A few thoughts on one of the most disastrous occasions for a Trojan in living memory….

1. Despite the provocative title, while I think this is definitely the worst loss in USC football history, I believe the Michigan loss to Appalachian State was even more ignoble and pathetic.  Michigan is the winningest program in collegiate football, was considered a strong national title contender, and lost to a "Hot, Hot, Hot" I-AA team with the lamest school promo video ever aired and which recruits kids from towns whose church leaders handle snakes. 

As bad as Stanford is, they are a longstanding, hated rival of USC, they play us every year and are very familiar with our schemes and plays, and despite how horrible they have been the past few years, they still recruit classes ranked anywhere from 25-50 and regularly send players to the NFL (the League currently has 20 from the Farm).

2. I heard two things at the L.A. Coliseum on Saturday evening that surprised me at first… but then made total sense.  The first surprise came after USC failed to score at the end of the first half despite two tries from the one-yard line.  A few scattered boos rained down from the crowd, and after a couple seconds, built into a modest crescendo.  USC fans, booing their own team???

Predictably, an even greater number of USC fans booed lustily as the USC fans immediately ran off the field into the tunnel.  But the second surprise came as Bea and I moved to the aisle and were held up until some of the crowd could clear.  It took a few minutes to make any progress whatsoever down the Coliseum’s upper reaches, and just before we started moving, I heard clapping.  Not just a few people here and there either — but virtually an entire section of USC fans around the tunnel at the east end of the Coliseum, as the Stanford players and coaches jubilantly walked, skipped, and jogged back to their locker room.

While I refrained from the booing, I couldn’t help but join in the clapping.  And I’ve been pondering ever since just why that was so.  As for the boo-birds, the fact is, I feel the booing was completely justified.  While I couldn’t bring myself to boo anything USC-related not named Paul Hackett or O.J. Simpson, like my fellow fans that night, I couldn’t handle the sight of a team that played lethargically in Seattle and barely escaped a completely outmatched Washington Huskies team (unfortunately, I saw that disgraceful performance live as well), only to turn around and pathetically play even worse against the Stanford Cardinal and flat-out give the game away.  Few things are as angering as spending upwards of $60 for a ticket to watch the team you love — one that is full of ridiculous talent and led by an amazing coach — drop easy pass after easy pass, refuse to block rushers, make mental mistake after dumb penalty after mental mistake, and throw interceptions at the worst possible moments.  If Stanford actually outplayed us in any facet of the game save for playing with some heart and focus, I could forgive the loss, but the fact is Stanford had nothing to be proud of on that stat sheet except what showed on the scoreboard.

Yet the emotion that rose up in the fans and twice turned much of the Coliseum into a disgruntled flock of boo-birds is the same reason many of us who were still around clapped for the hated Cardinal players as they ran off the field.  The Stanford band may be the ultimate disgrace, and goddamn that ridiculous, loser tree of a mascot, but those Cardinal players showed guts, focus, heart, and a refuse-to-lose attitude all because of a crazy, wacky coach believed in his players and made them believe in themselves.  I’d trade half the talent on the USC roster for a few ounces of the character that Stanford team showed that night, and the clapping from my fellow Trojans showed I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.  The claps also showed that USC fans, in addition to having high standards and expectations for their team, can still display class to hated rivals even in the midst of utter humiliation — something some other tradition-rich fans completely lack (fUTLA has neither tradition nor class, and this is true of most of USC’s regular opponents save U-Dub and Notre Dame).  The Stanford players just deserved a hand, that’s all there is to say.

