“The only way UCLA has a chance to win this game is if they outscore USC.” –Lee Corso

Gee, ya think?

Alexis Jones and Nathan Gotsch of From the Sidelines, an original-content USC football blog that started six weeks ago, have officially hit the big-time: they have behind-the-scenes passes, and will be hanging out with the ESPN College GameDay gang all afternoon.

They’ve got photos.

USC football blog From The Sidelines offers this quote of the day from USC fullback Brandon Hancock, discussing the difference between the Trojans’ rivalries with Notre Dame and UCLA:

“We respect Notre Dame and at the end of the day it’s a pretty healthy rivalry. But all bets are off with these pansies.”

Heh.

Incidentally, From The Sidelines will be blogging live from ESPN College GameDay tomorrow. Nathan Gotsch, one of the site’s co-bloggers, writes via e-mail:

[Co-blogger] Alexis [Jones] and I will be blogging from the GameDay set all day tomorrow. I’m not sure how much access we’ll have, but she spent today hanging out with Kirk Herbstreit and the crew so I would imagine we’ll be able to get some interesting stuff.

Click here to visit Nathan and Alexis’s blog, and tune in to ESPN to watch GameDay, which starts at 10:30 AM EST.

BEAT THE BRUINS!!!

Oprah Winfrey’s appearance on the Late Show gave David Letterman his biggest audience in more than a decade, and his fourth-biggest ever on CBS, more than tripling his usual nightly ratings.

Alas, this probably will not be his Hugh Grant moment, if Lisa de Moraes and my dad are right that he was so fawning as to be unfunny. A golden opportunity wasted.

SI’s John Walters laments the end of the college-football regular season, and previews today’s games. The important ones are early: Texas-Colorado at 1:00 PM and USC-UCLA at 4:30 PM, both on ABC.

Meanwhile, B.J. Schecter takes a closer look at the Trojans-Bruins matchup.

P.S. Over at ESPN.com, Ivan Maisel says that “if USC’s offensive production were a stock, the feds would have begun an investigation already,” while Ted Miller writes that “the Bruins’ defense is a feather pillow.” I like those odds. :)

In an apparent effort to make USC and Oregon look as bad as possible — and to make me look as foolish as possible — Fresno State last night completed its utter collapse in the wake of its near-win against the Trojans, losing to Louisiana Tech and missing out on capturing even a share of the WAC title.

Lou Holtz spoke at the ND football banquet last night.

Even in Buenos Aires, they love the Trojans! :)

With USC playng UCLA this afternoon — in a game that would be essentally a national semifinal, if not for the Bruins’ inexplicable collapse against Arizona last month — it’s only natural that I have a bet on the game with UCLA grad Mike Tran, who is one of my best friends in the NDLS 2L class despite the fact he’s a f***in’ Bruin. :)

The terms are: if UCLA wins the game, I have to add a powder-blue-and-gold motif to my blog for a week, and post a picture of myself wearing some sort of Bruin gear (supplied by Mike), which will stay on the homepage for a week. If USC wins, I get to post a picture of Mike wearing some of my Trojan gear on the homepage for a day.

Why only a day, when my losing end of the bet punishes me for a week? That’s our way of grappling with the point spread, which favors the Trojans by 21. Since a USC win is so much more probable than a UCLA win, Mike wasn’t going to agree to the bet if it would subject him to a week’s worth of ridicule in the likely event of a loss. He wanted to bet on the point spread, but I felt it would be absurd for me to redesign the site in Bruin blue and post pictures of myself wearing UCLA gear in the wake of, say, a 20-point USC win. I mean, really, who cares about the spread… if the Trojans win by a point, we’ll still be 7-0 against UCLA since my freshman year, and we’ll still be going to the Rose Bowl! I’ll be celebrating a great victory, not mourning a defeat! So, as a compromise, we agreed on the week vs. day idea. It might not seem fair, but whatever, it’s totally worth it for me, just so I can post that picture of Mike Tran the Trojan. Hehe.

Anyway… as I believe I may have said once or twice already… BEAT THE BRUINS!!!

USC and UC-Santa Barbara are playing in an NCAA women’s volleyball first-round game at the Lyon Center right now. The Gauchos won the first game, but the Women of Troy won the second and third games, so they lead the match 2-1. They’re early in the fourth game now. If you have Windows Media Player, you can listen or watch live.

Full tournament scoreboard here. Bracket here.

Interestingly enough, with Notre Dame advancing to the Sweet 16 earlier tonight and the University of Washington winning its first-round game, the Irish and the Huskies — who are the top seeds on their respective sides of the College Station Regional — are inching ever closer to a possible Elite Eight matchup, an opportunity for David to take out some of his recent hostility against Notre Dame by rooting for his Huskies against them in a sport where UW is actually good. :)

First, though, Washington will need to beat Colorado State and then either Purdue or College of Charleston, and the Irish will need to get past the winner of Cal and Wisconsin (which, incidentally, sounds like a decent bowl game — though not as good as tonight’s LSU-Texas game!).

