The Living Room Times

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When something bad happens to Michigan football, MGoBlog posts photos of kittens. For Pete Carroll’s resignation from USC and impending introduction confirmed hiring as coach of the Seahawks, I think another type of animal would be more appropriate:

Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anita__greg/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

The King is dead. Long live the King? King?!? (WTF?)

P.S. I alluded on Friday to how the missed opportunities of 2006, 2007 and 2008 — starting at the Rose Bowl versus Texas, and continuing through a Thursday night in Corvallis in September ’08 — suddenly loom much larger now that we Trojan fans face a period of profound uncertainty, and perhaps even some time in the football wilderness. (Serious NCAA sanctions would potentially be the “other shoe” yet to drop, obviously.)

Brian Grummell summarized this in a tweet thusly: “RIP: USC 2001-2004 WTF: USC 2005-2009.” But that’s not really right, since 2005 was a great year, arguably the very pinnacle of the Trojans’ success, as they built their winning streak to 34 games with epic victories over Notre Dame and Fresno State, and had a brilliant season overall against a brutal schedule. It wasn’t until the Rose Bowl — on January 4, 2006 — that Vince Young single-handedly ushered in the “WTF” era.

So the proper delineation, it seems to me, is RIP 2001-2005 and WTF 2006-2009.

The first five years of the Carroll Era saw a meteoric rise from obscurity to utter dominance, both on the field and on the recruiting trail. The next three years witnessed a series of deflating woulda-coulda-shoulda losses, starting with Rose Bowl (yes, VY was amazing, but if Reggie Bush doesn’t try that lateral, or if the replay equipment doesn’t malfunction, or if Bush lines up on 4th and 2, or…) and continuing with a series of inexplicable losses to inferior foes (Oregon State ’06, fUCLA ’06, Stanford ’07, Oregon State ’08 — also Oregon ’07, but the Ducks with Dixon were not so “inferior” and thus not as “inexplicable”), each and every one of which potentially prevented the Trojans from winning a national title.

If USC just manages to beat Oregon State or UCLA in ’06, and just manages to edge out 41-point underdog Stanford in ’07, and just manages to not have a letdown of epic proportions against the Beavers in ’08, we could’ve been talking about five consecutive national titles. That’s a lot of “ifs,” I know — and it depends on beating Ohio State twice (ha!) and Florida once in the national title games — but don’t forget how excruciatingly close each of those losses were. And also keep in mind, USC didn’t have very many close wins in that time period. It was generally blowout win or down-to-the-wire loss. So it’s only natural to ponder what might have been. Especially now.

Instead, the Carroll Era yielded “just” two national championships, one of which is AP-only and will always have something of an asterisk next to it, the other of which may yet be declared doubleplusungood and wiped from the record books by the NCAA’s Ministry of Truth. I know LSU fans are just waiting for the moment when they can declare that the “USC dynasty” featured zero national championships.

The Trojans’ trevails of 2006-2008 had wider consequences for college football, too. Into the power vacuum created by USC’s annual failure to win the “little games” stepped Florida and LSU, and 2006-2008 became an era of alleged SEC dominance in college football (extended in 2009 by Alabama, natch). USC had the most talent in the country, and thus was by far the most logical contender to put the It’s-A-War crowd in its place, yet the Trojans never even got a chance to play any of the godlike SEC teams on their way to ascending into BCS heaven — all because we couldn’t get a freakin’ “W” in Corvallis, couldn’t beat a horrible Bruins team in Pasadena, couldn’t overcome mighty Tavita Pritchard and his merry band of Drunken Trees at home in the Coliseum. Year after year, we were “playing the best football in the country” at season’s end, yet because we kept shooting ourselves in the foot against lesser opponents, we kept casting away BCS title berths that were being presented to us on a silver platter.

But we, or at least I, always figured we’d have plenty more chances where those came from. Then came ’09, which initially (when we beat tOSU, then lost to UW in Seattle) seemed like a re-run of ’06-’08, but instead turned into a horror show of mediocrity — unthinkable blowout losses, multiple defeats at home, four “Ls” on the win-loss record — not seen since the Hackett days. An 8-4 season, and a trip to Emerald Bowl, suddenly made the previous three years’ “sick of the Rose Bowl” gripes seem like the musings of, well, spoiled children.

But hey, we’d be back, baby! We’re USC! And now this. And now, who knows.

In the final analysis, 2001-2005 was an era of ascendancy and dominance that won’t soon be forgotten — even if the NCAA ends up tossing some portions of it down the memory hole. But 2006-2008 will be remembered as an era of missed opportunities. And 2009 will barely be remembered at all, except perhaps as the year when it all started to fall apart. That last part, though, depends on what the next chapter holds.

Beat the Warriors.

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