17-7!

The President rocks!

96-yard punt return for the Bruins… it’s 10-7.

UGH: Ugh. Blocked punt… UCLA ball deep in Trojan territory.

But hey, they got a defensive stop… Bruins will have to settle for the field goal.

MISSED IT! Still 10-7! Way to blow your big opportunity, UCLA!

A 65-yard touchdown for Reggie Bush!!! Trojans lead, 7-0, 58 seconds into the game!!!

P.S. High up in the hills of Westwood
Sprawled offensive to the eye
Lies a Cal extension campus
Known as Westwood High (high high high)
Home of all the Bruin bearcubs
UGLY is its name
The student body’s vile
The football team’s a pile
and the campus is a shame!

U (clap clap clap)
G (clap clap clap)
L (clap clap clap)
Y (clap clap clap)
U G L Y
Eat My Shorts!

:)

UPDATE: 10-0!

It all comes down to this: the USC Trojans vs. the UCLA Bruins at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. With a win, the Trojans complete their undefeated regular season and their wire-to-wire run as the #1 team in the country, and clinch a berth in the national-championship Orange Bowl. Kickoff is just a few minutes away!

I have a friendly wager on this game with my friend and fellow Notre Dame 1L Mike, who went to UCLA for undergrad. We bet $10 on the spread as of last week, when it was Trojans by 22. So I need USC win by at least 23. C’mon guys, you can do it! :)

While Mike is rooting for his Bruins to win (or at least beat the spread), some UCLA students are not so loyal. Witness this “Email of the Day” on Matt Leinart’s blog:

It’s quite hard to root for my Bruins when I have such respect for you as a quarterback. My friend and I always talk about how great the USC football team is. I guess no one can really blame us when USC is loaded with talent. But anyways, the point of this is to just…wish you good luck against us on Saturday, if that means anything. At the Rose Bowl on Saturday, I’ll be cheering for you on the inside while I do the eight-clap on the outside. And shh… let’s keep this thing to ourselves.

Treasonous Bruins for USC! I love it!

I’m not sure if I’ll be watching the whole game at my apartment, or eventually heading over to Steven’s (my fellow Irish Trojan), or Mike’s, or the FOG lounge. So updates may be sporadic, or they may not… we shall see. Regardless…

FIGHT ON TROJANS!!! BEAT F**K THE BRUINS!!!

Brad Edwards has an excellent column about this weekend’s BCS scenarios. Key excerpt:

And for those who are wondering about Armageddon scenarios on Saturday, here’s my best guess as to what would happen if the roof caves in on the top of the BCS Standings.

If USC is the only team that survives the weekend undefeated, assuming Cal also wins, I see the Trojans and Bears having a rematch for the national title. If SC loses, along with either Oklahoma or Auburn, I think Texas would gain points in both the computers and polls and would be the opponent of the lone survivor in the FedEx Orange Bowl.

And then there’s everyone’s favorite question: What if they all lose? For starters, I think Auburn would be out of the championship mix. The participants in the title game would probably be determined by the order of the polls, although the Big 12 teams would likely get the boost from the computers if the voting was close. Here’s the tough part for the voters. Do you drop USC behind Cal, which lost to the Trojans on the field? Do you drop Oklahoma behind Texas, which lost to the Sooners on the field?

I don’t even know how I would answer those questions, much less how the voters would handle that situation. But regardless of what they came up with, it would surely go down as one of the most memorable weekends in college football history.

2002: USC 44, Notre Dame 13
2003: USC 45, Notre Dame 14
2004: USC 41, Notre Dame 10

‘Nuff said.

P.S. Leinart for Heisman!!!

Five minutes into the second half, still 17-10 Trojans, and they’re driving in Irish territory. Go ‘SC!

UPDATE: Now 20-10.

GO BUSH! 27-10 USC!!! Bush for President! :)

NA-NA-NA-NA, HEY, HEY, HEY, GOODBYE: 34-10!!! (with 12:27 left in the game)

P.S. For the last two consecutive years, USC has defeated Notre Dame by exactly 31 points. They won 44-13 in 2002 and 45-14 in 2003. One more touchdown would do the trick again this year, 41-10. :)

In the mean time, the next time I hear “Conquest,” I’m officially looking ahead to next week and yelling, “BEAT THE BRUINS!!!”

TOUCHDOWN! It’s USC by 31! Again!

The Trojans are looking like crap thus far against the Fighting Irish. Notre Dame leads, 10-3, with ten minutes left in the first half. But hey, USC is a second-half team, right? They’d better be… if ND pulls the upset, I’ll never hear the end of it from my friends at school.

UPDATE: 10-10 now. That’s a bit better.

EVEN BETTER: 17-10 Trojans!

HALFTIME: Still USC by seven. They’re lucky to be ahead. Fight on! (Start playing better!)

END OF THIS POST: More updates above.

Ara is gone, and Dan was Devine
But Carroll’s boys will kick Ty’s behind!
When the Irish take the field,
Their blood runs cold and they get killed.
Their golden dome is made out of brass
Their marching band just sits on its ass
And the leprechaun is queer
In heaven there is no beer.