3. John David Booty must be benched this week.  In no way am I pinning the blame for the loss solely on Booty — as alluded to above, virtually everyone on the team made critical mistakes — but it’s apparent JDB just doesn’t have that special moxie that’s needed to pull a team out of a funk and will it on to victory.  Actually, when it comes to lack of focus and heart, Booty not only isn’t part of the solution, he is part of the problem.  It’s no coincidence that in the past two games which USC has looked horrible, Booty has thrown seven interceptions (one of them in the end zone, against Washington, was overturned on review).  Teams rally to the quarterback, but this team simply doesn’t rally to John David Booty.  And really, it shouldn’t be any surprise that this Evangel Christian star turned into a bust like the rest of his highly-coveted high-school predecessors.  You don’t have to be a great quarterback to win a national title — see: Chris Leak, Florida, 2006 — but if you’re not a college phenom QB, you do have to command the fierce, outspoken loyalty of your team. And Booty clearly does not carry that type of swagger.

4. That being said, Pete Carroll has still backs Booty as his starter, if he is healthy enough to play this coming Saturday. Still, I say that, with or without Booty as our starting QB, I’ll be shocked if we lose another game.  It is simply inconceivable we’ll come out this flat against ASU, Cal, Notre Dame, fUTLA, Oregon State, or Oregon. And while the team obviously didn’t learn its lesson after sleepwalking through the U-Dub game, I have to bet that the slap to their face this past Saturday finally woke them up.  Indeed, if I’m PC, I’m handing out t-shirts to everyone on the team this week with big, bold letters that proclaim, "I LOST TO FREAKIN’ STANFORD!"  The players should be forced to wear those shirts for the rest of the season under their jerseys, in practice, and in the games.

As for the chicken-littles who want to doubt USC and think we’re in deep, deep trouble, I call bullsh*t.  Stats don’t win games, but they do speak to certain truths, and the truth is there isn’t a team on our schedule that can hang with us when we’re not beating ourselves.  Really, who here wants to put their money where their mouth is and bet against the Trojans in Berkeley, in Eugene, or in Tempe?  I’ll take that bet from each and every one of you, straight up.  Despite three turnovers, Stanford couldn’t muster 100 yards on these Trojans through the first three quarters, and penalties (some stupid, some wrongly called) were the only reason Washington could keep a couple of drives alive against the Trojans.  I’m not expecting USC to suddenly put it all together and play stellar for each of the next seven games, but no way do they have that many dropped passes, that many penalties, that many missed blocking assignments, and that many turnovers.  Factor in getting some key starters back on our offensive line and on our defense, and we’re definitely due for a breakthrough.

5. Bitch about the polls all you want, but the reason USC is ranked 10 in one poll and 7 in the other is due mostly to the fact that, despite how badly USC killed itself, it barely lost this game, and most of the pollsters just couldn’t bring themselves to agree that there were more than six-to-nine teams that could beat USC if they played tomorrow.  Few things are as predictable and as lame as whining about the placement of one-loss teams six weeks into the season.  Words like "travesty" and "injustice" should be saved for the last couple of weeks of polling, when there are enough games played that more valid, unbiased comparisons can be made.  I can’t help but point out that at this point in the season, even the recently-revered Stewart Mandel ranked South Carolina behind Georgia … two weeks in a row, after the Gamecocks handled the Bulldogs in Athens and then lost a brutally tough game in Baton Rouge to the now-unanimous #1 team.

My point is simple: If you can find a rational AP or Coaches’ ballot that lacks an obvious head-scratcher, you’re obviously not paying attention.

[Andrew guestblogging.]

Whether they realize it or not, Notre Dame’s season just got a little uglier — and they haven’t even lost to Michigan yet.  As part of the unfolding scandal now surrounding Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, Paul Zimmerman reports an interesting nugget rife with implications:

Marinelli was the defensive line coach in Tampa Bay when the Bucs beat the Patriots in the 2000 regular season opener and did a good job controlling New England’s offense. After the game the Patriots’ offensive coach, Charlie Weis, was overheard congratulating the Bucs’ defensive coordinator, Monte Kiffin.

"We knew all your calls, and you still stopped us," Weis said. "I can’t believe it."

He couldn’t believe it because the Patriots had videotaped all of the defensive signals in their last preseason game, which was against the Bucs.

