A lot of the run-up for yesterday's games in the local papers took the form of Al Groh and the UVA players describing it as an opportunity to find out where they stand as a team, as they try to rebuild after a decent year in 2007. By the end of the game, Al Groh could have been forgiven for thinking that next time, maybe USC could just grab some See's Candy at the airport as a host gift, as opposed to the "gift" of showing just how big the gap is.

I'd like to give you a sense of the mood around the campus and the tailgates yesterday, but my refusal to spend any time in Northern Virginia not required for work came back to bite me in the ass and we were thwarted to no end by the northern end of Lee Highway, so we squeaked in just before kickoff.

Scott Stadium is a really cool venue, well situated in a neighborhood and sunk down;  the students section is effectively a hill where the UVA undergrads congregate in standing room only. I have never seen so many sundress-clad co-eds in my life, and I had to laugh when I heard some kid trying to rant at us for being so unsightly - apparently 1962 is the benchmark for preppy kids there.

I was a little concerned about the possible effects of the heat - while newspaper articles mentioned the prospect of rain and severe weather, it was a muggy 90 degrees - a lot of the visitors from California in the stands were visibly wilting by half-time. It didn't seem to slow the players down though.

As I mentioned, we got into our seats in enough time for kickoff, and for all intents and purposes, that was it for the Cavaliers.

The beginning of the end

We had assumed that the Virginia fans would be a little less, um, lackadaisical than SC fans at a home game, but aside from the Cavaliers' scoring drive and the occasional third or fourth down defensive series, they were pretty quiet and started leaving early in the third quarter. As the game went on, it got progressively emptier.

 I took this picture a couple of minutes after the end of the game - and it wasn't because the exits were so well designed.

Paragon indicated that this game probably didn't test the Trojans that much, and I would tend to agree. Virginia didn't roll over, but they weren't really able to get much going - good plays here and there, either on defense or on run-blocking, but nothing consistent. SC looked not bad. From our vantage point in Row Z (the only place in the stadium catching a breeze, so we weren't complaining), we noted the following:

• Damian Williams and Ronald Johnson were looking very good indeed
• Bradford and Johnson stood out for getting good yards
• I hadn't appreciated McKnight's ability to find & shoot through closing gaps until I saw it in person
• By the end of the third quarter, the O-line was effectively scrimmaging, alternating run blocking screens to get the kinks worked out
• Sanchez looked not too bad, but he really needs to stop with the low percentage throws into coverage

As mentioned above, we weren't able to get much chance to talk to the locals, but I must say that the Virginia fans were all kinds of classy after the game. After a bludgeoning of that nature, you could understand if there was some shouting or posturing or aggravation afterwards, but we didn't see any of that - mostly people who had experienced a game that was sobering in more senses than one, and were doing a little post-game tailgating to cheer up a bit.

I just spent a diverting couple of hours watching Stanford beat Oregon State. If memory serves, last season Oregon State opened or had an early game against Cincinnati in which they were just woeful. This was a different kettle of fish - most of the mistakes that they made seemed to be indicative of younger players still getting into the groove of actual game time. The defense was, for the most part, playing hard, but they were getting stymied by some of Stanford's option plays, and making mistakes in the secondary.The offense was very effective at short play drives, less so at longer attempts.

Stanford looked surprisingly good. They struck me as having a decent rather than great  passing game, least so when Pritchard had to wait more than a couple of beats for a receiver to come open, or take off running. Their running game was sound though, and Gerhart was very effective. More impressive though was the improvement on their defense - fast, opportunistic, but smart rather than dominating.

If both of these teams develop on their first game, it's going to make for interesting trips to Corvallis and Palo Alto.

According to Radar Online, USC is the most superficial university in America! Yay us!

You can get the details here, but there's one thing I'm not sure about:

"When it's hot outside everyone goes to Bikini Hill and lies out," reports another student. "Not a good place to be ugly."

Admittedly I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but isn't the campus still fairly flat? Is this some new innovation that came along with all the campus renovations and updates in the late 90s and early 2000s? And if it is, why haven't any of you who are local to USC provided any evidence? 

For reasons too boring to explain, my route to work today took me past the hotel where the local alumni association is hosting the Friday night pep rally before the UVA game. It was pissing down rain, and there was a woman and her kids, all wearing SC gear, huddled under an umbrella looking genuinely miserable. Welcome to DC!