UPDATE: USC wins! They’ll play Pepperdine in the second round tomorrow. Winner gets either Santa Clara or defending champion Stanford in the Sweet Sixteen, at Stanford.

I really should have done a women’s volleyball pool. It would have been fun, as no one would have known what the hell they’re doing. :) Maybe next year.

Have I said “Beat the Bruins” lately? Well, BEAT THE BRUINS!!!

Note the new graphic on the top of my homepage, BTW. :)

Here’s a video of us in the Coliseum, well after the Fresno State game ended, doing the traditional cheer that goes along with “Tusk”…

source file

P.S. Here are my photos of the USC-UCLA game in 1999, 2001 and 2002. I’ve always been rather partial to this photo; note the scoreboard. :) But of course this one, of Jenny riding on Jeff’s shoulders after the Trojans broke the Bruins’ eight-year winning streak our freshman year, is a classic.

TommyCam should be fun to watch tonight, as it’s the annual “Save Tommy Nite.”

How did I not know that USC and Notre Dame played each other in women’s basketball last weekend in South Bend? I’m the Irish Trojan! Someone needs to tell me these things! :) Anyway, Notre Dame won, 73-62.

Notre Dame beats Northwestern, 3 games to 0! (All three games were close, though.) On to the Sweet Sixteen!

On the glorious morning after Connecticut’s long-awaited enactment of the Wonderfulness of Reform :), telephoned bomb threats closed the state’s entire court system. / Authorities have not yet Commented on any possible Connection between the day’s twin Threats of anti-reform Lawsuits and of anti-courthouse IED detonations. ;} Joe Loy, guestspeculating. :>

Five threatening phone calls today shut down Connecticut’s judicial system and triggered evacuations and bomb sweeps at every courthouse in the state.

Public Safety Commissioner Leonard Boyle said the state decided to close all 45 courthouses after the bomb threats were received at the governor’s office and elsewhere around 10 a.m.

…”The calls were not specific as to particular courthouses, which of course compounded the problem,” Boyle said. “The calls simply stated that bombs had been placed in courthouses, or one call I believe said ‘judicial buildings’ in the state of Connecticut.”

Connecticut’s judicial branch has 83 facilities; 45 include courtrooms.

Ten teams of officers and bomb-sniffing dogs continued to search courthouses into Friday evening but had not found a bomb as of 5 p.m.

State police would not elaborate on the threats, saying the content of the calls will be kept confidential until the investigation is complete.

…Chief State’s Attorney Christopher Morano said officials tried to balance the need to finish court business with the threat to public safety in deciding when to close the buildings.

“There are certain arraignments that need to be held within certain time periods and that is the major concern,” he said. “There are other speedy trial issues that might come up, but primarily we want to make sure that [Money Quote Alert! / ~ the guestblogger :] the conveyor belt of justice keeps moving and that timelines are met that are set forth in state law and our constitution.”

…Larry Mozzicato, who runs a food truck outside Hartford Superior Court, said the threat ruined his lunch business.

“People were coming out saying there was a bomb threat,” he said. “Whenever there is a bomb threat, they never stop.“

Hee hee. No, I suppose they Wouldn’t. Larry should seek Restitution for his losses from the Perps when They nab ‘em. / As will the State for Its expenditures in Responding, which is one of the things you learn when you Read The Whole Thing.

Via Alexis Jones and Nathan Gotsch’s USC football blog, a plea for any and all Trojan fans in the L.A. area to show up for GameDay tomorrow morning:

ESPN’s College GameDay invites the entire USC student body to a live broadcast of the premier college football pregame show in the country. Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit and Desmond Howard will be broadcasting LIVE beginning at 7:00 am [Pacific time] on Saturday outside the main entrance of the Coliseum. The show is hoping to set the record for most people to view the show live on Saturday. We have already received a strong reception from UCLA and are hoping that the Trojan faithful will show up to outnumber the Bruins fans.

I would say that trying to set the record with a West Coast show — where the students have to show up three hours earlier than when GameDay is on the East Coast — is a bit crazy… but then again, turnout at GameDay for USC vs. Cal last year was pretty freakin’ awesome. In fact, I’d say it was better than the turnout for this past October’s USC-ND GameDay in South Bend. So who knows?

Anyway… you’ll be hearing me say this a lot in the next 24 hours, but…

BEAT THE BRUINS!!!

(Hat tip: Tran on the photo at the top of this post.)