USC, Now or Never

You probably don’t know it, and this game may very well fly under your radar this weekend, what with the impending Happy Valley White Out, South Florida wading into another trap in the form of UConn, The Worlds Biggest Outdoor Cocktail Party, South Carolina traveling to Tennessee in a crucial SEC East showdown, West Fucking Virginia going on the road to Rutgers, Boston College going to Blacksberg and Kansas facing Texas A&M at Kyle Field in what looks to be the only challenge for the Jayhawks between now and Missouri game. There is a lot going on this weekend, so you might not notice it when USC travels up to Autzen stadium for what could very well be the defining game of the Pete Carroll era. It will be on that field that the fate of this team, and the direction of the program will turn. USC will either show that the Stanford game was a mere one time fluke of a result with a win, or they will continue down the path of Miami with a loss. Which is, as you know, a path of total and complete collapse over time.

It is tough to tell what this team really is. And it has been that way from the beginning of the season. And I, like most saw the holes that needed to be filled from last years team to this years group. But I then looked at the depth chart, and the truly staggering array of potential and just, sort of figured that it would sort itself out and they would continue to roll and be the juggernaut they have been since 2002, because that is what they have done down there at USC. They have sent wave after wave of ultra talented play makers to the next level and simply replaced them with, more, highly skilled play makers who sort of push the bar to a higher level until you arrive where we are today, with the bar set at such astronomical height that it seems unlikely that this team, or any team will live up to it.

Now the fuel that has built the legend of Troy under Pete Carroll has been turnovers, and lots and lots of them. Since 2001 USC has perennially led the nation in takeaways. Averaging 35 per season, or roughly 2.5 per game. That has been the fuel for this team. They have always played high pressure, high intensity defense. Bringing pressure all the time, very predictable in coverages and the timing of blitzes, and all the while seemingly unstoppable. But a key trend that has emerged over the course of the last two seasons is that the well of turnovers over which the sprawling city is built appears to be drying up. They only forced 22 turnovers last season, and have only forced 13 so far this year, well off the breakneck pace that has been one of the signature features of this program under Pete Carroll.

This team has a exponentially large amount of talent, and the extraordinarily high capabilities if they can manage to play up to their potential, a task they have failed to achieve of late. Now, granted, there are some mitigating factors in USC’s favor, but history rarely considers them. USC has a whole boatload of talent, that is what everyone sees on the surface, and they question how a team with such abnormal capabilities and potential can be so throughly normal. But no team can sustain the level of injuries(page 3, middle column) this team has sustained. But history does not investigate mitigating factors, history sees only the black and white of it. Wins and losses, not reasons for them, however valid they may be. That is why this game against Oregon is so important to this program. The difference between winning and losing is simply the difference between being pulled, forcefully, back into the world of averages that dominates this sport, or keeping alive the their conference championship hopes, controlling their own destiny and continuing in the image of the teams that came before them.

Pete Caroll Should Be Coaching Basketball

The world of College Football recruiting is changing at an extremely rapid pace. I think this is a fact that can be understood well enough across the board. Kids are committing at earlier and earlier intervals than ever before. In Basketball the practice is far more common. Its not all that strange to see kids pull the trigger and commit in their Junior, Sophomore or even Freshman seasons. That practice is a little out of control in my opinion. Its asking a lot of a kid to make one of the most important choices of their life as a 16 or 17 year old. The bigger problem in Basketball is that the evaluation process starts in Jr. High. The blame can be heaped upon whoever you wish, the AAU system, the independent scouts, the coaches who buy into the notion that unless they engage in evaluating 8th grade kids for their future they will fall behind. It is a problem and it looks like the idea is making its way to the gridiron, and the concept is being imported to Football by Pete Carroll.

As stupid as the idea seems in Basketball it is stupid in Football. The difference between the two sports is so pronounced that it seriously makes me doubt the why anyone would consider it a good idea. Like I said coaches in Basketball know who is the real deal and who is not much sooner than Football coaches do. Part of that is that is the AAU system that showcases these kids at the ages of 14 and 15. The other part is that if a kid is so talented and so good from the get go he will start for his high school team right away. LeBron James comes to mind. He dominated as a freshman in high school despite lacking all of the physical presence that we have come associate with his play. He grew into his body but he was a star from the start because his talent was undeniable. Physicality is less a part of Basketball than Football and that is why its impossible to get years ahead in the recruiting process in Football.

