The squealing has begun

Every sports outlet in SoCal was abuzz with the news today, the evil BCS computers had ranked USC second behind Texas. It seems that some people were absolutely aghast at the idea. I think you all need to take a break and try to remember what it was like before your heads became the size of watermelons.

In my opinion Texas deserves to be the top seed at this point in the season. We're talking about current standings based on statistical criteria (generated from an incomplete set of data). Any whining before the end of the season is misplaced and potentially counter productive. Not that it has stopped anyone from complaining about any part of the BCS from the moment it was created. If you really want to whine, aim it Arizona State, a fine team which battled LSU and USC down to the wire and subsequently fell on an attitude bomb. The performance of ASU is the biggest chink in the USC ratings armor right now.

I'm not going to try any kind of whitewash. I've lived in SoCal for 18 years and I'm a bit of USC fan (more so than when growing up but even then I could appreciate the Trojans). I'm certainly more of a UCLA backer (the gutty Bruins always appealed to me more back when I thought this land of nuts and flakes) and I've been to a bunch of their games. If it were a popularity contest, I'd be for lowly Rutgers, or Penn State (and Joe) or Notre Dame. That should get my bias out of the way.

I generally try to use the idea of teams meeting on a neutral site when comparing them in my mind (one wonderful thing we get from NCAA football is a chance to do that for real in many of the bowls). Assuming we had Texas and USC facing on another on a neutral site next week, I'd have to pick Texas in a very close decision. The SC defense is a patchwork at this point and it seems that anytime now the Trojans will be forced to bring on the 9th string cornerback or safety. I'd have to favor the Longhorns.

Nothing lasts forever and there are a lot of games yet to be played.

If the season plays out for both schools (a bigger if for SC), they'll face off a month after the regular season in the Rose Bowl (on Jan 4th, what a silly notion) where this years national championship game will be happen and I'd give the nod to SoCal.

That's not next week and it's not a neutral field.