunt, with the voters leaving love letters outside your door again.

But wait … what's that I see at the end of your Division I-AA-esque stretch of games? Oooh, bummer. A game against USC. And on the road to boot. Too bad. Oh well -- so maybe there's not a chance that you'll play for the national championship this season. Not that you'd want to. Ohio State or Michigan would crush you. And that would be bad for your image.

Beautiful. It’s one thing if this stuff comes from someone in the USC corner of the blogoshere, but when it’s written by someone who actually writes for a living (albeit for SportsPickle, The Onion and Cracked) that’s just awesome.

Of course, Weis broke the first rule of the BCS Club: Don’t talk about BCS Club. But he just couldn’t help himself because he fuels the Domer Hype Machine, and is thus part of the collective Domer Mind that begets the “Irish” Bizarro World.

Luckily for us, people like DJ Gallo are around to help call it all out.

Fight On! Beat the Beavers!
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Southern Inferiority Complex

What’s with these southerners and their big mouths?

Just when we start to think the silliness has subsided, up pops another example of the southern inferiority complex, which we must now recognize as a second cousin to the Domer Hype Machine, which is of course closely related to the east coast bias. Together these three subversive movements make up the larger Axis of East Coast Bias. But, I digress …

The latest “mouth from the south” without a brain, comes to us not from the SEC – which actually plays good football – but the ACC. You know, that “hoop dream” of a conference where Tar Heels and Blue Devils rule indoors.

Some kids named C.J. Spiller (pictured above) and James Davis, two running backs at Clemson, are declaring their arrival upon the college football scene. In fact, Spiller is employing some Tuberville-brand history and sense of self just eight games into his college football career. According to Mark Schlabach of espn.com:

Spiller, a Jacksonville, Fla., native who spurned Florida on national signing day to ink with the Tigers, believes he and Davis are as potent as Bush and LenDale White, who helped lead Southern California to the 2004 national title and the BCS title game again last season.

"That's where I see us right now," Spiller said. "We've got the same combination."

Mr. Spiller, we know Mr. Bush and Mr. White. We were there when “The President” was catching touchdowns on wheel routes out of the slot, and when Lendale scored TD, after TD, after TD … We know the authentic “Thunder and Lightning.” Mr. Spiller, you and Mr. Davis are no Thunder and Lightning.*

We don’t need to over-react here – this is after all just a teenager displaying his naïvete – but it is annoying nonetheless. When current Trojan players or coaches make such statements, we can accept it as simple aspiration. But for anyone else, particularly those trying to catch up in the south, it’s all just a little more complex.

* With mid-term elections coming up, I figured I could get away with a clichéd closing like this. If I was wrong, what the hell …

UPDATE: In Clemson's next game (Thursday 10/26/06), Spiller and Davis combined for 71 yards on 22 carries in a 24-7 loss to Virginia Tech. At this point, the duo has led Clemson to as many losses (two) in their first nine games as Bush and White had over three seasons.
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Fool Carroll Once …

There is a lot to like about USC head coach Pete Carroll, but there are two things in particular that we have to love. One is that he is smart enough to learn from his mistakes. The other is that he has enough experience and brains not to screw up much in the first place.

Because of his high energy and enthusiasm, sometimes we forget that Carroll is in his 50s and has been coaching for more than 30 years. If any of us does something for that long we tend learn a lot of stuff, if we’re smart. As we know, Carroll is smart. In fact, unbeknownst to almost everyone except for Mike Garrett, he apparently became a genius prior to his hiring at USC. Still, he keeps learning.

We know this because we’ve seen Carroll and his staff make smart changes to what they do over the years. Not just adjustments at half time, but changes in game preparation and mental approach that help ensure certain outcomes … like wins.

One example of this is how USC handles its bye weeks. In 2003, with 14 days to prepare for Cal, Carroll used the extra time to rest starters and evaluate younger players. He still does this, but in ’03 there was apparently less emphasis on intensity and competition, which contributed to USC’s sluggish start in Berkeley and its eventual 34-31 loss to the Bears in OT.

A few days afterward, at a pre-game press conference for the following week’s trip to ASU, Carroll talked about what he learned:

After the game, it was obvious what occurred. It's counting on good preparation and working against each other and playing hard. We have to remember that the game is a full step faster. … Once we played the game and got up to game speed, we were fine. I hate to admit it, but that's what happened. We have to be aware of why that happened. I do think there are some circumstances that I understand why that happened. …The errors are the things we have to make go away.

