Sigh, the LSU fans are bitter. Against USC. Again. They just could not swallow the fact that their prized recruit, #2 ranked in the country, was going to go to USC instead of LSU.

There was some noise recently about recruiting violations, that Reggie Bush got on the phone with Pete Carroll in trying to get Joe McKnight to come to USC.

And now, Pete Carroll who normally does not name names has openly stated that LSU fans are the ones creating such stupid rumors!

LSU fans, just remember – this recruiting business is a dirty game. Les Miles has probably done the same thing to many other coaches that Pete Carroll ended up doing with you and your team. Its all a fair game though not clean. Take what you have and play with it. You’ve got to watch out for Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, etc. before you dream of playing USC.

So shut it and move on! Oh yea, and act like adults, not freaking 5-year olds!

Leave it to Pete Carroll to finish strong. After a somewhat less-than-superb recruiting season, Pete Carroll and his buddies climbed up rapidly and now have what seems to be the second-best or the third best class in the country!

Who else thinks we have the deepest roster at running back? And will all of them get decent playing time? Is McKnight the next Reggie Bush?

What about fullbacks? Looks like Martin Coleman may be converted to fullback. With Lane Kiffin gone, I wonder if the fullback will have as big a role as it seemed to be this year. Maybe if there is a game-breaker like McKnight, the game plans may change?

Let’s see – can’t wait for the season to start!!

Details on the final rankings at MSNBC, among others.

So much USC’s rebuilding year. After losing a bunch (huge one!) of studs last year to the NFL, this year USC was supposed to hang in there and maybe go to some nice bowl.

What has ended up happening is an unbelievable thing (well, believable nowadays of course). USC is a lock for one BCS Bowl, the Rose Bowl which takes the Pac-10 champion.

USC is the Pac-10 champion already.

USC can beat ucla and stake a claim to go to the BCS National Championship.

USC “survived” the year with one loss so far, with one game to go.

USC took the majority of All Pac-10 team honors, including the Pac-10 coach of the year for Pete Carroll.

With two games remaining in the schedule, USC knew the worst it could do is go to the Rose Bowl and if they won the last two, they could possibly go to the National Championship game. To lock up the Pac-10 title with two games to go is a fantastic feat.

USC went unbeaten at home this season.

Yea, this is the rebuilding year. They have only 4 senior starters. Provided they don’t lose too many juniors to the NFL draft, it is going to be much more experienced next year and I can’t imagine what they would be able to achieve next year.

Seeing the game yesterday made me very happy, but at the same time I started thinking, is Notre Dame really as good as it was made out to be? If yes, then it makes USC even better than what it has been made out to be.

But what if Notre Dame was really overrated and its boosters had just unjustifiably made them ranked so high at the beginning? What if Notre Dame was not that good?

I don’t care at the end, of course. USC beat one of its biggest rivals and that too handily. If not for Booty’s 2 INT’s, the blocked punt and that one freakish run by Brady Quinn, this would have been a flawless night.

The offense did seem like it was working like a well-oiled machine, the defense has really come up in the last few games and the special teams showed up too (way to go, Cushing!).

Ok, so now it is down to the last regular season game with another big rival who is doing not that well. ucla in Pasadena. I am not as tense as I was for the Notre Dame game, but I just hope there is no over confidence and complacency in the USC team and the “looking ahead” mentality. They do need to win this one and then start the chatter.

I was a little bit unsure of how the game was going in the first half, but after seeing the defense step it up big time today, I feel a lot better in general about the health of the team at this point in the season.

The offense is sputtering, and JDB still seems to telegraph his passes, but we have huge playmakers in the team in DJ, Steve Smith and in this game CJ Gable. How cool was the catch for the first down by DJ jumping high in the air just beyond the marker? How cool was Steve Smith’s 4th and 2 conversion to a TD? How cool was CJ Gable in his monster runs at various points in the game? Awesome.

I was not willing to quote the turnover margin that USC had against Stanford because hey, it is after all only Stanford. But to create so many in one game against a team like Cal is worth noting.

USC kept the 35 points per game Cal to a miserly 9 and that says a lot. The defense deserves a huge pat on the back for doing that to Cal. Good stuff.

There is a reason to feel upbeat for USC Trojans.

Of course, next week is going to be a different game. So we’ll keep the celebration limited to tonight only. 🙂

Another bad trend that USC has fallen into this year: start the second half with a punt (or a turnover) instead of coming out and scoring a TD, which was almost a certainty last season.

Lack of turnovers forced, INT on first possession of game, punt/turnover on first possession of second half … how can they keep winning like last few years?