Since USC’s winter break began, three — count ‘em, three — Trojan teams have won national championships: men’s water polo, women’s volleyball, and now, football. And yet the Daily Trojan homepage reads:

“While USC observes its winter recess, the Daily Trojan is not published. The Daily Trojan will resume regular publication January 13, 2004.”

This is a travesty. Granted, there are many other college newspapers that similarly go into complete hibernation over winter break, regardless of how big the story. But not all. And if the Daily Trojan aspires to be a truly great college paper, as its editors so often say, surely it should aspire to be in the select few here.

According to my understanding, there is no technical reason why the DT can’t do online updates, and there is certainly no shortage of sports writers who would be willing to do the work. (Arash Markazi, anyone?)

No, the problem isn’t technical or logistical — the problem is that the DT has a faculty adviser who clings obsessively to some sort of outdated, ridiculous rule that a newspaper should not publish anything on its website that has not appeared in the paper. (That’s so 1997.)

I believe that this, like many other absurdly timid DT policies, is grounded on said adviser’s crippling fear of lawsuits (though I’m not sure what the legal issue is in this case, and I could be wrong on this point).

Mind you, the DT is an independent, student-run newspaper, so under no circumstances should the faculty adviser have editorial control over what goes into the paper or onto the website. But editor-in-chief after editor-in-chief refuses to stand up for her, and the Reign of Institutional Timidity goes on.

Oh, well. Not my paper anymore, not my problem anymore, I suppose. But it’s too bad we, as USC fans and alumni, can’t read the USC take on one of the greatest winter breaks in USC history until it’s extremely old news.

(By the way, this post is solely my opinion, not necessarily Arash’s or anyone else’s.)

Ohio State is creaming the controversy-saddled Kansas State Wildcats at the moment, 35-14, late in the third quarter. This brings up an interesting question: if the Buckeyes win, will they leapfrog Michigan in the final rankings, even though the Wolverines soundly beat OSU in the final, conference-deciding, national-championship-berth-possibly-on-the-line game of the regular season?

Here were the final rankings of the regular season from the AP poll (you know, the voters who actually get to vote) and what that team has done in its bowl game:

1. USC (beat Michigan, 28-14)
2. LSU (plays Oklahoma Sunday)
3. Oklahoma (plays LSU Sunday)
4. Michigan (lost to USC, 28-14)
5. Texas (lost to Wash. St., 28-20)
6. Tennessee (lost to Clemson, 27-14)
7. Ohio State (easily beating Kansas State)
8. Kansas State (losing badly to Ohio State)
9. Florida State (lost to Miami, 16-14)
10. Miami (beat Florida State, 16-14)

Okay, so let’s review. USC is #1. The Sugar Bowl winner is #2. After that, our winners and still two-loss teams are… Ohio State and Miami. Plus, whoever loses the Sugar Bowl will also be a two-loss team. So what do we do with those presumptive #3-5 teams? Following the normal “win and you gain ground, lose and you lose ground” logic, it would go:

1. USC
2. LSU/Oklahoma winner
3. Ohio State
4. Miami
5. LSU/Oklahoma loser
6. Michigan

But of course, this has several flaws. One is, I’m not sure if the sportswriters really respect OSU enough to put them at #3. I suspect Miami might leapfrog them instead. Then again, Kansas State was a media darling after beating Oklahoma, and now OSU is creaming them, so who knows… but the bigger issue is, what the hell, how can OSU be 2-3 spots ahead of Michigan after beating them 35-21 on Nov. 22?

(Hey, wait a minute, Kansas State just scored, now it’s 35-21 — familiar score! — early in the fourth quarter. It ain’t over yet.)

Assuming OSU does win in the end, a more accurate final poll — based on the totality of the season rather than the old “bump up, bump down” logic — might look something like this:

1. USC
2. LSU/Oklahoma winner
3. LSU/Oklahoma loser (c’mon, give ‘em a break, they lost to the #2 team in the country)
4. Michigan (c’mon, give ‘em a break, they lost to the #1 team in the country)
5. Ohio State (good win, boys, but #5 is as high as we go — blame Michigan, again)
6. Miami (of Florida, though I’d love to see Miami of Ohio, which only has one loss after all, here or higher)

Of course, that places three-loss Michigan ahead of two-loss OSU and two-loss Miami, which, come to think of it, isn’t exactly in line with “totality of the season” logic. But head-to-head matchups should not be ignored… so as you can see, this is a dilemma.