:)

And now, some great publicity for USC… :)

I’m two days late in pointing this out, but Saturday was the fifth anniversary of USC’s win over UCLA in 1999 — the game that broke the Trojans’ eight-year losing streak against the Bruins, started a five-year (and counting) winning streak, and gave me my first real taste of a big-time college football victory. (It also probably extended the Hackett Era by one additional, miserable season, but never mind that now. We’re in the Carroll Era, which is so glorious that the Hackett Era is like a distant memory.)

What a game it was. We cheered, we yelled, we rushed the field. In a word — okay, in two words — it was freakin’ awesome.

That’s Jeff and Jenny, fellow Trojan Hallers that year. I absolutely love that photo — always have — even though it’s crappy quality by my current standards (those were the days of my 0.3-megapixel Mavica). I remember standing on the field, taking that picture, seeing it on the LCD screen, and immediately feeling that it was literally the perfect shot, that I couldn’t possibly hope for anything better — and so, quite uncharacteristcally, I put my camera away for a couple of minutes and just started celebrating with everybody else. :)

More Trojan-Bruin photos here… and, if you’re feeling nostalgic, more USC freshman-year photos from Fall 1999 here.

P.S. How does it compare to my other most awesome big-game-winning, field-rushing football experience, earlier this fall? I dunno, that’s a tough call. Unlike USC over UCLA, Notre Dame over Michigan was a huge upset as well as a huge rivalry win… and Notre Dame is definitely more intense about its football than USC (sorry fellow Trojans, but it’s true). But at the same time, USC-UCLA ‘99 was my first, which automatically makes it special… sort of like my field-rushing de-virginization. :) And besides, I hate UCLA way more than I hate Michigan.

Breaking News: ESPN College Gameday, which had never been to a USC game at the Coliseum before this year, is returning for the second time in less than two months next Saturday for the Notre Dame game!

Despite the Irish’s mediocre record, I thought Corso & co. might end up in L.A. for this one. It is the nation’s greatest intersectional rivalry, after all… the Trojans are #1 in the country… and it was either USC-ND or Virginia-Virginia Tech, a matchup which, despite its ACC implications, doesn’t exactly get anyone outside the Old Dominion State terribly excited. (The only other marquee game of the week, Texas vs. Texas A&M, is on Friday, not Saturday.)

I will not be flying out there this time, however. :) I’ll be in Connecticut with Becky.

P.S. This is also the second time this year Gameday has been to a Notre Dame game… but both have been on the road. They were planning to come to South Bend for the Michigan game, but shifted gears after the Irish lost to BYU — a big mistake, as Notre Dame ended up beating the Wolverines in the biggest upset of that weekend. In a feeble attempt to make up for disrespecting the Irish, the Gameday crew went to East Lansing for the ND-MSU game the following week… which was something of a yawner, as it turned out.

Fraternity Row at USC was hit by a bomb scare Thursday evening.

BrendanLoy.com’s favorite SI guy, Arash Markazi, wants to see the Trojans play the Sooners on Jan. 4, and he thinks Auburn’s fans should stop whining:

As much as the Tigers would be slighted if they go undefeated and are left out of the Orange Bowl, they aren’t going to get much sympathy from USC. Compared to the Trojans’ snub last season — being locked out of the national title game as the consensus No. 1 team — Auburn’s slight seems laughable.

Via e-mail, Arash says he’s “already had over 100 ‘War Eagle’ crazy Auburn fans e-mailing me and telling me what I can do with my thoughts.” Heh.

Obviously I’m not as passionate as those folks about the issue, but I gotta say, I actually disagree with Arash here. Lest we forget, the Trojans were a one-loss team last year; they could have avoided being snubbed simply by winning all their games (i.e., by beating Cal). That automatically gives them somewhat less right to complain. Auburn, on the other hand, is en route to being snubbed as an undefeated team. There isn’t anything they could have done better during the season (assuming they win out, of course). They, like the other undefeateds, clearly deserve a shot, at least, at the national title. That they might be denied such a shot is an inherently bigger problem, in my view, than a one-loss team being snubbed. And it certainly isn’t “laughable.”

I can’t disagree with Arash about this, though:

For nearly two years, college football fans have been salivating over a possible USC-Oklahoma meeting in the national championship game. It’s the sport’s lone marquee matchup and would litter the field with superstar players and coaches on both sides of the field.

It’s Pete Carroll vs. Bob Stoops, Matt Leinart vs. Jason White, Reggie Bush vs. Adrian Peterson, Shaun Cody vs. Dan Cody, Matt Grootegoed vs. Lance Mitchell. …

We finally have the national championship game we’ve been hoping for since Week 1. It’s USC. It’s Oklahoma. It’s perfect.

True… but as to that last paragraph… whoa, whoa, knock on wood, dude! We still gotta win two more games!! Beat the Irish!! Beat the Bruins!! Then beat the Sooners!!

UPDATE: Here’s an example of the anti-Arash vitriol on at least one Auburn fan site. BrendanLoy.com is mentioned.

We weren’t wrong: The refs did suck. So says Ty (sort of).

Also:

The Irish were drubbed by USC last year at home, 45-14. The scary part is that Willingham thinks the No. 1 Trojans might be better than that team.

“In many regards, they’re better, and there are probably some areas they’re learning and growing, and there are probably some replacements and a little younger at some spots,” he said. “But overall I would say they’re a better team.”

True, but because Pete Carroll is a classy guy, the Irish needn’t worry; the Trojans won’t run up the score much beyond 44-13 or 45-14. My prediction? 52-10. :)