Okay… back to football. :) Here’s a photo of our lovely group of Trojan rooters at yesterday’s game:

The Associated Press poll is now out, and it’s official: USC is the #1 team in the land in both polls, with LSU #2 and Oklahoma #3. In the AP poll, we got 42 first-place votes, LSU got 21, and OU got 2. In the coaches poll, it was Trojans 37, Tigers 18, Sooners 8.

But when the official BCS pairings are revealed in an hour and a half, it seems almost certain that the computers won’t agree with those rankings. It appears that the polls’ #2 and #3 teams will be meeting in the “official” national championship game, the Sugar Bowl. Rich Tellshow is predicting it will be OSU #1 with 4.94 points, LSU #2 with 6.20, and USC #3 with 6.31. And it may not be that close.

Bottom line, the Trojans are very likely going to the Rose Bowl… where they will pound Michigan, win a split national championship, and deal a fatal blow to the BCS system as we know it. Merry Christmas, Andrew. :)

And for that matter, Merry Christmas (and a very happy New Year) to the Rose Bowl itself. How much are the bowl executives out in Pasadena crapping their pants with joy this morning? They wanted their Big 10-Pac 10 matchup, and now they’re going to get it… and they’ve just become the co-national championship game.

Alas, Trojan fans such as Adrienne and her family who were hoping for a joyful trip to New Orleans on Jan. 4 will be disappointed. But as Pete Carroll has said repeatedly, it’s not like the Rose Bowl is a bad place to play. And all we have to do is beat Michigan, and we get to raise a national championship banner at the Coliseum.

Of course, this whole thing is just a huge piece of evidence for the necessity of a playoff, or at least a post-BCS mini-playoff. And that will probably happen now, thanks to the outrage this will create. Which is awesome.

On an unrelated side note, #1-ranked Kansas lost in basketball yesterday, and #1-ranked Oklahoma lost in football. I wonder if this is the first time the top-ranked teams in both sports have lost on the same day?

UPDATE: Let the outrage begin:

The easiest way to answer the question of who should be invited to the national title game is to tell whom, unequivocally, should not.

It is enough to make you believe in the inherent fairness of boxing, figure skating and Iraqi elections.

Taking a brief break from football… my mom sends along these pictures of the snowstorm that’s blanketing the Northeast:

As you can see in the posts below, Daily Trojan sports columnist extraordinaire Arash Markazi has agreed to be a guest blogger BrendanLoy.com for the next few weeks. The DT isn’t publishing over winter break — not even online updates, the bastards — so Arash wanted someplace to write about this most exciting Trojan postseason in a quarter-century. And we here at BrendanLoy.com are delighted to have him on board! :)

In other news, if you’re looking at my BCS analysis using the college-football category page, be sure to check out my cell-phone posts, too. Not all of those are properly categorized yet, but there’s a lot of college-football stuff in there… including live audio posts from yesterday’s USC game!

CARSON PALMER (2002) - 288-of-458, 62.9%, 3,639 yds, 32 TD, 10 int
USC RECORD: 10-2 (No. 5)
All-Pac-10 Co-Offensive Player of the Year
All Pac-10 First Team
Other post-season awards: Heisman Trophy, lJohnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, Pop Warner Award, National Player of the Year, All-American first team, Davey O’Brien Award finalist, Walter Camp Award finalist

MATT LEINART (2003) - 232-of-368, 63.0%, 3,229 yds, 35 TD, 9 int
USC RECORD: 11-1 (No. 1)
All-Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Year
All Pac-10 First Team
Other post-season awards: ?

Fight on, USC fans, there’s a new sign for you. Put that middle finger down — your team is No. 1.

I know you might want to keep up the bird and wave it directly at the BCS, but for now, don’t let any computer or computer geek take this moment away from you.

For the first time since 1979, the USC Trojans are No. 1 in the country. USC fans have to go all the way back to the undefeated team of 1972 to remember a Christmas when their Trojans were the undisputed No. 1 team.

But the Trojans have been anything but gifted this holiday season.

The scenario that the Trojans face as they wake up this morning is as absurd as it is close to becoming a harsh reality. It’s the nightmare scenario that no BCS official ever thought would happen.

The No. 1 team in the Associated Press and the Coaches Poll at the end of the season will not be going to the national championship game. It’s the most embarrassing moment in the BCS’s controversial six-year history.

With the human polls giving their votes to the Trojans and the computers expected to push a national title game between No. 2 LSU and No. 3 Oklahoma, it would be easy to label this struggle as man versus machine, but don’t look at USC coach Pete Carroll to be throwing any computer out of his window in anger.

“The one thing I don’t like is blaming the computers,” Carroll said. “I don’t think that’s fair at all because some person made up the computers. Somewhere, someone made up the program. That is the guy that we should be blaming.”

If Carroll doesn’t sound too disappointed about the possibility of taking his outright Pac-10 Champions to the Rose Bowl, one needs only go back to Dec. 15, 2000, the day he was announced as the team’s coach and outlined his dream for the future.

“Our team goal is simple here,” he said during his first press conference. “What is the goal of all Pac-10 teams? It’s to win the Rose Bowl and that’s a beautiful thing. It’s so clear, we know exactly what we are shooting for, exactly what lays out there.

“At this time to dream about a Rose Bowl victory or to talk about all the things we are going to do, talk is cheap right now. What we have to do is we have to get to work. We have to develop a work attitude and habits that will take us to where we want to go, that will take us to where we dream.”

So while it might not be as sweet as some had expected, for the Trojans, dreams do come true.