By
Brian Harbach
This is usually the day where my SEC picks go up and they will be listed at the bottom of this column, but we need to talk about what happened last night to Southern Cal. Pete Carroll has officially become the Bizarro Jim Tressel. There is not a coach in the country that is better in a big game than Pete Carroll, just as there is not a worse big game coach than Tressel. Where Tressel excels is against the opponents he is supposed to beat, Carroll can’t seem to motivate him teams to win the ones they should win. Southern Cal’s loss to Oregon State last night was absolutely embarrassing to a program that demands to be called a dynasty, but never delivers on it.
USC’s rock star status in Southern California with all the attention they receive from the celebrity community fosters an NFL mentality that does not fit into college football. The comparison to the NFL is because the Trojans don’t seem to have a sense of urgency to win every game. NFL teams can lose a game and it doesn’t matter, they can lose a rivalry game and it doesn’t matter. Sure NFL fans may hate it, but to professional players they have to move on to the next week and focus on getting better to make the playoffs. Every week in college football is a playoff and the USC coaches don’t seem to be getting that point across to their players. There is no explanation for the loss last night except maybe the players read into their own hype a little too much.
Speaking of hype, can ESPN have anymore egg on its face right now after the constant USC love-fest we hear every year? Maybe these players have been watching the four letter network too much and listening how they were going to walk through their schedule. Maybe they heard how awful the other Pac 10 teams were and they were the only team in the league without a loss. It is a coach’s job to hide the players from all the great things said about them, but Pete Carroll embraces it. He relishes in the attention the Men of Troy are given and that is why they continue to lose games against terrible competition.
Of course this was not as bad a loss as the Stanford game was last year for the Trojans but let’s not call this anything other than what it is, this was a terrible loss for USC. The Pac 10 is officially a terrible conference in 2008, this game does not show the depth of the league, it does not show parity, what it shows is that there is not one team worthy of national title consideration in the Pac 10 this year. Oklahoma didn’t have a problem winning on the road at Washington a couple weeks ago, how can USC struggle so badly against poor competition? The league as a whole has some absolutely terrible losses already a month into the season and there is no explanation for them.
Just a few of the losses the Pac 10 has suffered this season include a # 15 Arizona State home loss to UNLV, New Mexico beating Arizona, Maryland beating #23 California, Boise State beating # 17 Oregon in Eugene and the 59-0 de-pantsing that UCLA was given by BYU. Even after all of these glaring eye sores, the Pac 10 had USC. USC has been the conferences poster child for the entire decade with one national championship to go along with its self appointed title of Dynasty. For years the Pac 10 has begged for respect screaming east coast bias, but every time they are given an opportunity to prove the media wrong something like Oregon State beating #1 USC happens.
Where USC and the Pac 10 go from here is anyone’s guess. The USC loss is a stain that the conference will have to live with likely for the rest of the season. With no teams currently ranked except for USC, which should fall out of the top 10, the conference won’t have any marquis games to talk about for probably a month. The stigma the league will carry until November will be a comparison to BYU and Utah, teams better than anything the Pac 10 has to offer right now. The USC loss does not take them out of the national title picture, but it does further the opinion that the Pac 10 isn’t very good. For all the talk of a lack of respect the Pac 10 feels, it would be nice if they could prove it to us on the field and stop screaming off of it.
SEC Picks
Florida 38, Ole Miss 16
Auburn 21 , Tennessee 17
Texas 52, Arkansas 6
Kentucky 31, Western Kentucky 17
South Carolina 27, UAB 12
LSU 41, MSU 3
Georgia 27, Alabama 13
I know that ruffled more than a couple feathers, let me know what you think. E-mail
me Brian Harbach
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Harbach’s SEC Picks Week Two, September 3, 2008
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Y’all Play Nice, August 21, 2008
The SEC Bachstory, August 18, 2008
Has Spurrier Failed at USC?, August 15, 2008
The SEC Bachstory, August 11, 2008
The SEC Bachstory, August 3, 2008
Harbach's Top 5 SEC Offensive Players by Position, July 27, 2008
Harbach's Top 5 SEC Defensive Players by Position, July 27, 2008
Harbach's Top SEC Games, July 13, 2008
Championship Game Hurts SEC, July 6, 2008
Harbach's 2008 SEC Preview, June 30, 2008
Let's Get This Started, June 9, 2008
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