Now, I’m not suggesting Charlie Weis still participates in such blatant attempts at cheating (all bitterness of Weis’ poor gamesmanship ruining Desmond Reed’s career aside), however, it does lead to a few questions:

• Did Charlie Weis earn his "offensive genius" tag from Domer homers and media sycophants at least partially on the basis of Patriots’ game plans developed with illicitly obtained information?
• Is not the entire Belichick era at New England, and ergo Weis’ success as an offensive coordinator there, now tainted with the same kind of doubt and suspicion that hangs over baseball players Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds as a result of their alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs?

I think the answers to the above two questions are terribly obvious, and this must be disconcerting for Domers.  The evidence mounts that not only is Weis not the great coach he was cracked up to be, he also isn’t the most ethical role model for Notre Dame.

Obviously Urban Meyer was Notre Dame’s real target when the Golden alumni turned on Ty Willingham after the 2003 season and sabotaged his recruiting efforts with over-the-top threats, demands, and innuendo, but even though Domers congratulated themselves on getting the "genius" Weis after whiffing on Meyer, did they shoot themselves in the foot even worse than even their biggest detractors imagined?

There’s no way Domers will admit how badly they treated Ty after the rough transition year in 2003, when Davie’s option system and personnel were finally being flushed out for brand-new personnel for the still-emerging West Coast Offense and a bunch of new starters on defense.  And without a doubt, the ten-year, $40 million contract Weis has means the current coach will not be expeditiously run out of town like Ty was.  But we can hope that Ty’s current success — and the latest revelations about Weis and Belichick — will once again teach Notre Dame to put personal integrity, morals, and academic commitment above greed and the yearning to return to the glory days when Notre Dame could rely on its built-in advantages (money, media exposure, and religion) to win national titles.  There is still time before the Golden Dome is tarnished much further.

Things have gone from bad to worse for Michael Vick this week, culminating in a blockbuster civil suit:

Embattled NFL quarterback Michael Vick, facing federal charges related to his alleged participation in dogfighting, has been hit with a “$63,000,000,000 billion dollar” lawsuit filed by a South Carolina inmate who alleges the Atlanta Falcons star stole his pit bulls and sold them on eBay to buy “missiles from Iran,” FOX News has learned.

Jonathan Lee Riches filed the handwritten complaint over “theft and abuse of my animals” on July 23 in the U.S. District Court in Richmond, Va.

Click here to read the filing against Vick.

Riches alleges that Vick stole two white mixed pit bull dogs from his home in Holiday, Fla., and… goes on to allege that Vick sold the dogs on eBay and “used the proceeds to purchase missiles from the Iran government.”

The complaint also alleges that Vick would need those missiles because he pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in February of this year.

“Michael Vick has to stop physically hurting my feelings and dashing my hopes,” Riches writes in the complaint.

Riches wants $63 billion dollars “backed by gold and silver” delivered to the front gates to the Williamsburg Federal Correctional facility in South Carolina. Riches is an inmate at the facility serving out a wire fraud conviction.

I’m pretty sure that someone at the National Weather Service wrote a completely meaningless press release just to see if the reporter was stupid enough to reprint it. At least one news agency fell for the obvious con job:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Temperatures and precipitation in the Midwest have an equal chance of being above or below normal in June, the National Weather Service said in its latest monthly forecast released on Thursday.

That pattern could linger through August for the nation’s key grain growing regions, U.S. weather forecasters said.

Regions which could have a hotter-than-normal summer include the East and West Coasts and the coastal areas on the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, June precipitation on the coasts could be either above or below normal, the Weather Service forecast.

The government forecast dovetailed with recent private forecasts which predicted that temperatures in the Northeast and Midwest, both big natural gas consuming regions, were expected to vary on either side of normal for next week.

(Hat tip: Best of the Web)

I just wanted to make sure he got the message and ensure compliance, unless he is planning on being the only naked groomsman. ;-)

… but he’ll sure be able to tell you all about who beat them.