Now with Football if a kid is talented as a freshman he is not guaranteed meaningful playing time. He might have a world of potential but he will not see the field as a starter unless he is an absolute physical specimen for his age. The process can not start as early in Football because everyone is an unknown quantity until their Junior and Senior years when they can start to make a name for themselves during camps. Only the elite prospects ever hear from recruiters and receive scholarship offers before their Junior year. That is what I don’t understand about these kids calling their shot before they begin their Junior season. It really does not make sense to me from either prospective. As a kid I can see one reason to give a verbal before the process even starts. It is an assurance that you do have a place to go. But on the flip side of that, if the kid is that talented that he has a verbal scholarship offer from a program at that point they are sure to get more offers. If that coach changes schools what happens then? He is not promised anything from the new staff. I don’t really see a lot of positives in the idea for the kids and I see even less for the coach. For a coach to offer that early in the process really makes little sense to me. They would be going off one year of meaningful playing time, two at best. There is the ever present risk of injury with a game as violent as Football. Those kids also have two more years ahead of them with the risk of tearing an ACL or receiving a concussion or any other number of pottential injuries. There are a lot of variables in the process to start. Commiting that early puts alot of pressure on that kid to stay healthy and avoid injury for two years. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from either prospective.

However this is the direction that the sport is going right now, and Pete Carroll, the pied piper of College Football, is leading the way. Southern California is the preeminent program in the nation right now. With all due respect to Florida, Ohio State and Texas; They are trailing the Trojans right now. Pete has taken a page out of Tim Floyd’s book of recruiting. Right now Carroll has two commitments for the class of 2009. Like I said that is some Basketball shit right there. Not even Mack Brown, the dean of early commitments has picked up a commitment for the class of 09. USC right now is at the head of the class and it is not even close. With their 5 consecutive top three recruiting classes and their 66-12 record since 2001 and their three Heisman’s and their five straight PAC 10 titles and BCS Bowls. They are at the top of the game.

I don’t think that Urban Meyer, Jim Tressel and Mack Brown will start getting super early commitments anytime soon. They are established and they have their own methods of executing the process of recruiting that have worked extremely well for them. What I believe will happen is that coaches who are on that second tier; guys like Kirk Ferentz, Charlie Weis, and Dennis Franchione will see this as the prevailing wind in the sport and will jump on the early, early commitment bandwagon. I fear that when that happens it will become the next major trend in recruiting and I don’t see any true positives from it.

Reggie Bush

I have been waiting for some time to unleash my complete opinion of the entire Reggie Bush situation. I have been waiting for the NCAA to reach its decision on the matter. However it occurs that the decision that they may, or may not have wanted to unleash on the world looks less and less likely to happen with the dawn of each new day. So I present to you my complete and unfiltered take on Reggie Bush and his time at USC. Keep in mind that this is merely part one of two, the first being the actual Bush situation, the other being a breakdown of the complete and utter incompetence of the NCAA as a holistic institution.

Keep in mind that your position on this subject has a lot to do with your belief in the notion of the Student Athlete. Your take on that prompt will shape your opinion of all that follows below. Now, there are two ways to look at the situation, the first is that Bush is the victim in this entire sad sequence of events, the other way to look at this is to assume the Bush is a truly, unbelievable greedy and manipulative person looking for as much money as he can get his hands on as soon as possible. At the onset of the investigation I was leaning heavily on the former. Given recent events on the behalf of Bush I have begun to shift my opinion more towards the center. However I do not think he has done anything wrong.

The saga has been spun entirely off of the actions of a now dissolved company, New Era Sports and their attempt to land Bush as the anchor of their company. As the reports go this company which was connected to Lamar Griffin, Bush’s stepfather, showered the family with gifts, money, and a house in an attempt to get Bush to sign on the dotted line and become the flagship of the company for the coming years. The complications arose when Bush began to distance himself from Michale Michaels and Lloyd Lake, the men behind the company. When Bush signed with another agent attempted to recoup money “invested” in the active recruitment of Bush to this company. I am sure the general though process for Michaels and Lake had a lot to do with their preexisting relationship with Lamar Griffin, and how they would bank on Griffin to have Bush sign on the dotted line. I am inclined to think that Griffin acted on his own and without consultation with Reggie about the matter. In an attempt to get the best for is step son Griffin wanted to have a team already formed for him the instant he turned pro. Good idea but terribly misguided and ultimately doomed to fail.

