USC Moves Up Their Annual "Surprise" Pac-10 Road Loss

With the baseball pennant race at full throttle, it's been tough to keep up with much else in the sports world. Hence, I wasn't even aware USC was playing last night until a quick teaser on ESPN around 7 p.m. Like most, I shrugged it off and chalked up another blowout victory for the Trojans on their inevitable march to an undefeated season. As Mr. Corso would say, not so fast my friends!

To my surprise this morning, I got wind that the always intimidating Beavers of Oregon St. had managed to jump out to a 21-0 lead and hang on to beat the boys of Troy. Another sterling example, by the way, of why I no longer bet on sports.

Besides being mildly pleased at this development for nothing else in that it already makes the college football season infinitely more interesting (see: Dawgs/Tide tomorrow night), it got me to thinking about the Trojans. To claim that Coach Carroll has been anything but stellar would be heresy, but following the 2006 loss to unranked Oregon St. and last year's upset at the hands of Standford, does it not seem that USC is getting in a habit of consistently blowing through most of the schedule save for one "shocking" road loss in the conference?

Usually, the formula falls more toward bursting out of the gates with six or seven straight wins before dropping one in late October and then storming back to finish the season at 10-1 or what have you. Apparently, the schedule on that SC Pac 10 road loss has been moved up a bit this year. We won't be surprised to see them now run the table again and get right back into the mix by season's end.

posted at 9:36 AM