I will not mourn the very real fact that the 2010 college football season will be totally over in about 24 hours. I  just can’t think about it. (Or, rather, I try to tell myself I will be super productive in the off season and finish writing my book.)

I, like so many of us, spent the weekend watching the NFL Playoffs Wild Card Weekend. And WILD it was!  Did anyone other than Pete Carroll and his Seattle Seahawks expect the 7 win team to knock off the defending Super Bowl Champions New Orleans?

Well, anyone familiar with Pete Carroll’s Win Forever philosophy could have predicted he’d have Seattle fired up enough to knock off the not-as-good-as-they-were-last-year New Orleans Saints.  Marshawn Lynch’s magnificent 67 yard TD run to clinch the Seahawks’ victory was a thing of true football beauty. The former Cal standout broke EIGHT TACKLES on his way to the end zone to seal the deal for Carroll and the Seahawks.

The question is: Can Carroll and his crew make magic happen next weekend at Soldier Field vs my beloved Chicago Bears? The odds are stocked against Seattle. Chicago’s weather in January is vastly different from Seattle’s. And let’s face it, Carroll’s team had 7 regular season wins and squeaked into the playoffs.  Can they beat the Bears? Sure. Will they? Not likely.  And I am well aware of the Bears particular talent at falling apart in the off season.

I am just not sure how Carroll’s Win Forever bravado will go over when Lake Michigan’s wind chill factor sets in, you know?  Care to wager on the NFC or AFC playoff games?  Be sure to check out the NFL Betting odds before you do!

How about Mark Sanchez, Ladanian Tomlinson and Rex Ryan and  New York Jets knocking off perennial playoff contender Indianapolis? Pretty cool, eh? Next week the  Gang Green heads to Foxboro to take on Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. I really want the Jets to win. I am sick to death of New England. The Jets and Pats split the regular season games this year, with the Jets taking the first meeting in Week 2 with the score of 28-14.  Fast forward to Week 13 and the Jets lost to the Pats 45-3.

I would love to see the Jets knock the Patriots out of the playoffs, but the fact is, the Jets are sort of limping along behind an injured Mark Sanchez.  Sanchito has a slight cartilage tear in his throwing shoulder. Last year, the Jets made it to the AFC title game by relying not on the then rookie Sanchez, but on their rather powerful running game. If the Jets, who have moved away from that running game this season, can find it again in time for next weekend’s game vs. the Pats – they have a chance.

And your Gridiron Goddess would be a very very happy football fan to have a year without New England, Indy, Dallas, Philly or the Giants in the playoffs.

I’ll be back in a day or two to recap the Green Bay-Philly and Kansas City-Baltimore games, discuss the whole Jim Harbaugh thing, and take a look at what happens in Monday night’s BCS Championship Game.

We had a decade for our heads to swell. We had a decade of winning, of excellence, of conference championships and BCS bowls and a couple National Championships and Heisman Trophies.

It’s hard to come back down from that.

It’s hard to be realistic about a team that doesn’t look like we expect  it to.

But it is time to get real.

It is time to stop moaning and groaning about sanctions, about the losses, about Monte or Lane or Coach O or Joe Houston.

It is time to get real.

It is time to stand up and be a Trojan.

This team, OUR TEAM, is two plays away from being 6-0 right now. This team, this coaching staff, is far and away better than last year’s team and coaching staff. Carroll had already checked out, my fellow Trojans. Jeremy Bates as Offensive Coordinator was a disaster of epically boring proportions.  Matt Barkley was a freshman. Aaron Corp was not the QB we thought he’d be. And we have to face it, Carroll’s recruiting the last few years (Barkley, Woods, etc exempted of course) was not as strong as it had been in the past.

Those amazing classes of 2003 and 2004 and 2005? Who recruited them? Coach O and Lane.

Um, who do we have back on the sidelines for USC? Coach O and Lane.

Of course we are going to have growing pains. We are going to have a transition period. We are going to watch a team struggle to find its identity in the wake of NCAA sanctions these players had nothing to do with.

Last year, the Trojans got blown out by Stanford. This year, we failed at clock management/Andrew Luck excelled at it and we lost by 2 points. It came down to a case of whomever had the ball last would win.

We will lose more games.  But stop listening to the pundits that proclaim USC’s dynasty over.  Stop letting that get you down. Stop making comparisons to the teams of the Paul Hackett era. Stop expecting Lane Kiffin to fix the mess that Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll and company left him with so quickly. Our recruiting has been off for a few years. That coupled with early NFL exits and transfers due to the sanctions have left us depleted.

