Without playing a game this weekend, USC moved into the Top 10 in both the Associated Press and Coaches’ polls. The Trojans, who were ranked #11 in both polls last week, are now #10 in the AP poll and #9 in the Coaches’ poll.

They were able to leapfrog up the charts because previous AP #10 and Coaches #8 North Carolina State lost Saturday and fell to #14 and #13, respectively, in the two polls. In addition, Notre Dame fell from #6 to #10 in the Coaches’ poll after also losing Saturday. The new BCS standings come out tomorrow.

Half of college football’s undefeated teams lost Saturday. BCS #3 Notre Dame, #4 Georgia, #6 Virginia Tech and #9 N.C. State all bit the dust. That leaves #1 Oklahoma, #2 Miami and #5 (soon to be #3) Ohio State, along with BCS-unranked Bowling Green (#21 in the AP poll), as the nation’s remaining unbeatens.

This clarifies the BCS picture significantly. Among Oklahoma, Miami, and Ohio State, if just two teams remain unbeaten, those two will play in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship, and everything will be neat and tidy. If all three remain unbeaten, the Fiesta Bowl will feature Oklahoma against either Miami or Ohio State — whoever finishes higher in the BCS — with the “other” unbeaten team getting a chance to make its case for a split national championship by winning its bowl. (Could be Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, with the Pac-10 champ attempting to play spoiler.)

Speaking of the Pac-10, Washington State delivered a major setback to USC’s Rose Bowl hopes by defeating Arizona State 44-22 on Saturday. The Cougars now merely need to win 2 of their next 3 games to clinch the Pac-10 championship and a trip to Pasadena. The Trojans, on the other hand, must win all of their next three games, and root hard for Oregon, Washington, and (horror of horrors) UCLA against Washington State. Say it with me, fellow Trojans… GO BRUINS!!!!!!

In other football news, the Newington High School football team’s two-game winning streak was predictably — and, um, convincingly — snapped Friday by #1-ranked New Britain, which won by a final score of… 69-0. The Hurricanes registered more points than the Indians did yards rushing (42). But really, there’s no shame in it; New Britain is good. It’s sort of like UConn playing Miami: What do you expect? Anyway, hopefully the Indians (3-5) will have a better time next week against Platt (4-4), which lost last week to New Britain by a similar score of 70-7. A winning season is still mathematically possible, and Newington’s opponents get worse and worse from here on out. So let’s keep rooting and hoping. Go Indians!

USC’s football team almost cracked the Top 10 this week, rising to #11 in both the Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today polls. The Trojans (who were #15 and #16 in those polls, respectively, last week) are the highest-ranked team with two losses, and the second-highest-ranked Pac-10 team (behind #9 Washington State).

I get a 96th-percentile 167 on the LSATs, the Trojans crush the Ducks, and the Angels rally from a 5-0 seventh-inning deficit to force Game 7. What more could I ask for?

Well, an Arizona win over Washington State would be nice… it would help USC’s Rose Bowl hopes… and at halftime, incredibly, the Wildcats, winless thus far in the conference, are leading the #9-ranked Cougars 10-5! Click here for the most updated score and play-by-play.

UPDATE, 10:33 PM: Washington State unfortunately survived the scare from Arizona, winning 21-13. So the Cougars remain undefeated in the conference, and they need to lose 2 of their next 4 games in order for USC to have a chance of reaching the Rose Bowl.

USC’s football team caught Oregon on Saturday like a Duck in a noose.

The #15 Trojans beat the #14 Ducks, 44-33, and it wasn’t even that close. The Trojans dominated the second half, and led 44-19 until Oregon scored two garbage-time touchdowns. I think we can now consider the Oregon football billboard on Figueroa Street thoroughly avenged.

Oregon is virtually eliminated from the Pac-10 title hunt, but USC remains very much in the race. The Trojans just need to win their next three games — two of which are against teams that aren’t doing very well this season, Stanford and UCLA — and hope that Washington State loses two of its next five games. The Cougars still have to play Arizona (tonight), Arizona State, Oregon, Washington, and UCLA. (There is a possible scenario whereby USC would need to root for UCLA to beat Washington State to give the Trojans the conference title.)