Lloyd Lake and Michale Michaels seem to have very limited understanding of what they were doing. For whatever reason, lack of logic and more than likely a flawed understanding of basic economic theory seem to be at the top of the list. First of all starting a company is a risk in the first place. That is something that can’t be disputed, starting from scratch uses massive amounts of capital regardless of the venture. To begin with these guys were on a novice at best. Basically they watched Drew Rosenhaus on TV say no comment a million times at a TO press conference and thought, hey I can do that. They were wrong they were amateurs from the start. A smart person would think to at least consult someone, if not hire them outright, who knew what the fuck they should be doing. Not Lake and Michaels, they thought that they could just wing it. That’s the lack of logic bit. Now any two year old who has every gone on an Easter egg hunt knows better than do engage in any business plan as recklessly ill conceived as any words that come out of Rosie O’Donnells mouth. You never ever put all your eggs in one basket. What Michaels and Lake did was try to buy a lottery ticket named Reggie Bush. A smart person would start small and build a reputation before going after a potential client the status of one Reggie Bush. Not Llyod and Michael, I mean shit they know his step father. That’s money in the bank. It never occurred to them to measure their input of time and energy in the direction of Bush because it might not work out. It never occurred to them that a person like Reggie Bush, with his prodigious skills, charisma and a Q rating that is out of this world, would want to sign with someone who actually knows what they fuck they are doing. They couldn’t be bothered with measured and logical thought, and you know what happened to them? Bush didn’t sign with them instead opting for a little bit of rational thought. Of course Lake and Michael’s didn’t like that and wanted to recoup the investment in their ill conceived company that was doomed to fail from day one. but who to get their money from, why of course their corner stone that never was. One Reggie Bush.

Now think of this situation from the position of Bush. I would bet the farm that this would have been just one of several attempts by companies to throw themselves at Bush and I highly doubt if he didn’t receive perks from those other attempts, and I don’t personally find anything wrong with that, more on that latter. Michaels and Lake had to have been on the periphery of Bush’s mind during his whirlwind Junior season at SC. I doubt that he had close contact with him on a consistent basis. They might have spent some time in the SC locker room after games but I don’t see that as anything substantial. I highly doubt that Bush would be sitting down on a consistent basis with those idiots plotting the future of the Reggie Bush brand. Even if he did have a sit down he clearly was not impressed with what they were offering him. Clearly, because he did not sign with New Era. Opting instead for people who know what they are doing. That’s just smart.

Now the crux of my argument lies in one of my principal beliefs that has shaped the way in which I look at much that transpires in the broader world of intercollegiate athletics, most will disagree with what I am saying. I hold no punches when it comes to the myth of the student athlete. Now I am not tarring all student athletes with the same brush, for the most part the vast majority of people playing sports at the major college level are indeed students, but they are athletes first, and are made as such by the expectations that are place on them by the rest of the sporting world. It is unbelievably unfair to most of them it is true. I can say with a great deal of confidence that the term has no application for those at the highest level of the sport. The Reggie Bush’s and Vince Young’s of the world, the ones whose names are known throughout the land aren’t student athletes in my estimation, nor should they be held to the same standards. Yes that implies that a double standard is in place, its the same one that has been in place for decades. People like Reggie Bush become the face for their institution, they have their faces splashed across posters, billboards and magazine covers. One of the main threads that can be drawn from this saga is the idea that Reggie Bush was acting as a man apart, or above his peers, which he was and still is. The people behind this story, the attention and respect starved reporters at yahoo! sports, approached the notion that people on Bush’s status level have a different set of rules that apply to them as if this was the grand mystery of our time. Bush might have an overactive Hubris, but it was not bestowed upon him from birth. We gave it to him as we become more and more enthralled in his unparalleled talents.

In picking your side on this you have two options to choose from. You can take the side of Lloyd Lake and Michael Michael’s and their brand of stupidity that is really unmatched in this particular context in recent memory. Or you can pick Bush who apart from the actions of the two idiots mentioned above seems to have done much of anything that is wrong. If you haven’t figured it out I side with Bush, and I would even if the allegations are found to be true. I don’t find what he did to be that wrong on personally offensive. There are people out there who have jumped on the settlement reached by Bush with Michaels as a tacit indication of guilt on the part of Bush. The theory is that anyone who is innocent would not buy the silence of one who could bring suit against him. Problem is that the theory doesn’t apply to actual court proceedings where out of court settlements are the norm and actual trials are rare in civil proceedings. Its not a tacit admission of guilt, merely an indication that he wants to be done with everything.