In case you missed it, Nadagate ended with a whimper. It turns out that the administration official who originally leaked Valerie Plame’s identity to Robert Novak was … [drumroll please]

Richard Armitage.

Yes, that Richard Armitage — the one who has consistently been hailed by Bush administration foes as a friendly moderate and anti-neocon in the Colin Powell mold.

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Here’s another way to bide your time until September 2.

Arizona Cardinals coach Dennis Green is none too happy about Matt Leinart still not being signed:

Green sharply criticized Leinart and his representatives on Monday for rejecting “a more than generous” offer from the team.

“It is an outstanding contract,” Green said. “It’s $14 million guaranteed.”…

Green said the deal is far more than a 10th pick would normally receive….

Green said the sides were at odds over the total value of the contract, which the coach said was among the top five of this year’s deals with draft picks.

The main issue reportedly is the size of escalation clauses that would give Leinart additional money the more he plays….

“It would be a shame if Matt Leinart is still sitting out there as the only player in the National Football League who is not in the National Football League, and you’ve got an impressive deal on the table.

“That’s just the kind of mood I’m in,” Green said, before he walked away.

If this is remotely true, it represents a serious upgrade of what reportedly was on the table before, and Leinart should end his holdout right away.

UPDATE BY BRENDAN: Apparently, Leinart reads this blog, and he took Andrew’s advice to heart. :) The holdout is over. Leinart and the Cardinals have reached a six-year, $14 million deal that “could be worth as much as $50.8 million if all incentives are reached.”

UPDATE BY ANDREW: If Brendan would let me update MY OWN DAMN POST, I would be telling you that Matt Leinart has signed a six-year deal purportedly worth $50.8 million if all incentives are reached, and $14 million in guaranteed money (Hat tip: gahrie). Brendan, I fart in your general direction!

By way of comparison, Jay Cutler, drafted one spot after Leinart, inked a six-year deal with $11 million in guaranteed money and up to $48 million overall.

I refuse to provide any commentary because there is simply no reason to be partisan or ideological here; it is far more productive to analyze the Pew Research Center’s latest report on the political habits and nature of the American people from as many angles as one can derive.

HTML version

UPDATE: Actually, when I originally Googled for this post, I meant to link to this report on media consumption but got distracted by some older studies (the above one was from last year).

When Bill Clinton was president, well-known terrorist Yassir Arafat was one of his most frequent guests. Warren Christopher met with Syrian dictator Assad more than a dozen times. Ill-advised agreements with North Korea allowed the rogue communist nation to gain aid from the United States while secretly enhancing their WMD abilities and developing missiles to reach American cities.

Since Bush has been president, the Dems have only sunk lower. Criticizing the Bush administration, John Kerry made the excruciatingly hilarious claim about the current Hezbollah-Israel skirmish that, “If I was president, this wouldn’t have happened.” The Dems have repeatedly chided Bush for not pursuing direct talks with Iran and North Korea, and they are currently criticizing the administration for not pushing a diplomatic solution to the Lebanon crisis involving Syria.

With this as backdrop, then, the hypocrisy of the Democratic leadership is simply amazing when they boycott and threaten to boycott Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki’s speech to a joint session of Congress. And then they have the gall to accuse Maliki of being on the wrong side of the Global War on Terrorism. Maliki’s crime is that he made statements that, in effect, were supportive of Hezbollah and critical of Israel. Not unlike Kofi Annan, I might add, but you won’t see Dems expressing outrage at the UN Secretary.

In sum, the Democrats approach is: Welcome talks with Assad, Arafat, and Kim Jong Il, but oppose and boycott the democratically-elected Iraqi Prime Minister.