Our losses and at times sloppy playing, our faltering defense are not due simply to Coach Kiffin choosing not to tackle in practices. For whatever reason this 2010 defense is having issues adapting to the Tampa-2. They will hit their stride. It is inevitable. This is USC. Our bench players, even in a down year, would be starters at most other programs.

USC’s dynasty is not over. It is just dormant. And it has been dormant since before the 2009 season started. And what we know, that the haters don’t, is that USC will be back.

And it won’t take a decade.

Win or Lose, I am proud to be a Trojan.  Faithful, Scholarly, Skillful, Courageous and Ambitious.

“Here are provided seats of meditative joy, where shall rise again the destined reign of Troy.” -Virgil

-Your Gridiron Goddess

Football Fiends,

It was the worst sort of Saturday. USC lost and both the hated bRuins of fUCLA and the damned Irish of Notre Lame won. And we face Jim Harbaugh, Andrew Luck and the rest of the Stanford Cardinal next week. <headdesk>

It really couldn’t be much worse. I turned to my friend and fellow season ticket holder Oakley sometime in the early 3rd quarter and said “Fuck us, its going to come down to the kicking game and we will lose.”

I wish, for once, that I had been wrong.

WTH is going on with the Trojans? Has Monte, the pre-eminent defensive guru, lost his touch?(Yes, I realize Monte is the asst. head coach and Ed Orgeron is the defensive coordinator. Still, with Monte on staff, I look to him for fricking answers. He is, after all, a noted defensive guru.)  Has Steve Sarkisian reaveled himself to be the master play-caller of the co-offensive SarkKiff years under Pete Carroll? Are the Trojans just not hungry? Not disciplined? And how the hell did kicker Joe Houston miss that FG attempt from 40 yards out?!

And what the fuck with lining up in the Wildcat and using Matt Barkley as a receiver? WHAT THE F LANE? Really? Dillon Baxter played QB in high school, wouldn’t it have made sense to use him in the Wildcat instead of Marc Tyler & Allen Bradford? Is Kiffin a play calling buffoon or a mastermind? So far we have no clue.

There is no way Lane Fucking Kiffin is a worse play caller than that bozo Jeremy Bates was last year. And Matt Barkley had a good game, unlike Aaron Corp last year in Seattle. Allen Bradford ran for over 200 yards. As much as I would like to blame the kicker, as easy as it is to blame the kicker, the onus here is on the whole team. The offense did not put up points when they had to. Barkley overthrew David Ausberry in the endzone on the last drive that set up that failed FG. The Trojans simply should never have been in that position.

“We’ve got to do a better job.  We’ve got to finish people off when we’ve got a chance to, time and time again in that game,” USC Head Coach Lane Kiffin said after the game.

Where was the defense? The highly regarded Monte Kiffin D could not stop Locker and the Huskies all night, let alone in those last three seconds when it really mattered. Locker reignited his Heisman campaign last night in the Coliseum with 420 yards –310 in passing and 110 rushing. The Huskies racked up 536 yards on the pitiful Trojan defense.

Yes, I said pitiful. Do you know what else the Trojan defense is? SLOW. Where is the trademark speed and power and sheer indomitably that USC is known for? Has Monte Kiffin lost his touch? The USC D this year reminds me so very much of the USC offense last year under Jeremy Bates. That is a comparison that should never have to be made.

These are different days, Trojan fans. A new era. And, if you’re like me, you are worrying that we could return to a Paul Hackett like level of dismal.  I personally don’t think we will. Sanctions and lack of will and lack of depth aside this team and this coaching staff have too much talent to fall all that far for all that long.  That said, this team really needs to find its heart and find something to play for or we will end up with five or six losses.

Can you honestly say after looking at that pathetic display last night that Stanford and Cal and Arizona and Arizona State and Oregon and Oregon State and Notre Dame and UCLA don’t scare you to death? We could easily lose most of those games. I did not think we would prior to last night. Washington is not a great team by any stretch of the imagination. Sark has done wonderful things to rebuild a glorious program that fell by the wayside. That said, Washington IS the best team the Trojans have faced all season.

We didn’t lay down and hand it to them, we only lost by one point; but there is concern. And angst.

Angst football fiends, angst, and I have it.  So much angst. You realize Washington won in the exactly the same manner, by a field goal last year 16-13.

