LOS ANGELES — The Penn State players marched into the hotel ballroom with strides steady and faces tight.
The USC players swaggered in with yawns and chuckles.
The Penn State players spent Tuesday’s 30-minute Rose Bowl media session sitting upright, quiet, attentive.
The USC players lounged. Some buried their heads in their hands and slept. Some talked on cellphones. Others bounced to iPods.
One player spent nearly the entire session stretched out on the floor underneath his table. A couple of others used their hands to pound out rhythms on top of the table.
As a giant clocked ticked off the final moments of the interview session, many of the Trojans chanted “3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Happy New Year!” Hmm. Will it be? If media day was any indication — and it usually is — there are two ways to look at how USC has handled The Week That Nobody Wanted.
1) The Trojans are loose enough to be dominant.
2) They are bored enough to be ambushed.
One thing for certain is, Penn State is neither.
Said defensive end Aaron Maybin: “They could feel (bored), but that’s got nothing to do with us. We’ll be ready to play.” It has been written here several times that USC doesn’t want or need this game, so it would disingenuous to criticize the Trojans players if they are acting like it.
But if they are, they are setting themselves up to fall into a trap of mistaken identities.
Penn State could actually make them pay.
“We know this,” protested Trojans guard Jeff Byers, who is from Loveland. “From the moment they announced this game, Coach Carroll has reminded us that Penn State was one point from playing in the national championship game. One point. He tells us this every day.”
No matter what their creator preaches, they hear only an inner voice that reminds them of their incredible skill. They interpret this to mean their immortality. A humbling loss usually follows.
Could they be tuning out Carroll and hearing that voice now?
“No, this is an extraordinary challenge, they want to go out and show who they are,” Carroll said.
That will certainly happen Thursday, when USC plays for a fourth consecutive January in a stadium down the street, against a team from a conference with no juice, in a game that has zero bearing on a national championship.
As witnessed Tuesday at a downtown hotel, the Trojans will be locked in a battle with their toughest opponent.
Themselves.
