Pushed Back USC Post

I have been meaning to do a post on USC for a while and their loss last week really catapulted my want to do so. But this week got a little busy and I really wanted to write something about the Wednesday night game, but the post turned out to be quite average. For that I apologize, but today, we will try to do better.

The University of Southern California (the only USC in the country) has enjoyed quite a run for the past few years. Pete Carroll has done an outstanding job resurrecting one of the great programs in the history of college football. For a long time the names Allen and Simpson, in a football sense, stood alone but in recent years names like Palmer, Leinart and Bush have joined their predecessors as some of the greatest trojans since Hector.

The program has flourished into what can be related to the Florida State program that seemingly disappeared when USC began to take power. A changing of the guard? Perhaps.

But Florida State never lost to a team like Stanford in it's years of dominance. There was the NC State loss and then a few losses to Florida but nothing like losing to a team that got beat by 39 points the week before and has association with Jim Harbaugh.

After the loss, USC dropped to 7th in the AP Poll and 10th in the USA Today poll. This is unacceptable. Absolutely absurd. I would be willing to bet that if Stanford played App. State tomorrow, App. State would win. No disrespect to Harbaugh and as much as I don't like him anyway, but his team isn't that good. App. State was and still is a championship ball club. They know how to win and they have athletes at the right spots. Yes, App. State was in that other league that we all call 1AA, but if you really look at the teams on the field, and you actually know something about football, Stanford's win was in fact more impressive than App. State's.

All this being said, Michigan drops out of the top 25 and USC stays in the BCS hunt. A win against Cal and no one is going to remember the catastrophe against Stanford. If they can beat Cal. No one will forget App. State, nor should they as they are a better team than The Cardinal. USC loses, drops to 7/10 in the polls, but still secures the prime afternoon ABC slot. Interesting? Interesting that USC controls prime coverage most of the time on ABC? Very much so...

Do me a favor and Google "USC Disney." See what comes up. Then ask yourself, "Why would Kirk Herbsreit go against the No Owens experts and pick USC to go undefeated and run the table?" Do you really think that a company who's immediate source of business is cinema isn't going to support the world's premier university for cinematic studies that just happens to be in Disney's backyard? Do you think it's a coincidence that one of USC's trustees (at least) is also a major executive in the Walt Disney corporation who gave $5 million to the university? Do you still think that it's a coincidence that the American Broadcast Company seemingly always has USC on their prime network at key times?

Let's go another route shall we? We have discussed exactly how much influence that ESPN has over the public, and the media...aside from that fact that in many ways it is the media. We see USC as this new powerhouse, a powerhouse that threw away their shot at a national title last year. Twice. A powerhouse that has been beaten by the worst program in the Pac-10. A powerhouse that has seemingly done everything in it's power to keep the public knowledge of Reggie Bush's scandal to a minimum. And the consequences as well. We all know that major programs give money and gifts to their players. Oklahoma got caught. Rhett Bomar's career as a football player has been destroyed...though his career as a car salesman seems to be on the right track. But Reggie Bush is going to walk away, a cheater with his Heisman (that he didn't deserve regardless of his cash intake) in-hand...and as we have talked about, walking is about all he's done in the NFL. Those suing Bush will be settled with out of court and the whole thing will disappear. Will they have to forfeit victories like OU has? Probably not...though Vince Young forced them to submit by himself in the only game that mattered anyway.

There is always so much concern with the business that surrounds college sports. We hear the fights about how athletes should be paid, publicly, for the millions that they bring to their universities and how the education they have paid for them isn't enough...and that's even a poor investment. But look at the business that surrounds ESPN and USC. Without ESPN, USC wouldn't have the legacy that they do now. Lest we forget, it was ESPN and ESPN only who was promoting the potential three-peat if they had beaten Texas. They didn't win the BCS National title, the only one that matters, in '03, LSU did. But ESPN found a way to glorify the program that Walt Disney Corporation has so much of an entitlement to. Of course, none of this can be proven, really. Are you surprised? Walt Disney's vision was always to bring fantasy to real life. A top 10 ranking after being beaten by one of the worst programs in college football? Walt Disney Corporation always finds a way, a way of making dreams come true.