Should We Care?
by Paragon SC on Sep 2, 2008 6:42 PM PDT
in USC Football
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PrintDan Weber of the Press-Enterprise has a few quick and interesting thoughts about last night’s ucla win over Tennessee.
Ask the Trojans and they'll tell you it's never about anybody else, always just about themselves and what they do with their program.
Only it's not. Not when you're as competitive as Pete Carroll is. Not when competition is your lifeblood.
And not when whatever goes right across town will ultimately be pegged to the work of two former USC assistants -- Norm Chow and Dewayne Walker.
The better UCLA does on offense, no matter how many players it loses, puts the hat on the Trojans to keep their offense at the level it showed Saturday at Virginia.
No more just getting along as the Trojans did with a conservative, show-up-some-weeks, just-try-no-t-to-get-beat offense of the past two years.
There are lots of reasons why USC's offense looks so different from a year ago, and if you don't think the return of Chow to LA isn't one of them, you just don't understand how competition works...
I see where Weber is coming from but frankly I am ambivalent. There is a difference between what the program thinks and what the fans think. As fans we ONLY care about USC. I understand that there are those who are concerned about how the conference performs on a whole and that’s fine but for the most part I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to other teams in the Pac-10 and I wouldn’t expect them to pay attention to USC.
It has been interesting to read some of the stories about this game and about the genius that is Norm Chow while hardly hearing a word about DeWayne Walker’s defense that kept ucla in the game. I finally got to see the first half this afternoon.
This was an UGLY game!
Here are some numbers:
31 rushes for 29 yards, for a 0.9 yard average
74 plays for 288 yards, for a 3.9-yard avg.
I guess that’s lighting it up…
The reason that most USC fans don’t care is because… IT’S. JUST. ONE. GAME.
Sure, you could say that it was an amazing win. I mean it’s an instant classic on ESPN, right?
I wrote this today in the comments of this FanPost.
[...] if anyone took the time to read up on the game you would have found that UT was going to have a very tough time winning this game comfortably, if at all. There were just too many little things adding up that made this a difficult game for UT.
- New offensive coordinator…bringing in a new system
- New QB…playing in a new system
- On the road…against very good defense, hyped up crowd etc. etc.
I have no idea why everyone thought this was going to be a UT blow out. The guys in Vegas set the line was at 7 and seeing that they kind of do this for a living they seem to get it right most of the time. All this talk about a double digit win was way over blown.
Should we be surprised that ucla won?
In a word...
No!
You could have seen this coming a mile a way, as the stars lined up perfectly.
If Pete Carroll and his staff care about what happens across town then that's fine with me. If it keeps them motivated to always want to be better and achieve great things then that's fine with me too. But I'm not sure that a lot of USC fans care when ucla has such a long way to go to get our level regardless of their accomplishments real or imagined.
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Agree with you about most of it
My thoughts on how ucla and the rest of the Pac-10 does goes like this:
1. If ucla is playing anyone and they are losing, then it makes me smile a little.
2. If ucla is playing a non-conference opponent and winning, then yay for the Pac-10 for sticking it to another conference.
3. If any other Pac-10 team is playing in conference, I have no preference on who wins unless that game has some significance to where USC ends up in the conference standings.
4. If ucla is playing ND, then I can only hope for a 0-0 tie going into 20 overtimes, followed by an asteroid landing on the stadium.
An incredible game and amazing win for ucla...
But I have to agree, drawing a bunch of conclusions from one game is a bit too much, and although their offense played out of their minds in the fourth quarter they were almost unspeakably horrendous for the rest of the game (although their defense definitely played well). I also have to agree with the whole conference pride thing. I like it when the Pac 10 is good as it directly benefits USC in the BCS computer rankings, but in the more literal sense I could care less if the conference is good as long as USC continues to be good. Plus I’m all for anything that stops the whole “SEC is the best” blah blah blah mess I have to hear every day in the media, A great game to be sure, but everyone should definitely take a wait and see approach before making broad and sweeping statements about a program that has definitely been underachieving for most of this decade.
Occam's Razor
Simplest explanation is the most likely to be correct, right? So why not assume that USC’s offense looked the way it did because Sanchez was making plays that Booty didn’t? That’s no knock on Booty, he was more steady than a lot of us appreciated, but he wasn’t one for rolling out of the pocket and checking receivers on the move.
Add in Damian Williams and healthier running backs, and lo and behold you have the makings of a player-driven argument.
Ucla - Tenn post mortem
Ugly isn’t really a good enough word for the game on Monday night.
Look, congratulations to the bruins for winning a game that seemingly no one thought they could win. And you definitely have to feel good for their QB for showing the heart and the guts to play as well as he did in the 2nd half. It’s pretty clear that the coaches did a good job propping up his confidence at halftime, but if he were Nate Longshore he would have tossed another 4 picks in the 2nd half.
But, that being said, the whole delerium about Ucla being back and being a relevant player seems way too premature. If they were against a team with even a reasonably cohesive offense and coaches making the proper play calls (why not just run every down?), they likely lose that game going away.
I think any serious praise for Ucla needs to wait until after their 3rd game when there’s a bit of mileage to review. Until then, good win for them and theirs, but seriously, it needs to be put into some sort of perspective.
At least, that’s my take.
Go Bears!
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