Meanwhile, Game 6 of the World Series is tied 0-0 in the 3rd inning.

After dozens of busy signals, I finally got through to the LSAT score reporting line — and my score is 167, which puts me in the 96th percentile. That’s not quite Yale-worthy, but it puts me within striking distance of NYU and Columbia, and Georgetown is a definite possibility. I’m above the median score for Fordham, Boston College, George Washington, American U., and UConn.

Becky is proud of me. :)

Yay!

In other news, the USC-Oregon game looks like it’s going to be a hard-fought, see-saw affair. Trojans lead 14-13 with a few seconds left in the first quarter.

First things first: Newington High School’s football team beat Maloney 14-7 Friday night for their second consecutive win — the first time the Indians have done that since starting last season 3-0. (They finished the season 3-8.) This season, they are now 3-4 with four games remaining. (You must understand the context of this: the NHS football team won a grand total of three games the entire time I was in high school.)

Now, looking ahead to tomorrow…

The first big event occurs in less than six hours, at 7:00 AM Pacific time, when my LSAT score will become available by phone. Of course, I’ll undoubtedly be sleeping at 7:00 AM, so the big event will really occur when I bother to wake up, groggily grab a phone, and call. I’m hoping for mid-160s…

The second big event is the USC football team’s must-win game against Oregon at 12:30 PM Pacific time. (We need to catch the Ducks in a noose!) This game is crucial not only because the loser is effectively eliminated from winning the Pac-10, but also because Oregon’s athletic department had the unbelieveable audacity to paint a giant f***ing advertisement for Oregon football on the side of the Hotel Figueroa, just down the street from OUR campus!!! That’s what we call a declaration of war, my friends, and it means unequivocally that we MUST beat them. Let’s just hope Carson Palmer, Mike Williams & company will be weapons of mass destructions tomorrow in Eugene!

The third big event, of course, is Game Six of the World Series at 5:00 PM Pacific time in Anaheim. The Angels are trailing 3-2, seeking to repeat the home-field feat of the Diamondbacks last year, so they’re going to need some big-time help from the Rally Monkey (and perhaps a couple of their players… though really, I think the monkey can handle most of the hard work).

By the way, while we’re on the topic of the Angels, the funniest thing I read about the three games in San Francisco was that at one point, some Giants fans started chanting, “Beat L.A.! Beat L.A.!” A small group of Anaheim faithful correctly shouted back, “We’re not L.A.! We’re not L.A.!”

So, in conclusion… Wish me luck on my LSAT score, Fight on Trojans, and Believe in the Power of the Rally Monkey!

Oh yeah, one more news item: 4 days till I turn 21!!!

(Oh, you wanted real news? Well, the seige in Moscow ended, thank God; the Democrats are thinking about running Walter Mondale for Senate in place of the late Senator Wellstone; and the authorities are battling over who should get to put the snipers on trial first. Also, as friend and fellow blogger Andrew rightly points out, I have been remiss in not mentioning Hurricane Kenna on this site. Despite my usually intense interest in weather generally and hurricanes especially, I have been so consumed with sniper news that, frankly, I barely noticed it. But Kenna was a ferocious Category 5 storm at one point, and it has now made landfall in Mexico as a powerful Category 4.)

Hmm… now remind me again, why would a Trojan voluntarily become a Husky? :)

USC 41, Washington 21. Dave’s old school vanquishes Dave’s new school, and in convincing fashion. ‘Nuff said.

Actually, there is one more thing I need to say…

NYAH, NYAH, NYAH-NYAH, NYAH! :)

(Dave, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, is David Kreutz, my freshman-year roommate, briefly a member of the Trojan Marching Band who then transferred to Washington and joined the Husky Band. He returned to L.A. this weekend for the first time since leaving USC in May 2000.)

In other news, USC’s undefeated, #1-ranked women’s volleyball team beat UCLA, our #5-ranked men’s water polo team beat Cal Baptist, and our #12-ranked women’s soccer team beat Arizona State.

Oh, and the World Series starts tonight. Go Angels! Go Rally Monkey!

