The NCAA women’s soccer national championship between USC and Florida State is underway, live on ESPN2, and the Women of Troy lead the Seminoles, 1-0 with 30 minutes left.

UPDATE: 2-0 USC with five minutes left!!

UPDATE 2: WOOHOO!!! The USC Women of Troy are your 2007 national champions!!!

P.S. In other news, the USC women’s volleyball team upset Texas on Saturday to earn a spot in the Final Four. Nice!

Julie Moffitt, the former SoCal VoCals singer (most memorably the amazing soloist on Total Eclipse of the Heart for the better part of four years), now has a budding independent music career — here’s her MySpace page — and last weekend, she was in Austin, Texas for the finals of FameCast, an online reality-show music competition thingy that awards $10,000 to the winner.

Julie writes all about the FameCast experience on her blog. She says that after two years of keeping herself grounded even as the gigs and the money have gotten better, her experience with a “total rock star lifestyle,” courtesy of FameCast, has her “hooked.” Heh.

Anyway, Julie is one of five finalists in the singer-songwriter category, and now it’s up to the online audience to decide whether she wins the big bucks. So, for those willing to help a Trojan out (or just interested in listening to some good music), here’s the link where you can watch Julie’s performance and vote for her! (You have to register before you can vote. It’s free.)

I particularly like the second song she does; it shows off her ability to really let loose and belt out the music with the same sexy, sultry edge that made her version of Total Eclipse such a highlight of the VoCals’ repertoire when we were at ‘SC.

The photo at the top of this post, by the way, is one that I took in 2002 when I was tailing the VoCals around the Bay Area for a photojournalism assignment that eventually also spawned a Daily Trojan article. Julie loved the picture and asked me to make her a copy, but I promptly lost the negatives, and only found them again just recently while going through old photo boxes. So, I have now finally sent her that copy she asked for, a mere five years late. ;)

UPDATE: Julie’s very excited to finally have that photo. She even blogged about it: “There was one photo in particular that I fell in love with, but somewhere along the way, it was lost, and though Brendan and I spent months trying to find it, eventually I had to give up and hope that one day I could recreate the shot. Until a few minutes ago, when I received an email containing [it] … Thank you Brendan!!” You’re welcome, Julie!

P.S. Julie isn’t the only SoCal VoCal from that era who is enjoying musical success. My other favorite VoCal alum, Bryce Ryness, is in a band, and last year he played Roger in the national tour of Rent. Oh yeah, and he’s married to fellow ex-VoCal Meredith.

…in women’s soccer, that is. On ESPN2 right now, Notre Dame is playing Florida State in the first semifinal — and with just over 22 minutes left in the second half, it’s tied 2-2.

Up next? USC vs. UCLA, in the second national semifinal. Alas, that game is on ESPNU, not ESPN2.

Go Irish! Go Trojans!

UPDATE: Seminoles win, 3-2. So there will be no USC-Notre Dame title game. :(

UPDATE 2: USC stuns top-ranked fUCLA!! Woohoo!!!

The win broke a nine-game USC losing streak against the Bruins. Nice timing, ladies!! It also ended UCLA’s overall 17-game winning streak, which dated back to mid-September.

So the tournament of surprises will end with a most unlikely pairing: the USC Trojans Women of Troy, ranked #9 in the final regular-season coaches poll, against the #14-ranked Florida State Seminoles in the national championship game, Sunday at 2:00 PM on ESPN2.

Fight on!! Stop the chop!!

For the first time in history, a sophomore will win the Heisman tomorrow night. The finalists are Florida’s Tim Tebow, Arkansas’s Darren McFadden, Missouri’s Chase Daniel and Hawaii’s Colt Brennan, but the result is already a foregone conclusion: Tebow will win, according to StiffArmTrophy.com, which tabulates actual declared ballots, and has never been wrong.

In other Heisman-related news, sports writers Don Jaeger and Jim Henry are releasing a book in January called “Tarnished Heisman,” containing transcripts of conversations of Reggie Bush supposedly “acknowledging he owed money” to his would-be New Era agents. The upshot is that, at the least, Bush could lose his Heisman if the transcripts are taken seriously. As always, Yahoo! Sports is at the forefront of reporting this story, though their headline is oddly uninformative and actually kind of funny: “Bush hit with book.” I have this mental picture of somebody whacking Reggie over the head with a Harry Potter book or something. Heh.