While former Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi was accused by top Dems of being Bush’s puppet, the Dem criticism of al-Maliki is now the opposite: that he isn’t parroting Bush’s support of Israel. Aside from the fact that Democrats are only strong supporters of Israel when she is under attack and it is election season, does anyone else see it as richly ironic that the Democrats would expect al-Maliki, who is a Shiite (Hezbollah are Shiite), and Arab (Hezbollah are Arab), to not reflect the popular Arab and Shiite views in this conflict, even as they opposed the removal of his deposed predecessor Saddam Hussein, who fired SCUD missiles at Israel and compensated the families of Palestinian suicide bombers? How brave of the Democrats to boldly protest al-Maliki’s typical Arab brand of anti-Semitism, even as they hypocritically demand the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq (which would only guarantee that even more radical anti-Israel and anti-West elements take control of that country) and say the war to remove Saddam from power was a huge mistake.

The performance of Bush and the Republicans these past few years is driving the conservative in me absolutely nuts, but when one takes a look at what kind of political and foreign policy lunacy is being advocated in the other party, well, that just puts everything into perspective, doesn’t it?

I really wanted to get this post up Friday night before the knockout round commenced, but I’ll go ahead and stick with what were my predictions going into Saturday:

Second Round
Germany over Sweden
Argentina over Mexico
England over Ecuador
Holland over Portugal
Australia over Italy
Switzerland over Ukraine
France over Spain
Brazil over Ghana

Quarterfinals
Argentina over Germany
England over Holland
Australia over Switzerland
Brazil over France

Semifinals
Argentina over Australia
England over Brazil

3rd-Place Match
Brazil over Australia

Final
Argentina over England

Some comments on the above predictions:

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I couldn’t help but leave a quick post with this nugget:

Serbia is like Nokia: Each year there’s a new model, and it keeps getting smaller.

Group D
Having covered Mexico’s uninspiring draw in Friday’s post, I will focus on Portugal’s 2-0 victory over Iran, a result which secured Portugal a spot in the second round, eliminated Iran (to the civilized world’s relief), and left underdog Angola some hope of making the second round if Portugal finishes off Mexico this week. Iran is not that bad of a team, but they are about where the Americans were in the mid-90s, and they probably will take much longer to truly be a threat to advance. Portugal returned to form in this win and showed themselves to be the class of the group, but I am not convinced that even they have a chance to knock off Holland or Argentina.

On Wednesday, look for Argentina and Holland to play conservatively, not risking injury or yellow cards to star players. Attacks on goal will likely not be fully supported in most cases, as neither team will want to leave open the counterattack. While neither team will care much who takes first or second, Portugal may play slightly more or less aggressive depending on that earlier result. Portugal will likely play loose and relaxed and be content with a draw, while Mexico also knows it goes through with a draw, so don’t expect spectacular committed attacks from either side. Angola simply must beat Iran to even have a chance, and while they probably can pull it off, I don’t expect Portugal to press Mexico hard enough to send El Tri home.

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If it wasn’t for the English you’d be Kraut,
if it wasn’t for the English you’d be Kraut,
if it wasn’t for the English,
wasn’t for the English,
wasn’t for the English you’d be Kraut.
(sung to “She’ll be coming round the mountain”)

What’s it like, what’s it like, what’s it like to lose a war? What’s it like to lose a war???
(sung to “Argies”)

Two World Wars and one World Cup, do daa, do daa, two World Wars and one World Cup, do da do daa day
(sung to “Camdown races”)

There were 10 German bombers in the air,
there were 10 German bombers in the air,
there were 10 German bombers,
10 German bombers,
there were 10 German bombers in the air… .
And the RAF from England shot em down!
And the RAF from England shot em down!
And the RAF from England,
the RAF from England,
the RAF from England shot ‘em down!
(sung to “She’ll be coming round the mountain”; repeat 10 down to 1)
Bonus link*

Next Tuesday, the result of the England-Sweden match could very well determine whether you hear some of those football chants in the stadium on TV, as a second-round matchup with Germany is a strong possibility. But first, a review of the games concluded yesterday….

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