Admit it. You’ve picked USC to lose in some big,
momentous upset at least a few times during this 26
game undefeated run. We all have. Yet, they never
do. How is this possible, especially considering
how many games have come down to the wire? Are they
that much better athletically than all the other
teams? Is the Pac Ten just that weak as they simply
overmatch every opponent? Maybe Pete Carroll is
just one of the best college football coaches of all
time? Realistically, all these things are true to
some extent, and they play major roles, but the
actual answer is much simpler. They’re just USC.
During this 2 year span, we’ve learned to just
automatically connect USC with greatness. They get
the best recruits, they have the best players, they
have the best coaches, they’re the fastest, the
strongest, the smartest, and pretty much everything
else you would associate with being good. It’s
frustrating for the rest of the college football
world to accept something like this, especially when
they think that if only their team had a shot, they
might be able to beat SC. Here’s a message to those
people, they can’t. Not this team, not this year.
It’s best that you’re wish to play them stays right
where it is, in your dreams, because more likely
than not putting it into reality would be a
nightmare.
So, what can we do? Nothing. Just watch them, and
enjoy what is one of the best teams that will ever
play college ball. They’ll fall off eventually, it
might be after Matt Leinart and the majority of the
offense leaves after this year, or it might be
when/if Carroll decides to give the NFL (and it’s
money) another shot, no one can really know, but it
will happen. It happened to Miami, it happened to
Notre Dame, and it’s currently happening to
Oklahoma. But right now, the future is of little
concern, because the 05 version of the Trojan army
is another 9 wins away from what many consider their
3rd national title in a row, and probably
have their 3rd Heisman winner in the last
4 years. The funny part is that it’s not like those
next eight scheduled games are pushovers, seeing as
how they include at Notre Dame, at California, and
vs. UCLA in the LA Coliseum; yet there’s no fear,
because it’s USC.
If
you want a poster boy for this whole “It’s USC”
attitude, look no further than the man himself, Matt
Leinart. He takes a lot of heat for being so
visibly nonchalant about things, despite having what
most people would see as a lot of pressure on him.
Not to mention the fact that I need to hear “the
only class he’s taking this year is Dance Class” one
more time on ESPN before I can really feel
comfortable with him as a football player. He never
gets flustered, he doesn’t talk to the media, he
doesn’t get bitter if his numbers are a bit off, or
if his young WR drops a pass. There’s no need,
because he knows that for as long as he’s on the
field, his team’s going to win.
At
the beginning of the 3rd quarter of the
Arizona State game, USC was losing 21-3, and the
Trojans were clearly emotionally out of it. ABC was
flashing the little pointless trivia bits every 4
minutes, the kind that they save for when something
huge is about to happen. Hell, even the ASU fans
were starting to convince themselves that they were
about to be the team that defeated the mighty
Trojans. Well, all that was well and good, until
the camera zoomed in on Matt Leinart. Simply put, I
had chills looking at him. No matter who you are,
or what team you were rooting for, if for that
moment you didn’t think to yourself, “oh man. USC’s
going to win…” then you have no idea what a winner
looks like. It was the same exact feeling that I’d
had a week before, right after the Pittsburgh
Steelers scored what was then the game tying TD with
1:31 left on the clock. All I needed to know New
England would somehow win that game right there was
the vision of Tom Brady trotting out onto the field,
no emotion, no fear, just the knowledge that he was
Tom Brady, and those were the Patriots.
It’s the same type of demeanor that carried Leinart
through the comeback vs. the Sun Devils. After a
while, it started to get a little eerie, because
whenever they showed Leinart, whether it was after a
Trojan score or during an ASU drive, he maintained
that look; and every time I saw it, I became more
and more convinced the game was in hand no matter
what the scoreboard said. Sure enough, USC started
rolling, and calmly did the Sun Devils in with a few
minutes to go thanks to the rushing of LenDale White
and Reggie Bush. Of course, one of the last images
of the broadcast is a triumphant Leinart shaking
hands and walking off the field; and naturally, his
expression was unaffected. He knew they’d win, just
like he knows they’ll win every game from here on
out; it’s just too bad that it’s taken so long for
the rest of us to realize.
