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I neglected to link to Arash’s football column from this past Monday’s Daily Trojan, but it was quite good, as usual. A few highlights:

“God, I hate them,” Williams said. “I hate UCLA. That’s what this is about.”

It’s about USC turning what used to be one of the most storied rivalries in college football into one the biggest mismatches on its schedule.

This game has turned into more of an annual revelry for the Trojans than a rivalry. For a rivalry to be possible, both teams have to bring something to the table. In this collaboration, UCLA has become the Garfunkel to USC’s Simon, the Sonny to its Cher, the Marty Jannetty to its Shawn Michaels.

UCLA has become a dead weight that USC has to carry on its back for one week each year for publicity purposes only, with the Bruins receiving more attention than its second-rate program and players deserve. There hasn’t been this kind of hype surrounding an expected execution since the Middle Ages. …

The measure of USC’s dominance over UCLA in the last two years can be summed up in the Trojans’ greed when looking at the final scoreboard. It actually kills many USC fans that last year’s final score was 52-21, and not 52-7, and that this year’s final was 47-22 and not 47-9. [Ed.: That’s so true.] …

If it means anything to the Trojan faithful, UCLA fans take little solace in the fact that USC has outscored UCLA, 126-43, in the last three years under Pete Carroll and beaten them five straight times for the first time in school history.

“Hopefully we’ll be smacking them around long after I’m gone,” said Williams, who finished the game with 11 catches for 181 yards and two touchdowns � all in the first half. “I really don’t like them at all. Every chance we get, I don’t care if it’s hopscotch, I want to beat them.”

The Bruins probably wish there was a hopscotch game coming up so they could somehow redeem themselves, but judging from the Bruins’ performances this week in rivalry games, they probably would have lost that matchup as well. In addition to being demolished at the Coliseum by the second-ranked Trojans, UCLA was defeated by USC’s No. 1 women’s volleyball team, No. 1 men’s water polo team and No. 3 club ice hockey team. The Daily Trojan even did its part, humbling the Daily Bruin, 48-26, in a flag football game on the UCLA campus Friday afternoon.

If this kind of domination continues, the Bruins are in danger of developing an inferiority complex larger than Canada and deeper than Jan Brady’s.

Hehehe. Read the whole thing, as they say.

By the way, here’s the DT’s front-page story, its lead sports-section story, its game analysis, and its BCS analysis. Oh, and let’s not forget the post-game frat-party police story. Heh.

Also, here is a PDF file of the DT’s front page from Monday. Headline: “Victory is Sugar-sweet.”

The cat blog has come back to life! Butter, having gotten ahold of the blog password despite Toby’s best efforts, is finally introducing herself to the world… and she shows us a picture of herself drinking out of Capone’s fish bowl earlier tonight:

In other recent blog-child news, Becky has thoughts on Britney Spears and gay marriage (unrelated topics, alas), my dad is finally fulfilling his pledge to post about Ireland, and Jen is taking a trip down musical memory lane with REM and Bon Jovi.

Also, Tim Stevens may have a BrendanLoy.com blog of his own soon. Stay tuned for more news on that.

ESPN’s Brad Edwards, a.k.a. Mr. Road to the BCS, provided us mere mortals with some additional insight in an online chat yesterday. Among other things, he gave his take on the USC-LSU computer-poll battle:

LSU is already ahead of USC in both Massey and Anderson & Hester. In my estimation, they will also jump them in Sagarin, and I believe Billingsley and Colley are also distinct possibilities. If LSU is able to preserve its .4 quality-win bonus [if Georgia wins out but doesn’t go to the SEC title game], five computers is all it will take to get the Tigers over USC. If LSU loses that bonus, they will need at least 6 computers, if not 7. Right now, though, I don’t see a computer in which USC seems to be untouchable.

The number of computers needed could change, however, with upsets in the strength-of-schedule department.

Anyway, one questioner in the chat expressed this Trojan fan’s sentiments perfectly: “Every week we’re told, if so and so loses, USC will get the nod…and every week it is a new so and so! When will USC finally be in the drivers seat?” Yeah, dammit!!

Meanwhile, in a sentiment that won’t be popular with this blog’s crowd, SI’s Stewart Mandel notes the likelihood of a third consecutive non-traditional Rose Bowl matchup, and says the folks in Pasadena should get over it.

SpaceWeather.com suggests looking west tonight, right around sunset, to catch a lovely glimpse of Venus very near to the crescent Moon, which will be beautifully illuminated by Earthshine.

A fellow Tolkienista has created a Lord of the Rings advent calendar. It counts down, of course, not to Christmas, but to Dec. 17, the premiere day for Return of the King!