UPDATE: James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal had a slightly different take, prefacing its reference to the headline “Bush hit with book” by quipping, “That Laura Sure Can Throw.” Heh.

I wonder which book Bush was hit with?

ESPN’s Irish Trojan doubleheader at Madison Square Garden, a.k.a. the Jimmy V Classic, is going well for the good guys so far. Notre Dame leads Kansas State, 59-53, with four minutes left. Luke Harangody is more than holding his own against the Wildcats’ much-hyped Michael Beasley, with 19 points and 14 rebounds to Beasley’s 17 and 11.

After ND and KSU finish up, it’s USC vs. #2 Memphis and O.J. Mayo against Derrick Rose.

UPDATE: Irish win, 68-59! Kyle McAlarney finished with 18 points, including a clutch three-pointer from the top of the key with a couple of minutes left that essentially sealed the win.

UPDATE 2: At halftime, it’s 29-24 Trojans. Nice!

UPDATE 3: OVERTIME! Daniel Hackett missed a free throw that would have put USC up 1 with 5.9 seconds left… and Taj Gibson has fouled out, so overtime may not be in our favor here.

UPDATE 4: Memphis survives, 62-58 in OT. It was a sloppy game all around, but with a lot of good defense. Nice effort by the Trojans, who lose their second down-to-the-wire decision against a Top 4 opponent in the last 72 hours. If only Hackett had hit that foul shot…

What with all the football madness on Saturday, extending into Sunday as the BCS rankings and pairings were announced, I totally forgot about the big USC-Kansas basketball game yesterday. Well, the Trojans lost, but it was a close game — a 59-55 thriller won by the #4-ranked Jayhawks thanks to Mario Chalmers’s late heroics.

Up next: a battle between my Trojans and Jay’s Tigers. That’s right, USC is at #2-ranked Memphis tomorrow night at 9:00 on ESPN. Fight on! Better yet, the game is preceded by Notre Dame-Kansas State at 7:00 PM, also on ESPN. It’s an Irish Trojan doubleheader!

UCLA’s embattled controversial godawful head coach will reportedly be fired this week.

Trojan Nation will miss him dearly. We do appreciate the free touchdown he gave us as a parting gift on Saturday, though. Thanks for the memories, Coach Dorrell!

Here are the final BCS standings, and here is the bowl schedule.

As expected, it’s LSU-tOSU for the Mythical National Championship — a moniker that I’m adopting for this season without a champion — in New Orleans on January 7.

Also in New Orleans, it’ll be Georgia-Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl. If the undefeated Warriors beat the #5-ranked Bulldogs (which I seriously doubt they will, but if they do), they should win the AP championship. (”Should” as in “it would be just,” not as in “I predict it would happen.” No, definitely not the latter.)

Possibly holding a more realistic chance of capturing the AP championship is Oklahoma, which will face West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl. SMQ writes that OU has “a distant chance to challenge LSU for a split title in the AP ballot if the respective margins of victory work in the Sooners’ favor.” But good lord, if LSU were forced to share another national championship, their fans would be insufferable. It’s the opposite scenario — LSU winning an AP title, but not a BCS title — that would have been delicious; a repeat of 2003-04 would just be annoying. I doubt it will happen, though, in any event. 96 points is a lot to make up.

In the Orange Bowl, Virginia Tech will play Kansas. Yes, Kansas got the last at-large bid (not counting the automatic at-large, Hawaii). Sorry, Arizona State. Whether or not it’s because the BCS hates the Pac-10, the fact is that the Sun Devils are going to the Holiday Bowl to play Texas. Also on the outside looking in: two-loss, #6-ranked Missouri, which came into the season’s final weekend ranked #1 in the land, then fell all the way to the Cotton Bowl (vs. Arkansas) with its loss in the Big 12 title game. Is it fair that #13-ranked Illinois and #8-ranked Kansas got into the BCS ahead of #6-ranked Missouri, which beat both of those teams? No, of course it’s not, but then, nobody ever promised “fairness” when it comes to the non-title-game BCS bowls. And hey, Chase Daniel vs. Darren McFadden? I’ll watch that game. Er, if I’m not in the hospital on New Year’s Day with a laboring wife or a crying newborn, that is.