I hadn't bought tickets to the game, but a friend fell into two tickets and cheap airfare from LA, so we're going now. Apparently we are in the absolute last row, so if the shit hits the fan, at least we can rappel out and make a break for it.

The list of everything that is verboten to take into Scott Stadium is pretty lengthy - it looks like pretty much everything except for me and my wallet - but if they allow cameras, I'll take some pictures and post them after the game.

1. In his "visiting lecturers" series posted on Every Day Should Be Saturday over the past few months, Orson Swindle asked each participant to explain which country, during which historical period, their team most resembles. Let's bring everything up to the present day and ponder: Which current sovereign nation is your team? Or to look at it another way, how does your team fit into the "world" of college football?

I wracked my brains to avoid saying this, because nothing's more irritating than the likes of 1970s Dallas Cowboys claiming the title of America's team, but then I realized that most people dislike SC also, so I'm going with it: USC is the US.

Strong on defense, a little shaky on offense, not necessarily full of rocket scientists, but fast, rich, and adaptable. Capable of causing significant rage to outsiders for reasons from general principle through ill-concealed jealousy. Possessed of a song that wears thin on people outside the tribe after constant repetition. Not looking like a hyper-power at the moment, but capable of mixing it up with just about anyone. I think that's a fair comparison


2. Every preseason roundup has to have some discussion of who's overrated, but let's go beyond that. Which team do you think is poised to crap the bed in the biggest way this season relative to high expectations, and which game do you think will begin their slide into ignominy?

Arizona State, because of their lack of an offensive line. I know that people in o-line glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but while defense wins championships, a quarterback who has been planted in the turf like a tent peg can't win games. I think that if Georgia shells ASU, the Sun Devils are going to have a hard time keeping their season intact - except for a win over SC, just for spite. 

3. On the flip side of that coin, which team do you think is going to burst out of nowhere to become 2008's biggest overachiever -- this year's version of Kansas '07, as it were -- and what's going to be the big upset that makes us all finally sit up and take notice of them?

I'll be honest, I don't pay much attention to anyone that USC isn't playing, which is especially true in a summer with both a major international soccer tournament and the Olympics. After skimming the Oracle of Phil Steele and other people's polls, it looks like BYU is a reasonable pick - but they have to beat both Washington and UCLA for that to be the case. In the PAC-10 more specifically, Oregon is going to be the team that's better than expected.

4. Here's an "I'll hang up and listen" question. I put Ohio State and Oklahoma #1 and #2, respectively, despite their recent high-profile BCS face-plants. Where did you rank those two teams, and did those BCS issues have anything to do with it?

We ranked Ohio State at #2 and Oklahoma at #3 (Georgia was ranked first, and USC at #4). While it's hard to avoid the bowl game bed-crapping, the fact remains that both Ohio State and Oklahoma are talented teams with limited attrition prior to this season. Those players got through last season at 11 - 2 for Oklahoma and 11 - 1 for Ohio State, and there haven't been any obvious huge swings from their conference rival. That seems to be plenty of reason to assume that our rankings are pretty solid.  Georgia gets the nod for first spot on the grounds that they seem to be more talented than the other two, but perhaps they are getting a bump from their bowl game thrashing of Hawaii... call it the Reverse Big-Game-Bob effect.

5. Last season was a statistical outlier in countless ways, not the least of which was the fact that we ended up with a two-loss team as national champion. Do you think anyone plays a strong enough schedule to get MNC consideration as a two-loss team this year? Conversely, do you see anybody managing to sail into the national-championship game undefeated?

It seems unlikely that another two loss team would end up in the MNC, but then who thought that Michigan would lose to Appalachian State, or USC to Stanford for that matter? Still, it seems more plausible, especially given the relative consistency of at least the top three in our Blogpoll rankings, that one loss is about as much as a team can carry and end up in the MNC. If Ohio State beats SC and Michigan has teething problems, tOSU could make it to the MNC undefeated.

6. OK, time for some Olympic fever. Which athlete from the Beijing Olympics -- any sport, any country, with the exception of USA basketball since those guys are already pros -- would you most want to add to your team's roster this season? No worries about age, eligibility, or even gender; we'll worry about that crap later.

I'm sure plenty of people have picked Usain Bolt, but who knows whether he can carry a ball at that speed in uniform and pads, and take a hit? Equally, the US men's and women's relay teams may not be our best bet.