Boifromtroy, a gay Republican sports fan in West Hollywood, CA (that’s his official description) and a blogger who had not previously appeared on my radar screen (his URL: tommytrojan.blogspot.com), has some good commentary on the Rose Bowl, particularly with regard to this apt question:

Amid all the National Championship versus BCS Championship debate, one “tiebreaker” may still exist…which team will President Bush invite to the White House?!?

Read the whole thing, as they say… and pay no attention to the fact that Mr. Boifromtroy has “Brenadan Loy” (the URL is correct, though) listed on his blogroll under the category… drumroll, please… “OTHER GAY LINKS.”

I believe a Seinfeld quote is in order here… either that, or a “Straight But Not Narrow” button… :)

Rose Bowl 2004:
USC 28, Michigan 14
FIGHT ON!!!

Ivan Maisel says the Sugar Bowl is irrelevant — USC is the national champ.

Trojan defensive end Omar Nazel agrees:

“Everybody knows who the people’s champion is — and that’s the USC Trojans, baby,” Nazel said.

Hell yeah!

And then there’s this: “It would be great to play Oklahoma next week,” said Nazel, “but I don’t think they’d really want to see us.”

Heh. Indeed. Coach Carroll wouldn’t mind playing that game, either: “I’d love to play the Sugar Bowl winner next week. We don’t get to, but we sure would like to.”

Associated Press sports columnist Jim Litke notes:

Anybody who still wants to defend the Bowl Championship Series should remember this: The one person in the Rose Bowl who knew better than anyone how good USC really is, Wolverine coach Lloyd Carr, won’t even be allowed to put the Trojans at No. 1 when he casts his final vote in the coaches’ poll this season.

“I think USC is very deserving,” he said after Michigan absorbed a 28-14 beating, its worst of the season. “You can make me an honorary member.”

Coaches’ revolt, anyone?

UPDATE: Oh, and for all those LSU and Ohio State fans who questioned USC’s defense… can you say nine sacks???

And for those who said USC’s offense only looked potent because the Trojans played a weak schedule, can you say four TD passes against a Michigan defense that had previously given up only five all year???

Yeah, I thought so, bizzatch.

Go Trojans! WE’RE #1! WE’RE #1! WE’RE #1!

By the way, USCTrojans.com is all over this, of course. Including a photo gallery

As you can tell from the timestamps on the posts below, the usually reliable e-mail system that allows me to post via cell phone evidently had a major hiccup this evening, causing my four Rose Bowl Moblog posts to appear between 10:50 PM and 10:59 PM, even though they were actually posted much earlier in the evening.

Oh, well.

I don’t have any way of reconstructing the “correct” time of the posts, but I’ve made a few slight changes to their timing, so they are at least in the correct order.

The Rose Bowl is underway! Stay tuned for possible audio posts from the Rose Bowl. I have recruited Chris and Andrew as BrendanLoy.com Pasadena Correspondents. :)

UPDATE: Touchdown Colbert! 7-0 USC!

UPDATE: Trojans just got robbed of a second Colbert touchdown. He caught it, fumbled it, and recovered it in the end zone, but instead it was ruled an incomplete pass. And then, to make matters worse, Killeen missed the field goal. So it’s still 7-0.

HALFTIME UPDATE: 14-0 Trojans!

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Colbert scored again… 21-0 USC! Can you say “#1″? :)

We’re heading back to the hotel now, so any updates for the next little while will have to be mobile.

Well, yesterday was an interesting day for me, to say the least. I made several visits to the porcelain goddess (for the uninitiated, that means I barfed), and I nearly fainted on the subway en route to picking up Becky at the airport. Once Becky arrived, she did a great job taking care of me, and I pretty much spent New Year’s Eve lying in bed, drinking lots of water and ginger ale and Sprite.