But anyway, enough of all that, let’s talk about the Grandaddy of Them All.

The Rose Bowl, for the first time ever, will feature USC and Illinois. I know some Trojans are underwhelmed by this matchup, especially considering the more compelling possibilities we thought we might see, like USC-Ohio State or USC-Georgia. Personally, though, I’m excited. My mom went to Illinois, as did my friend Dmytro, so this will be a good opportunity for some friendly and familial trash-talking. Plus, the Illini and their fans will undoubtedly be very excited about their fifth-ever Rose Bowl (and first since 1984), so it’ll be especially fun to squash their dreams like a little bug. :) As for Ohio State: we’ll get ‘em next year.

Fight on, Trojans!! Beat the Illini!!

On ESPN, they’re talking a lot about the Trojans. Kirk Herbstreit thinks either LSU or USC should be #2. Jesse Palmer thinks the debate should be between LSU, USC and Oklahoma.

Y’all know I’m a Trojan fan, but I’m not seeing it. If you’re ranking on resume, well, the Trojans have the worst loss of the bunch (at home to Stanford), and not enough quality wins to make up for it (at 10-2 ASU and… um… vs. 8-4 Oregon State? at 6-6 Cal?). If you’re ranking based on “who’s playing hot now,” you can make a case for the Trojans, but you can make a better case for Georgia. “But Georgia didn’t even win its division!” you say. That’s true, but now we’re talking about resumes again. And as soon as you start talking about resumes, you have to talk about USC’s loss to Stanford. And anyway you have to talk about resumes. It’s intellectually bankrupt to focus exclusively on “who’s playing hot now” while ignoring resumes. By that logic, you could potentially have a three-loss or four-loss team ranked ahead of an undefeated or one-loss team. You have to consider resumes as a significant part of your calculus, and I just don’t see how USC has a serious case.

That said, I’m certainly not going to be jumping up and down about the injustice of it all if USC somehow sneaks into the title game. Frankly, no one “deserves” to be ranked #2 at this point. All of the contenders are massively flawed. I think the team with potentially the best argument is the one with no chance at all: Hawaii. And they’re losing 21-0 to Washington right now, so never mind.

P.S. On SportsCenter, Pete Carroll made the injury argument: they’re healthy now, they weren’t healthy earlier in the season, they’re the best team in the country when they’re healthy. That might be true, but by that logic, why not put Oregon in the title game? They were the second-best team in the country when they were healthy! I know, I know: they’re not healthy now, whereas USC is healthy now. But I’m deeply uncomfortable with this line of reasoning. If we go down this road of giving teams free passes because their losses occurred when they had injures, where does it end? Injuries, unfortunately, are part of the game. If you suffer too many of them, if you’re not deep enough to withstand them, if your coaches can’t game-plan around them, you suffer the consequences. You don’t get a mulligan. Playoff opponents constantly say that “the regular season is the playoff.” If we can discount USC’s losses, particularly the loss to Stanford — Stanford!! — because Booty’s finger was broken, well then, that argument is utterly exposed as completely bankrupt. If the regular season is the playoff, there is no conceivable way USC can go to the BCS title game.

P.P.S. West Virginia was the #2 team in the land until Pat White got injured tonight. Presumably, he’ll be healthy by January 7. So, by Pete Carroll’s logic, why not put the Mountaineers in the title game??

Because there’s no crying in baseball, and there are no mulligans in football, that’s why.

UPDATE: ESPN just had a graphic showing how many wins each contender has over teams with winning records. Virginia Tech has 6; Georgia, LSU, Ohio State and Oklahoma all have 5. You know how many USC has? 2. Two. Same as Kansas. And they have a loss to Stanford to boot, by far the worst loss of the bunch. How can anyone possibly argue with a straight face, in light of those facts, that they deserve the #2 spot ahead of their competitors? I hate to argue with such vehemence against my own team, but I’m sorry, there is just no legitimate case for putting USC in the title game. A big win over a slightly suspect ASU team does not a whole season make, not when other teams in the running have their own impressive wins, and more of ‘em. Frankly, what is Kirk Herbstreit smoking?

The Rose Bowl t-shirts!!! Mooooore money!!!

Six Pac-10 titles in a row. Woooo!!!