Part of the circumstances to which Carroll referred was the precise timing of USC’s pre-game routine, which was messed up prior to the Cal game. The Trojans mistakenly arrived at the stadium 45 minutes early, which caused distraction. He said:

It's not the nicest [visitors] locker room in the world [at Cal] and so everybody's leaning on each other. I felt like we kind of lost our focus there. … We just sat around. I found myself standing on top of the stadium looking at Marin County. I'm waving at home and that kind of crazy stuff. I was just killing time. We kind of lost our edge.

Carroll learned from all this, which is why he makes a point of emphasizing intensity and tempo, especially during bye week practices, to maintain the Trojans’ “competitive edge.” And he is obsessive about USC’s pre-game routine, which is choreographed down to the minute, with basic procedures that are rehearsed during fall camp to indoctrinate freshmen.

An important element of this approach is characterizing road games as business travel rather than school field trips. Carroll learned this lesson after his first visit to Notre Dame in 2001, during which he took the team on a tour of South Bend and the College Football Hall of Fame. USC lost 27-16. Said Carroll: "Yeah, we went and did a big tour that we won't ever do again."

We all know smart people learn from their mistakes. Lucky for us, Carroll learns from his. Now, let’s hope his young coaching staff and players have learned enough during their 6-0 start to get them through the next six games unscathed.

UPDATE: Here's a post from Scott Wolf's Inside USC that lists all of USC's wins following a bye, since the Cal loss in '03.
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USC Post-Bye: Perspective

A mid-season bye is a very good thing. Of course, it gives USC Football a chance to rest, practice and recruit. But a bye also gives us regular Trojans a chance to run some errands or catch up on a few household chores left sitting since August.

A bye also lets us sit back – without the stress of our own game to worry about – and read a few more blogs and watch a few more games, all of which allow us to gain some perspective on things.

Certainly, this was true yesterday. We got to see that perhaps our “close” wins over U-Dub and Wazzu didn’t tell us everything we thought we were hearing. Maybe Cal’s OT escape from a Stanback-less Huskies and Oregon’s 11-point loss in the Palouse will put USC’s performance in better perspective.

Likewise, the USC “Rival Bowl” in South Bend showed us that perhaps ugla may actually have a good defense, albeit not quite good enough to beat the “Irish.” Or maybe it told us that the Domers are still not the swiftest afoot, regardless of how high their grass grows.

No doubt, John L. Smith got a huge dose of perspective after his Spartans’ record 35-point comeback win. Rutgers beating Pitt? Not so much.

I just hope that after a stress-free bye week, Trojans will remain calm when we see Michigan at No. 2 in the just released BCS rankings. Hopefully, we’ll all have enough perspective to remember that the Wolverines play current No.1 Ohio State, which means one of them will be eliminated from the BCS championship game by mid-November.

Maybe we should share some of our perspective with Auburn, which now finds itself behind West Virginia. LOL.

Still, the thing I read last night that brought it all together was a one-time blog post that really had nothing to do with college football, even though it showed up on espn.com. It was a post on Truthdig by Kevin Tillman, Pat Tillman’s younger brother who served as an Army Ranger with Pat in Iraq.

To be honest, I never liked Pat Tillman much. In the mid-‘90s when USC was struggling, Tillman was part of that 11-1 Jake Plummer ASU team that could have won a national championship, if not for a last minute 20-17 loss to Ohio State in the ‘97 Rose Bowl. In the NFL, he was one of those hustling white guys that all the commentators seem to like for no other reason than he was a hustling white guy. And when he volunteered to join the Army rather than sign a new multi-million-dollar contract with the Cardinals, it seemed more like a self-absorbed stunt than a noble thing to do.

But the more I read about why he did what he did, and the more I read about how he supposedly lived his life, the more I understand why he went to Iraq and the meaning he was trying to make for himself. Whether we agree with it all or not, I say we should certainly respect it.

So, when I read that Kevin Tillman was making a statement for the first time since his brother’s death in Iraq, I figured it would be worth the read. I was right. Regardless of your political point of view, it’s powerful stuff. Here’s a sample (ellipses in brackets are mine):

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice: […]

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated. […]

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

How’s that for perspective?