Today, I’m feeling considerably better… but not quite well enough to risk another subway ride, yet. :) So instead of going to that USC alumni club gathering at the sports bar in Arlington, I’m taking it easy and watching the Rose Bowl at Becky’s Uncle Rick & Aunt Evelyn’s place.

Tonight at midnight, Saturn will make its closest approach to Earth for the next 29 years.

Granted, this is nothing compared to Mars’s closest-in-60,000-years approach back in August. But it’s cool that this planetary encounter coincides so neatly with the start of the new year!

Making the scene even more worth seeing is the current angle of Saturn’s rings, which is perfect for a “beautiful, breathtaking, jaw-dropping” view through even a small telescope, according to SpaceWeather.com.

First it was the Christmas conjunction, and now Saturn is “ringing” in the new year. What heavenly holidays! :)

One more thing before I hit the road…

Fight on Trojans!!!

Beat the Wolverines!!!

The once and future president, Tim Stevens, has finally started blogging!! Check out his first three posts: 1, 2, 3.

Also, Kristy has posted some fun pictures over on the SHA girl blog.

I just saw Return of the King for the third time, but alas, I’m still not going to have time to write my comprehensive review yet. I’m leaving for New York in an hour or two, and then boarding a Greyhound bus bound for D.C. at 7:00 AM tomorrow. It looks like writing this review is going to fall into the “New Year’s Resolution” category. :)

Don’t expect too much non-mobile posting in the coming days. I will have my laptop with me in D.C., but given that I’m been feeling rather feverish (flu-ish?) for the last 24 hours or so, it may well be that my free time will be mostly spent lying in bed trying to feel better rather than blogging up a storm. Of course, those things could go together, I suppose. But, on a more optimistic note, hopefully I’ll be feeling better and will be romping around the town seeing the D.C. sights. We shall see. Either way, I expect I’ll be mostly Moblogging.

My New Year’s plans, at the moment, involve watching the ball drop on TV from the comfort of a hotel room, then going to the USC alumni club gathering the next day and watching the Rose Bowl. After that, the week and weekend will be mostly given over to family-related stuff — Becky’s cousin is getting married, and that is, after all, the whole reason we’re going to D.C. in the first place.

Happy New Year!

I’m blogging from our newly installed WebTV (a.k.a. MSN-TV) system in the NYC apartment, to test whether it is possible to do so.

We had a very nice Dec. 29 Christmas, presided over by a live image of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Ah, technology. :)

Getting ready for my family’s rescheduled Christmas tomorrow, I ran into a problem: we don’t have a Christmas tree in the apartment, and the only working holiday lights here are the nine artificial candles on my mom’s menorah. So, what does a Christmas-lights fanatic do in such a situation? He improvises:

Yes, that is an image of a Christmas tree on our television screen — this image, in fact, of Becky’s and my outdoor tree, displayed from this website using our newly installed WebTV system — and yes, those are real presents underneath the virtual tree. :)

The aforementioned menorah is on top of the TV, as you can see, with my dad’s as-yet-unopened Hanukkah gifts next to it. And of course, there are plenty of stuffed animals looking on, as with any major Loomer-Loy family event. In fact, there are at least a dozen more stuffies not visible in the picture, also participating in the festivities.

The setup is actually quite nice… surprisingly Christmasy.

Merry Christmas! :)

UPDATE: I forgot to make note of the Christmas stocking hanging from the TV antenna. Like I said… improvisation. :) “The stockings were hung by the TV with care…”

This is a family website… but, hehe.

The Arizona Cardinals (4-12) clinched a playoff spot Sunday… for the Green Bay Packers.

A miracle fourth-and-25 play as time expired gave Arizona a 18-17 win over Minnesota, eliminating the Vikings from the playoffs and handing their spot to Green Bay.

This undoubtedly infuriated countless winter-only Arizonans from Minnesota, while simultaneously delighting countless winter-only Arizonans from Wisconsin. :)