If Southern California can expose Ohio State as the overrated, plodding Big Ten fraud that it is, what will the Trojans do to the Pac-10, which exposed itself Saturday as arguably the worst BCS conference in the country?
USC fans had to be lining up South Beach hotels Sunday. It’s not just because of the top-ranked Trojans’ 35-3 pounding of the Buckeyes. It’s because most of the Pac-10 was getting swatted all over the country like a collection of sleepy sand flies.
Look at USC’s schedule and write a scenario that won’t land the 2-0 Trojans in Miami for the BCS Championship. It has a bye this week before visiting Oregon State. It hosts Oregon, which will be on its third-string quarterback, and Arizona State, which just gave UNLV its second road win in 23 games.
Then USC visits winless Washington State and Arizona, which just lost to New Mexico. USC then hosts Washington, which found itself down 48-7 in the third quarter before Oklahoma sent in the band, and then California, which lost to Maryland.
The stretch run is at Stanford, which TCU drubbed; at home against Notre Dame, which has lost six straight to USC by an average score of 44-15; and at UCLA, which just suffered its worst loss in 79 years. If you’re adding up Saturday’s carnage, subtract USC and the Pac-10 went 2-7 with five losses to unranked teams.
Oregon, at No. 17, is the only ranked team left on USC’s schedule.
The Pac-10 expected to step backward this year with so many top quarterbacks moving on. But the Pac-10 on Saturday was a sieve from coast to coast. UCLA gave up a BYU-record seven touchdown passes to Max Hall, and UNLV ran off an 18-play, 9:16 drive that turned the ASU game in the fourth quarter.
Arizona State coach Dennis Erickson said afterward: “It’s sickening. It starts with me. I didn’t have them ready to play. I’ll take the blame.”
What’s even more indefensible is Washington coach Tyrone Willingham, embarrassingly trying to save his job by emerging from his 55-14 loss by saying, “I do think we are a better football team, and now we have to build on it and show when we get this next portion of our season started.”
Ohio State add.
Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel’s genius label lost some cred after getting pummeled in two straight national championship games, and it didn’t help that he saved nothing for USC in beating Youngstown State and Ohio.
“They did everything we saw on film,” USC linebacker Rey Maualuga said. “Nothing changed.” Ouch.
Wounded Weis.
Charlie Weis never hurt so good. Notre Dame’s coach tore his anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments, the double jeopardy of football knee injuries, when linebacker John Ryan slipped on a sideline tarp and slammed into him.
“How do you like that?” Weis said after his 35-17 win over predictably dreadful Michigan. “I feel like an athlete, for the first time in my life.”
He also feels like a coach. The 2-0 Irish, who gave up an NCAA-record 58 sacks last year, have given up zero.
Hail mercy.
When will coaches start kicking deep to protect narrow leads late in games? It nearly cost UCLA the Tennessee game in its opener, and it cost Temple a rare victory Saturday.
Jeff Wathne’s kickoff, after a go-ahead touchdown with 38 seconds left, went out of bounds. Buffalo got the ball on its own 40, and in three plays and a spike, Drew Willy had driven the Bulls to the Owls’ 35 with five seconds left.
“Drew,” quarterbacks coach Danny Barrett said simply, “don’t throw it out of the end zone.”
Willy’s 35-yard Hail Mary found Naaman Roosevelt at the buzzer for a 30-28 win.
Meanwhile, Kentucky fans had ugly flashbacks when Middle Tennessee’s Hail Mary headed toward the end zone as the buzzer neared and the Blue Raiders down 20-14. Six years ago, the Wildcats lost a huge upset when LSU beat them with a buzzer-beating bomb.
Eldred King caught a nearly identical tipped pass, but senior cornerback Robbie McAtee, a transfer from Division II Franklin College, made the game-saving, shoestring tackle at the 1.
