Weekly Musings: The Season Opener, Sark, and Expectations for a New Year

The January through May season each year is an intensely busy one for me with work (never more so than this last year). June through August is what I called "summer" when I was younger, but I now call "misery", meaning, the world revolves around the kids, work is still crazy busy, AND college football is within visual range, but not quite touchable. Then, September arrives, and life is as it should be again. I woke up Saturday morning for College Gameday and just had an incredible peace and happiness take over me. Indeed, September through the end of the year is the greatest calendar segment of the year, and no doubt college football is behind so much of that. And when I say college football, I do mean the greatness of the sport at-large, and the pageantry of the entire college football culture, BUT I primarily mean USC football - the one passion I have held on to from my very early years all the way through age current, despite the busyness of work and family. The fight on mantra remains undiluted in its prioritization in my life.USC football ended last year with a whooping of Notre Dame in the Coliseum and then carried into an impressive victory over Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl. And yet, the UCLA loss along the those unforgivable last second losses to Arizona State and Utah left a taste in our mouths of dissatisfaction. We had talent, we had a solid QB returning, but could this coaching staff get these young players in a position to close out games? That, to me, has been the nagging off season question - are we ready to win those games that we were last year simply not ready to win? The first major post-bowl game milestone of the season was national signing day, the second year in a row where even Sark's biggest supporters were blown away at how strongly he closed. We took away the nation's strongest recruiting class and added to a roster of young, incredible talent. Expectations notched up a little higher ...The Salute to Troy/Sark event will only get a few sentences of attention here. I want Sark to succeed at USC and have written off as pitifully immature and uninformed the group of chat board residents who have dedicated their lives to bashing him (and Pat Haden, for that matter). To see this kind of episode take place was beyond regrettable, and I frankly could barely believe it. I don't drink any more, and I am sure not a single one of those who have gone after Sark in recent weeks have ever themselves had an embarrassing incident which was drinking-related. BUT, regardless of what hypocritical chat board folks do or do not do, Sark SHOULD be held to a higher standard, and the whole episode was just unbelievable. I, for one, remember being at a Salute to Troy in 2002 when Ed Orgeron got up on stage and dropped a few bombs (in fairness, no F words, but several expletives) and having a couple parents confront him off stage after the fact (I was seven feet away). The incident never made the press, and Ed wasn't slurring, but my point is this: Anyone who believes this thing was NOT blown out of proportion is living in an alternative universe. It never should have happened; it was deeply regrettable; but it was a 3 on a scale of 1-10 that became a 65. Sark's leash got a tad shorter because of this, but frankly I think an 8=4 season or worse and his leash was already short; a 10-2 season or better with the rival games being in the win column and he could probably do tequila shots at a press conference and no one would care. Sark's marriage and every other aspect of recent scrutiny is none of my business, and while I wish him nothing but the best as a person, it is outside my domain of interest. What I want for Sark is to lead the football team to greatness, and to represent the world's greatest university with dignity and distinction. Let's pray this episode gets deeply behind us, and that he becomes acutely aware of the bulls-eye placed on his back by a media and envious culture that hates the Fight On mantra that has defined USC for decade after decade. Move on, and fight on.There isn't a lot of analysis to offer after the Arkansas State game for the simple reason that we cannot tell much against opponents that are that badly outmatched. I don't want to overreact to the occasional poor pass protection, and I don't want to over-celebrate the great playmaking skills we saw from our young freshmen. The few negatives were a couple deep balls Kessler missed and the excessive times Kessler was scrambling (more so in the first half). On the positive front, the defense was swarming, the secondary looked deep and talented (even without Adoree Jackson), and the true freshmen at tailback, receiver, etc. all look phenomenal. I hate these kinds of games - where injuries are a possibility, a win does nothing at all, and a bad performance can be humiliating. We spent so many years filling up our non-conference schedule with Big-12 champions, SEC champions, Big-10 champions, and other highly ranked and highly regarded notables, that to now have these Arkansas States and Idahos feels disappointing. I understand no one from the SEC will dare play us, and I know we already have