Initially I was thinking left-field and looked at rowing - New Zealand's Hamish Bond solely for his name, or Britain's Robin Bourne-Taylor, an Oxford-educated engineer whose next gig will be as an infantry lieutenant in Afghanistan - there's a lot of upside to having someone like that in the mix. Finally, I decided to stick a little closer geographically to SC and look to Irvine for Jason Lezak - he's built like a football player, he used to play water polo so we know he can take a beating, and he's nothing if not clutch.

Fred Davis showed up on the field tonight in the Redskin's pre-season exhibition game against Indianapolis in the Hall of Fame game. He posted a couple of catches from passes by Colt Brennan, who looks a little more convincing when he isn't being leveled by Georgia defensive linemen, linebackers, water boys, etc. 

Another rookie player for Washington who deserves a shout-out is ucla alum Chris Horton, drafted in the 7th round - he recovered an onside kick (the Colts' mystery choice for an opening play) and also posted two sacks against the Colts as well. That's impressive less for his getting to Jared Lorenzen than the fact that he could actually bring Lorenzen down. 

The newest poll asks who you think has something or indeed the most to prove this coming season. If you picked one of the existing choices, tell us why. If you think it's someone else, who did I miss?

The US Women's Soccer team played a friendly against Brazil at the lyrically named Dick's Sporting Goods Park just outside Denver. Amy Rodriguez scored the only goal of the game in the 71st minute to get the US to their 10th win in a row and 6th shut-out of an opponent. The team is 20-0-1 in 2008 in their run-up to this summer's Olympics.

Rodriguez is one of two collegiate players selected for the Olympic team, and has scored 5 goals so far in the 17 national side games she's played in this year. She seems to be fitting in well with her fellow players, who in turn are adapting well to the system introduced by coach Pia Sundhage, and you've got to like their chances of going deep in Olympic competition.

Congratulations Amy, and Fight On to Beijing!

UPDATE: Here is the video from All Things Trojan!

Hot on the heels of a $42 million contract extension, Lofa Tatupu got pulled over in Kirkland WA and arrested for a suspected DUI. When he finally took a BAC, he blew in at nearly twice the legal limit. Tatupu was pulled over after a Kirkland police officer observed him driving too quickly in a 2006 Hyundia Accent (!).

Tatupu promptly apologized for being a dumbass.

Response from Seattle PI readers seems to fall into one of three camps:

1) Hang him! (a surprising number of people with Greek names choosing this one ;)

2) Everyone's entitled to one mistake, don't botch it again

3) What the hell was he doing driving a Hyundai? (It belongs to his girlfriend, FWIW.)

PI Columnist Jim Moore weighs in on the side of "There but for the grace of God go I" and apparently thinks, as do the Seattle management, that Tatupu will make amends.

I can't claim that there haven't been a couple of times when I drove but probably shouldn't have, but then I never blew a BAC at nearly twice the limit either. While this isn't murder or anything like it (not to invoke an infamous former player or anything), DUI's can have serious repercussions precisely because they involve such dangerous behavior.  Lofa Tatupu is lucky he didn't hurt anyone, and he would be well served to follow through on his promise to fly right from hereon. He brought that kind of discipline to working his way from Maine to USC for football; there's no reason he couldn't do it in order to do his part in keeping the metro-Seattle roadways that bit safer for everyone else.

Besides, with a $42 million contract in hand, he should be able to afford cab fare in the meantime.

A little change of pace: USC women's soccer forward Amy Rodriguez has been selected to the US Women's Olympic team and will be playing in Beijing this summer. Rodriguez, who was the MVP of the Final Four on USC's national championship team on the strength of a performance that included two goals against ucla in the semifinals, has had a good showing in the recent Peace Queen Cup*, scoring the only (and winning) goal against Brazil in group play as the US women's team moved on to beat Italy in the semi-finals and Canada in the finals.

Rodriguez is the first Trojan to play Olympic soccer for the US, and joins with Stephanie Cox of Portland College as the lone collegiate players on the team.

US Women's coach Pia Sundhage selected Rodriguez on the strength of her recent form: "The way she's been playing and actually running at people has been very good."

This is fantastic news: the US is not short on talented women soccer players, so to be selected for the national side for the Olympics on the merits is a real vote of confidence - Fight On Amy! And best of luck in Beijing.

*In case you were wondering, the Peace Queen Cup is an eight nation tournament organized by the Unification Churh (of the Reverend Moon fame) which is intended to facilitate cultural exchanges and promote world peace... it also has a $200,000 prize to the winning team, in case fostering peace isn't incentive enough.