Perhaps it’s too much for a sports blog, but if what Kevin Tillman is trying to tell us has anything at all to do with our freedom to experience and enjoy USC Football, then it certainly is relevant here.

Come November, let’s take care of what we love. Fight On!
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USC Bye Day: BCS Mashup

For the last year or so we’ve seen the creation of new fangled things called mashups, which are Web applications that seamlessly combine content from more than one source to create an integrated experience. Now, I’m certainly not a computer geek, so if this Wikipedia definition flies over your head, I’m down here with you. But suffice it to say that just like a lot of stuff out on our internets, some mashups are worthless, others are kinda cool, and a few are very useful, depending on your point of view.

One mashup that can be fun and relevant to college football fans is Map Game Day, which we found by way of the Wiz. The site uses Google maps to provide directions and photos to every Division 1A football stadium and some 1AA venues. But this week Map Game Day also posted a map that shows the location of all the BCS ranked schools.* The interesting thing about this is the different ways in which people interpret what they see.

According to the Wiz, who has one of the best college football blogs around, the dearth of schools on the western half of this BCS map refutes the existence of an east coast bias. He says:

This map … shows locations of the teams in the first Bowl Championship Series standings. The next time somebody talks to you about a bias toward West Coast teams, explain to them that there is no bias. The reality is that [the] power base in college football currently resides in the Eastern half of the country. …

Of course, we must respectfully disagree with the Wiz. Map Game Day does not illustrate a “power base” driven by performance on the field. To the contrary, the map shows us something we already know … that there are simply more Division 1A football schools in the eastern half of the country than there are in the west.

This is particularly obvious within the context of the BCS rankings, since only one of the six BCS conferences is in the western half of the U.S. Broken down by individual conference, the current BCS rankings are essentially even among the six groups, especially considering the “super-conference” format of the Big-12 and SEC, which have 12 teams each.

Pac-10: USC, Cal, Oregon
Big-10: Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa
Big-12: Texas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri
Big East: West Virginia, Louisville, Rutgers
ACC: Clemson, Georgia Tech, BC
SEC: Auburn, Florida, Tennessee, Arkansas, LSU

Add the independents (Notre Dame) and non-BCS conference schools in the south (Tulsa/CUSA) and the west (Boise State/WAC) and it really can’t be any more balanced than that.

In other words, this BCS map doesn’t say anything about the relative performance of conferences or regions. Rather it only depicts a kind of Division IA football population distribution that is heavily unbalanced toward the east.

With more total schools for sports media to cover in the eastern half of the country, common sense says the west gets less attention. But by virtue of this distribution, any “power base” will always be in the eastern half of the country, which actually supports rather than disputes the existence of the east coast bias.

It is true that there is more (read better) Division IA football in the west than in the northeast. (Stop with the Rutgers thing, already.) But in the midwest (Big 10), southwest (Big 12), and southeast (SEC, and most of the ACC and Big East) there aren’t just more teams, but a regional culture stretching from Texas through Florida that makes football a significant priority … and thus a priority for media outlets, including those based in the northeast.

However, it’s not just football population distribution or regional culture that drive the east coast bias, because time zones have a significant impact, as well. We said this before, but we’ll restate it here. Sunday editions of "national" newspapers like the New York Times have for years neglected to fully cover west coast games because many of them end long after the paper’s deadline. Even real time media outlets find it difficult to spread the word nationally when some games in the west aren’t finished until just before the 1:00 a.m. eastern time SportsCenter.

By contrast, all of the teams in the five conferences in the eastern half of the U.S. (except Colorado) reside in the central and eastern time zones, which means the media center in New York is awake to cover them.

There are a few other elements that make up the axis of the east coast bias, including its cousin, the Domer Hype Machine. But, I digress …

This mashup up stuff is pretty good. The next time I need directions to a football stadium I’ve never been to, I will use Map Game Day. As for this BCS map, I don’t see much use for it, since it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know. But again, as a USC Trojan that’s just the way I see it. The existence of the east coast bias, on the other hand … that’s just pure fact.

Fight On!

* It doesn’t look like Map Game Day is archiving each week’s map with static pages, so depending on when you read this post the map may have changed from it’s BCS Week 1 version.
east coast bias