How depressing was the Trojans *victory* over Virginia last week? So depressing I've waited five days to write a word about it. And even still I'm not going to devote an entire post to it, so bad the taint.
Unimpressive was the word of the day, and while I could explore problems just about everywhere (props to Coach Lunch Money grimly assessing "no one played well tonight" in his post game comments on live TV), I'm going to focus on penalties. USC had a lot of them, of all kinds and varieties. Consistently good teams usually don't commit a lot of penalties. Pete's USC teams were flagged a bunch, but a lot of those were the results of aggressive play (roughing the passer, etc.). Besides, those teams generally had a offense good enough to overcome those mistakes. Third and 26 for 2005 USC? Puh-leeze. Off tackle to He Who Shall Not Be Named, gain of 62 (this happened against UCLA, I believe). If my long career of sitting on a couch and watching college football has taught me anything, it's that penalties totally and completely fall on the coaches. It's their responsibility to run the drills, teach the players, and to communicate clearly in-game. Paul Hackett's USC teams were a penalty nightmare. One of the first things I noticed once Pete took over? No more dumb delay of games, less false starts, less holding. It's the coaching, stupid.
If there's two things I like about Coach Lunch Money, it's his absolute candor and lack of humor. He's willing to list his team's deficiencies in public, and he's also incapable of smiling (which might be more effective if he looked a little older than say, 12). I'm certain he's attempting to address the penalty problem. The question is will the team listen? Do they respect Little Coach Frowny-Face and his mummified father? I don't call Kiffin 'Coach Lunch Money' because it's my cute nickname. It was actually what USC players used to call him behind his back when he was here mid-decade (presumably because he resembles a kid who just had his lunch money stolen, or something. It's more fun if you can imagine Fresno State head coach Pat Hill and his handlebar moustache doing the stealing) . There's already an established lack of respect for the guy. Now granted that was years ago, and granted he wasn't el jefe yet. But it's still out there, I will be pointing to it again and again if this penalty problem persists.
As for Minnesota this weekend, fool on you if you continue to bet on USC to cover the point spread. I'm not even sure I know the spread on this game, but I'd take the Gophers even if it was like four (okay, not really...maybe eight). USC just isn't USC anymore, and it's really time for this team to establish it's own identity. With Wazzu up next week, it's going to be a very long season if this team doesn't improve these next two games.
In other news, He Who Shall Not Be Named gave up his Heisman this week, supposedly in order to prevent it being taken from him. I have a lot to say on this subject, but today I'll just say this. Giving back the trophy is the first preemptive thing HWSNBN has done for the duration of this scandal. If he and his parents had preemptively said no to free lodging and travel accommodations, OR had preemptively paid off their so-called benefactors (which is all those supposed sports marketers ever wanted) before they ran crying to Yahoo! Sports, none of this would have ever happened. So yeah, way to go.
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