When was the last time a team beat USC two years in a row? For real? Can you remember? I can’t. Oregon won in 2009, but USC hammered Oregon in 2008. Stanford won in 2007, but USC won in 2008 and 2009. Cal beat USC  in 2003 and hasn’t since.  Oregon State beat USC in 2008, but USC beat the Beavers in 2009. Sure UCLA had their run of eight against SC in the 90s and Notre Dame had their 13 year run in the 80s-early 90s, but recently? I can’t think of any team that has beat us two times in a row. Except for former USC offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian and his Washington Huskies.

Next week the Trojans travel to Palo Alto to take on Jim Harbaugh and the 16th ranked Stanford Cardinal who fell to #4 Oregon 52-31 Saturday night.  I fully expect USC to go into that game the underdog – another rarity for a program that has enjoyed unprecedented success in the past decade.

It’s a new era Trojan fans. And I am proud to be a Trojan. This whole cardiac-kids type of team is just going to take some getting used to.

Fight On!

-Your Gridiron Goddess

WOO HOO Football Fiends!!!

Football season is finally, completely here. As of Thursday both College and the NFL will be in action. I will be IN New Orleans for the NFL Kick-Off because, well, that is how I roll. So, picks are going up early this week and I’ll check back in on Sunday. (Cause Saturday night is USC’s home opener and well, you know how that goes…)

The Official Gridiron Goddess NFL Week 1 Picks

Saints over Vikings

Giants over Panthers

Atlanta over Pittsburgh

Cleveland over Tampa

Denver over Jax

Indy over Houston (the new home of my future husband Matt Leinart)

Miami over Buffalo

Chicago over Detroit

Titans over Raiders

New England over Cincy

Arizona over St. Louis

San Francisco over Seattle (sorry Pete Carroll)

Green Bay over  Philly

Dallas over Washington

Jets over Ravens

San Diego over Kansas City

Be sure to watch the NFL Kick-Off Pre-game show with Dave Matthews Band. You just might see me in a Chargers t-shirt and my friend ‘Nole Chick rocking a Bucs jersey. We’re part of the pre-selected audience!

Happy Return of the NFL Weekend!

-Your Gridiron Goddess

Dear Hawai’i fan holding the sign U Suck Cheaters,

Gee how creative you are. Jumping on the bandwagon of people lambasting a team that had nothing to do with the Reggie Bush-Lloyd Lake fiasco of 2004-2006. You do realize that in 2004 Matt Barkley was in 8th grade, right? That he and his fellow teammates were not members of the USC Football Team yet and wouldn’t be for many years?

You also do realize that Reggie Bush’s family getting all those shady benefits from the super shady Lloyd Lake had nothing to do with the Trojan football team’s on field success, right? You do realize that Reggie’s parents living in a house in San Diego that they didn’t pay for didn’t have any bearing on all the passes Matt Leinart completed, all the runs Lendale White had, all the catches Patrick Turner pulled down, right?  None of it had any bearing on Reggie Bush’s on-field performance, either.

In fact, an argument could probably be made that with all the shady shit going down in Reggie’s family at the time, he was distracted. Maybe without all of that, he’d have been even better. Maybe if all of that hadn’t been going on he would not have tossed that pass off to someone who’d never carried a ball before in the 2006 Rose Bowl National Championship Game vs Texas. Maybe, but we’ll never know.

NCAA rules say a player must complete three years before becoming eligible for the NFL draft. So Reggie would have been at USC, would have been the truly breathtaking player he was, and we still would have won all those games — whether or not Reggie and his family violated NCAA rules by taking money from Lloyd Lake.

So let me just spell it out for you, misguided Rainbow Warrior: USC did not cheat. Reggie Bush cheated. Reggie Bush’s step-father cheated. And unfortunately, kids that were in 7th grade, 8th grade, 9th grade when all of that happened are paying the price.

If you want to point a finger somewhere, I suggest you go to a New Orleans Saints game and heckle Reggie Bush. Legions of Trojan fans would love you forever if you did that.

Smooches,
Gridiron Goddess

Football Fiends — or should I say FELLOW TROJANS–

Check out this most excellent rant by fellow Trojan Lost Angeles.

He is So Right.

Kiffin is a CLOSER. And that is why I have faith that this season will kick ass even with the sanctions.

Fight On!

USC football kicks off tomorrow.  If you are a Bruin, if you are hater, it’s a good time to leave this blog.  It’s about to rain propaganda in here.  Get your poncho, fools.  Tomorrow, the season that never was kicks off and the world will be wondering will it be a shit show, shit shower, shit storm, shit tropical storm or full blown shit hurricane.  Trojan fans need to know how to feel about life after Pete Carroll, life after sanctions, life wi … Read More

via Lost Angeles