So… which car flag should Mike buy? ;)

UPDATE: A couple of pictures from the game, courtesy of the L.A. Times:

Barring a late turnover returned for a USC touchdown, it looks like Vicki Lopez will once again lose a BrendanLoy.com contest after heading into the final event with the lead. The current USC margin of 17 points would make Sean Sullivan the winner of the USC prediction contest; Lopez would finish second. UCLA has the ball deep in their own territory with less than three minutes left.

UPDATE: UCLA punts it away, and USC has the ball near midfield with 1:44 left. You have to think the Trojans won’t be too aggressive with their play-calling, so it looks like UCLA will beat the spread and Sullivan will win the pool.

UPDATE 2: Yup. USC 24, UCLA 7, final. Congrats, Sean!

They’re underway at the Coliseum.

They’re also underway in the SEC title game, and Tennessee leads LSU 7-6 late in the first quarter.

In the ACC, Virginia Tech beat BC, which virtually guarantees that Illinois will be eligible for a BCS at-large berth, and also helps Hawaii significantly. The only threat to the Warriors reaching the Top 12 now, assuming they beat Washington, is if Arizona State and Tennessee both leapfrog them in the BCS standings. (And even that might be okay, because if Tennessee wins, LSU might fall behind Hawaii.)

UPDATE: Trojans lead 17-7 at halftime. USC dominated the first half, but UCLA drove down the field in the final seconds to make it a ballgame. Dammit.

UPDATE 2: And at the start of the fourth quarter, Tennessee leads LSU, 14-13. If the Vols win, the Tigers won’t go to the BCS at all, as UT and Georgia will take the SEC’s two spots. Likewise, if Missouri loses to Oklahoma tonight, those Tigers will likely fall out of the BCS altogether as well, as Lex icon explains. So the last two teams ranked #1 in the regular season could both be left out of the big-money bowls! How crazy is that?

As crazy as everything else that’s happened this season, I suppose.

UPDATE 3: Trojans looking like crap. This is, like, the opposite of Pete Carroll Second-Half Magic^TM. Still 17-7.

UPDATE 4: HAHAHAHA!!! Karl Dorrell sucks!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!! USC 24, UCLA 7, with 12 minutes to go.

For those who missed it: the Bruins had the Trojans stopped near the goal line (I have to think even Pete Carroll would have gone for the field goal), but when faced with a choice of whether to decline a holding penalty and take their chances with 4th and goal from the 2, or accept the penalty and give the Trojans another shot at 3rd and goal from the 12, Dorrell inexplicably chose the latter, USC predictably marched right in for a touchdown, and I’ll be mighty surprised if Dan Guerrero isn’t calling a press conference to fire Dorrell at this very moment.

UPDATE 5: Meanwhile, Erik Ainge probably just threw away Tennessee’s shot at the SEC title. An interception inside the LSU 5 yard line, and LSU has the ball, up by 7, with 2 minutes left. This after an earlier pick-6 gave LSU the lead.

UPDATE 6: LSU wins. The Tigers are going to the Sugar Bowl (barring a trip to the title game if chaos strikes later tonight), where they will almost certainly play Hawaii, if the Warriors beat Washington. With Tennessee losing, there is no way an undefeated Hawaii gets excluded from the BCS.

Virginia Tech is effectively eliminated from any national-title hopes, and Georgia’s chances are severely hurt. If Missouri and West Virginia both lose tonight, you have to believe LSU gets the nod over Virginia Tech (which it crushed earlier this season) and over Georgia (a fellow two-loss team from the same conference that didn’t even win its own division, whereas LSU won the conference). But it would be a debate among LSU, Georgia, Oklahoma and Kansas. Virginia Tech wouldn’t even be in the discussion, IMHO, because of that loss to LSU. Nor would USC, not with the worst loss of the bunch.

Needless to say, it’s a huge Saturday in college football, with championships to be decided in the SEC, Big 12, ACC, Pac-10, MAC, C-USA and Sun Belt… plus Hawaii (and maybe BYU??) playing for a BCS bid… plus West Virginia and Missouri each playing for a spot in the BCS title game, with Ohio State waiting in the wings if one falters, and the tantalizing prospect of mass chaos looming if they both falter… plus Chase Daniel, Matt Ryan, Pat White and Colt Brennan making their final Heisman arguments (although truthfully, Tim Tebow’s probably already got it wrapped up, but maybe Daniel could catch Darren McFadden for second place with a big game today)… plus Florida International, against 2-9 North Texas, trying to avoid going winless for the second straight year… oh yeah, and there’s also Army-Navy… and the Big Game… and the Civil War… and the Territorial Cup… and I heard a couple of schools in L.A. might be playing a game too. ;) Here’s the schedule, and here’s the TV listings.