away games with Notre Dame, Oregon, and Arizona State this year. But all things considered, these games do little to tell us about our team, and just don't create the same enthusiasm we grew accustomed to. With that said, if a 2015 opener against Arkansas State and a 55-6 win is a cakewalk, I don't know what that says about a 2005 opener against the SEC-West champion ARKANSAS (the actual Arkansas) and a 70-17 score. In other words, if you ask me, Arkansas State did better than the last team from their state to come into our house. And Arkansas State isn't in the SEC. Just sayin' ...My questions on the year include all of the following ... (1) Are we able to finish out games, particularly on the defensive side of the ball where stops have been elusive when they have been most needed? Who in that linebacking corps and in that secondary will keep those chains from moving when we need to finish? (2) We know our offensive line is experienced and seasoned, but are they good? I feel more confident on the run blocking side but have concerns about pass protection. No doubt the former makes the latter much easier. (3) Will we be a run-first football team? I have NEVER seen an effective USC passing game that was not first enabled by a lethal USC running game, and I do not believe I will now either. The loss of Buck but return of Tre Madden should be a breakeven, but our ability to get those tailbacks in the open field and achieve that sensation of running down hill will be pivotal. (4) Health. Will the injury gods smile upon us? Depth is still limited in our first year off of the most egregious and immoral sanctions in NCAA history, and there is a sense in which health may very well determine the final record.I allude to those pitiful sanctions because they remain the exponent on my desire to see USC return to its proper place in the universe. The NCAA was unable tm destroy us. We came out of sanctions with an overwhelmingly positive record and a superior win-loss record than our rivals had (a stat that should bring shame and embarrassment to said rivals). We experienced great disappointment along the way (the 2012 season, the UCLA losses, the ASU hail mary), but we were hit exponentially harder than say, Alabama, in the early 2000's, and came out of it exponentially better. Indisputable facts. I remain of the opinion that at some point some rather raging cosmic justice is coming our way, and I am just as fine with it being this year as any other year. These young players will not and should not play with the chip on their shoulder coming from the arch-villain who is Paul Dee or Mark Emmert etc. The world who chooses to see now sees how unjust the sanctions were, and the world that doesn't choose to see such is asking you to pay for their education if you catch my drift. What Trojans do when they are left for dead is get up and punch someone in the mouth. To that end, we play.Around the country this week, a few comments and I'll wrap it up ...- The Stanford game is perhaps the biggest mystery. Is Northwestern going to prove to be that good? I doubt it, but maybe. But what we saw was not an incredible Northwestern team - it was a Stanford team that literally could not get a first down, could not complete a pass, could not establish even a remotely mediocre offense. I feel bad for Kevin Hogan because he seems like a very good young man and he lost his father this off season to a tragic fight with cancer, but the team seems to me to be very much "regressing to the mean" that is Stanford football, to borrow from @lostangeles. They had a four-standard deviation event for a couple years with Luck and Harbaugh and have not returned to their proper role in the universe. I will admit it if I am wrong, but I do not think I am.- There was not enough talk about Oregon giving up 42 points to Eastern Washington, all of which took place with the game still competitive and with Oregon's first string in ...- I didn't see Alabama's game but I imagine the ESPN world is licking their chops at what they see as an inevitable Urban Meyer vs. Nick Saban match-up ... The best thing about a Ohio State/Alabama gane every year? ONE of them WILL LOSE.- Pitiful weekend for the Pac-12, and who cares. I remain utterly mystified by those in my own Trojan family who feel some love or loyalty to a "conference" rather than to our own selves. This is a conference that team by team by team rushes the field when they beat us, and that somehow we are supposed to feel some fraternal love for. Washington State's loss to Portland State is one of the low points in Washington State history (think about that sentence); Arizona State either ran into the most underrated team in the country in Texas A&M or they were highly overrated themselves. We'll give it a couple more games to evaluate further but I'm not feeling great about the conference as a whole.- Incredible game in Nebraska with BYU and that vaunted hail mary ending. Not sure if college football teams are spending enough time preparing for a hail mary defense, or rather, if they are spending ANY time on it. Ay yi yi.Okay, I will leave it there for the week. Bring on the Vandals, and thank God it's September. The greatest time of the year is here, and I feel great.