Some of the entries are serious, others are funny. I particularly like December 4.

Does USC have a better chance of winning the national championship if LSU reaches the Sugar Bowl?

Huh?

Think about it. For LSU, the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans would be a virtual home game. Having the crowd on their side might be just the boost a team needs to help them beat seemingly unbeatable Oklahoma. So perhaps the LSU homeboys would have a better chance of pulling the upset than the far-from-home Trojans would. In which case…

LSU wins a close one against Oklahoma. Meanwhile USC, with a friendly crowd of its own in Pasadena, dismantles Michigan. Destroys ‘em. Tears ‘em apart. Embarasses ‘em, 45-22 or some such score. So now, what do the Associated Press voters do? USC was their team all along, and the Trojans surely proved themselves. The Tigers deserve props too, for stopping the unstoppable Sooners, but they’ll get their #1 ranking from the coaches’ poll automatically… why not give the Trojans their due, and award them a split championship?

And voila, we would have the best of both worlds: a USC national championship, and a colossal embarassment for the BCS (whose raison d’etre is to prevent split championships).

I’m not saying I’m rooting for it, I’m just saying it’s something to consider.

UPDATE: In comments, Andrew says this scenario is extremely similar to his root-for-OSU scenario of last week, for which I chastised him severely at the time. Now he’s chastising me, saying I took his idea without giving him due credit. Moreover, if he’s right, presumably I’m not only a thief, but a hypocrite! (And I smell bad, too.)

Well, he’s got a point, to a point. He’s right that the two scenarios are similar. I happen to think there are major differences: one, I’m not actually rooting for my scenario, just throwing it out there, whereas Andrew explicitly said he was rooting for Ohio State in order to “eff the BCS”; and two, my scenario is offered up only on the premise that a USC championship might actually be more likely this way — it isn’t just an alternative, more complicated means to the same end.

But still, the two scenarios are similar, so Andrew’s right, he thought of it first… sort of. :)

Rich Tellshow has updated his projected final BCS standings to more realistically reflect computer-poll realities if LSU wins out, and the new projection shows the Trojans and the Tigers finishing in — I’m not kidding — a dead heat for second place, 7.11 to 7.11. (Recount! Recount! Hanging chads! Voter fraud! Pat Buchanan!)

Tellshow notes: “This is from 2002 but I think it is still valid: ‘In the event of a tie for the second spot in the final standings, the tie would be broken by (in order) head-to-head results; a win against the highest ranked team in the final BCS top 25 standings or by using the strength of schedule component as contained in the BCS formula.’ So LSU would win the tie based on the victory over Georgia.” Well, yeah, unless Georgia loses to Georgia Tech, but Florida also loses and Georgia stays within five places of Tennessee, so the Dawgs still make the SEC title game, where they lose again to LSU… and fall so far in the BCS that they’re behind Washington State! Hey, it could happen. Of course, if all of that does happen, USC probably beats LSU anyway…

Anyway, after almost universally blubbering on Saturday that the Trojans are assured of a Sugar Bowl berth as long as they win out, the media is slowly catching onto what we Tellshowites knew all along: that LSU has a legitimate chance to catch USC. The Associates Press reports:

Southern California moved back into position to play for the national title — for now. … USC has one game remaining Dec. 6 against Oregon State (7-4). LSU plays Arkansas (8-3) on Friday, and if the Tigers win, they will play in the SEC title game. If LSU wins both those games they could get enough of a boost to move ahead of USC. … USC is 22 spots ahead of LSU in strength of schedule this week. BCS expert Jerry Palm projects that USC could end up anywhere from 15 spots ahead to 26 spots behind.

Brad Edwards, who writes ESPN’s Road to the BCS, is all over this. He notes:

Because schedule strength is a factor in the calculations of the BCS computers, this decimal-point battle could be decided by the results of remaining games involving USC’s and LSU’s opponents. The biggest of those games will be Alabama at Hawaii because it is a head-to-head matchup between an opponent of LSU and an opponent of USC.

GO WARRIORS!!! According to one estimate, that game alone could be worth 0.32 BCS points!!! So, add Hawaii on the list next to Arkansas (and, out of lingering gratitude, Michigan) among my new favorite teams.

Meanwhile, Stewart Mandel says LSU may be more deserving than USC of the Sugar Bowl spot. This debate is raging over on Tellshow’s message board, too. The Tigers won’t get much love on this blog, but I will give them this: if they leapfrog us in the standings, I’ll be far less outraged than I would have been if Ohio State had leapfrogged us. The Buckeyes would have been an undeserving bunch of lucky underachievers. LSU has had a genuinely good season, and I wish them nothing but the best. Well, third-best, actually. :)

Some people have no sense of humor.