Alas, I don’t anticipate having too much time to blog about it all. So I’m posting this open thread, Daily Kos-style, to give y’all a place to comment on the day’s action, at least until I post something else (or a guestblogger beats me to the punch).

Oh, and one more thing:

FIGHT ON, TROJANS!!! BEAT THE BRUINS!!!!!

As some of you have doubtless noticed, I haven’t actually gotten around to posting an official update on the USC and Notre Dame prediction contests… all season long. Um, yeah, sorry about that!

Luckily, commenter and contestant Ken Stern has posted several unofficial updates, most recently on November 11… and if that update was correct (and I have no reason to believe otherwise, indeed my spot-checking confirms his calculations), two contestants — Sean Sullivan and Vicki Lopez — remain alive to win the USC pool, with the outcome to be decided by tomorrow’s USC-UCLA game.

Sullivan and Lopez are among 13 contestants with 9-2 prediction records, but they have the lowest “point differentials” of the bunch, meaning they have come the closest to picking USC’s margin of victory or defeat in each game. Lopez is a total of 104 points off to date, while Sullivan is a total of 106 points off. Sullivan picked USC to beat UCLA by 17; Lopez picked the Trojans to win by 27. That means Sullivan will win if USC either loses or wins by 20 points or less; Lopez will win if the Trojans win by 22 or more. If USC wins by exactly 21 points, they would finish tied, with identical point differentials of 110 and no further tiebreakers to separate them.

Interestingly enough, with the point spread set at 20 by most oddsmakers, the prediction contest almost literally comes down to a question of whether the Trojans cover. If they don’t, Sullivan wins. If they do, Lopez wins, unless they win by exactly 20 (Sullivan still wins) or by 21 (it’s a tie).

Anyway, the big question is, can Lopez (a.k.a. “Vicki from NJ”) finally win a BrendanLoy.com contest? Three times — in the 2005 and 2006 Oscar pools and the 2006 women’s NCAA pool — she has been in position to win heading into the final event of a contest, only to lose at the wire. Can the Trojans win big, and break the “Lopez Curse” tomorrow? :)

In the Notre Dame pool, by the way, Sandy Underpants won, clinching early and never looking back even as he went 1-3 through the last four games of the season. He correctly predicted that the Irish would go 3-9, but he managed to get four games wrong along the way (he thought they’d lose to UCLA and Stanford, but beat Navy and Air Force) to finish with an 8-4 prediction record. That was better than anyone else, though. Andrew Long and Ken Stern, who both thought the Irish would 6-6, tied for second with 7-5 prediction records (both missed the Michigan State, Purdue, UCLA, Navy and Air Force games); Stern finished second on the basis of a lower point differential (183 to 197). No one else got fewer than six games wrong.

I’ll try to post full, official standings of both pools at some point. Maybe by the time the baby starts kindergarten. :)

Karl Dorrell is begging for one more year as UCLA’s head coach. In the course of making his case, he says this: "I hate to say it, but the guy who was before me screwed it up for me. And I had to clean it up and then rebuild." That’s right, folks, Dorrell is blaming Bob Toledo, who was fired in 2002, for the Bruins’ continued woes. And you thought the Notre Dame fans still blaming Ty Willingham were bad!! And this is coming from Dorrell himself!! LOL!! Way to take responsibility. You stay classy, Coach Dorrell.

More good stuff at DumpDorrell.com.

Alas, while I personally would love to see Dorrell stick around as UCLA’s coach forever, I’m afraid it is USC’s sad duty to dispense with him once and for all tomorrow. Ah, well — it’ll be well worth it, of course, not just for the Rose Bowl bid, not just for the win over our hated rival, but also for the pictures of Mike Tran driving around L.A. in his sweet Trojanmobile on Rose Bowl day.

BEAT THE BRUINS!!!

P.S. I checked the Bruins’ roster, and in case anyone was wondering, no, UCLA does not have any sixth-year seniors, so Dorrell can’t say he’s still playing with Toledo’s recruits. ;)