The #1-ranked USC women’s volleyball team won its 14th and 15th games in a row this weekend, sweeping the Oregon schools with consecutive 3-0 wins. Becky and I attended the first of these two wins, against Oregon State on Friday, and the Women of Troy definitely kicked butt.

And, oh yeah, we have football a team? Well, they won too, rallying from an early 21-3 deficit to beat Cal, 30-28, and stay alive in the Rose Bowl race. To make the day even sweeter, UCLA lost.

Next week, the Trojans face a virtual “elimination game” against Washington, which, like USC, has one Pac-10 loss. (Having two losses makes it virtually impossible to win the conference.) The stakes in the Trojans-Huskies game are incredibly high, not only because of that Rose Bowl thing, but more importantly because my ex-roommate Dave is coming to town — as a member of the Husky Marching Band — for the first time since he transferred from USC to Washington at the end of our freshman year. (The Trojans and Huskies did not play in 2000, and the 2001 game was at Washington.) It’s a battle of “Fight On” vs. “Bow Down”… and I think we all know who’s gonna win. Fight on, ‘SC! Bow down to NO ONE! :)

The hot sun beats down on Becky’s beautiful smiling face at the Coliseum during the USC football team’s Labor Day opener against Auburn. Temperatures were in the mid-90s that day. USC was hot, too (ha, ha), winning the game 24-17. To view a photo of the marching band in formation as a map of the United States, click here.

USC’s football team is #2 in the nation, according to the newly released New York Times computer ratings, which is one of the seven computer ratings used to determine who plays in the national championship game at the end of the season. (Notre Dame, at 4-0, is #1.) Unlike the subjective AP and Coaches polls, which have us ranked #18 and #20 respectively, the Times formula isn’t tainted by reputations and preseason expectations. It simply judges a team on what it’s done so far. And the Trojans have done pretty darn well, winning three games against top-notch opponents and losing a close road game to a good Kansas State team. Looks like the computer finds that more impressive than Texas’s four wins over the likes of North Texas and Tulane, and Miami’s thrashing of folks like Florida A&M (and, next week, UConn). Hurrah! Fight on… and bring on Washington State!

It was a good weekend to be a Trojan. USC’s #18-ranked football team crushed #23 Oregon State, 22-0, in our Pac-10 conference opener. Let the race to the Rose Bowl begin!! Meanwhile, our men’s water polo team upset archrival UCLA, 10-8 in overtime! And our undefeated, top-ranked women’s volleyball team stayed that way, beating #18-ranked and previously undefeated Washington State, 3-0 (30-18, 30-21, 30-24) and defeating Washington, 3-0 (30-28, 30-19, 30-26).

The only bad news game from the homefront: Newington High School’s football team lost 36-18 to E.O. Smith. Next week they begin the CCC South conference season against Bulkeley.

Bad news: USC’s football team lost to Kansas State today, 27-20, our first loss of the season. Our defense was quite good in the first half, then fell apart in the second half; our quarterback was pretty good, but had no help; our offensive line was pretty damn bad throughout the game; our wide receivers had very slippery hands; and our special teams were pathetic. But hey, at least it wasn’t a conference game.

Good news: UCLA lost, too — and not just to any team, but to Colorado, the same team we beat 40-3 last week! The Bruins lost to the Buffaloes 31-17, which, if my math is right, produces an extrapolated USC margin of victory of 51 points over UCLA. And our win was at Colorado, whereas the Bruins’ loss was at home! So nyah!!!

Bad news: Newington High’s football team lost to Hall High today, 44-33.

Good news: Miss Connecticut made it into the Top 10 finalists round in the Miss America pageant.

Bad news: She didn’t win. Miss Illinois did.

Good news: USC’s women’s volleyball team is ranked #1 in the country!

Bad news: Hurricane Isidore is going to wallop someone pretty soon. As of 11:00 PM Pacific time tonight (Saturday), it had 125 mph winds. It’s going to at least brush the Yucatan Peninsula, and then… well, all I gotta say is, watch out, Texas. Here’s a satellite map as of Saturday night: