LOS ANGELES -- "Chris "Beanie" Wells wouldn't have mattered. The same goes for Warren Wells, Dawn Wells, Orson Welles or the Mineral Wells (Texas) High Rams." Ivan Maisel, ESPN.com, September 13, 2008.
I was too tired on Friday night not to set the alarm for Saturday morning. I had spent the day as a volunteer at a Presidential campaign headquarters trying to fit 6,000 units of people into a Monday morning event the size of a 2,000-unit bag. Ultimately, while people queued up by the hundreds, more tickets were printed and the venue was changed on a dime. If only it worked that way for the economy!
Anyway, with ESPN Game Day broadcasting from outside the Coliseum in Los Angeles for USC vs. Ohio State, I didn't want to miss a second of it. It was barely light there when the opening titles rolled at 8 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time, but I could clearly see the sign already.
"Beanie is a Baby."
From the Ohio State side, we had heard nothing but Beanie, Beanie, Beanie for months. On the day he was injured in a meaningless home-opener against a cupcake, I was fairly irritated. I didn't want to hear the Buckeyes use the "if only we had had Beanie" excuse after they lost in Los Angeles -- all the way to the back end of the home-and-home next year in Columbus.
I smiled about the sign with it's cute, cuddly bear. For the previous week, the Beanie, Beanie, Beanie stuff had morphed to BEANIE, BEANIE, BEANIE. I was sick of Beanie, Beanies, Beanie Babies, Jelly Beans, Jelly Bellies....everything remotely Beanie-like.
But, honestly, the last thing I have ever believed about Beanie is that he is a baby. Chris Wells is an extremely gifted athlete who began the season as the front-runner for the Heisman Trophy and begged his coach up to game time to play him without regard to the good of his health. If he had played, I believe he would have given everything inside himself to help his team. Verbal leadership, hard-won rushing gains, the will to win.
But -- and it's a big but -- Beanie would not have been enough. I know that now, he knows that now. Everybody knows that now. The people who are paid to write about college football for a living wrote that now.
As much as I believed the Trojans would prevail in this game, I worried when I heard pundits declaring all last week that they would bury the Buckeyes. Thanks to Stanford University, I will never again try to predict a game outcome. I figure, if your team loses a home game to a team that they were supposed to defeat by 41 points or more, it's really important to wait until they actually play the game now to get too excited.
I wasn't always so inclined. But, now I need a halftime score greater than 21-3 to declare "game over." So, after USC held their opponent to a couple of yards in the entire third quarter, I began to breathe. And eat. And smile.
Of course, the rest of the Pac-10 really pulled a no-show and coughed up collective hairballs in their non-conference games. It's incredible to even say it, but I don't know whether USC will emerge through this rag tag bunch without a stupid loss, unlike last year. Thankfully, the Strength-of-Schedule component in the BCS won't matter IF they can hold onto the #1 spot.
That's a good thing, because they certainly can't count on the likes of Cal, UCLA, Washington, Wazzu, Arizona -- or EVEN Arizona State -- to win when they should. Cal went all the way across the country to play Maryland in similar fashion to USC's travel back to Virginia two weeks ago and choked from the opening whistle. They act like they think they can do anything USC can do because they were competitive for one game in 2004. After that egg they laid at Tennessee two years ago and this outcome in Maryland (and DeSean "Mesean" Johnson's stupid play in the NFL that cost his team for all of national TV to see), I don't want to hear another word about how great Jeff Tedford is....'well, at least it's not as bad as it USED to be....' to justify his $3 million a year salary.
During Carroll's time at USC, it's consistently been true that the Trojans can't count on Cal and UCLA for anything. But, Arizona State losing to UNLV?
Et tu, Sparky???
Sparky is a Baby.
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