The ONE and ONLY!

Firstly, congratulations to the USC TROJANS for winning their second national championship in football in two years. Last year we shared it with LSU (and rightfully so), this year we share it only with Trojan fans, period. I've been attending Trojan games for the last 8 or 9 years and it's been a tough ride. The downward days of Robinson's second tenure to the enormous failure of the Paul Hackett experiment. But once Pete Carroll got here everything changed. What he has done for this program is unbelievable. There really aren't a lot of things I like about USC as an instution, but it's football program, along with the history and tradition surrounding it, is simply amazing. And it has been especially great to see Coach Carroll be responsible for it. He was completely mistreated by the NFL and wasn't even USC's first choice. If you can believe this, Dennis Ericson was first on the list to replace Paul Hackett. The guy who just got his ass fired from the once proud flagship of the NFL, the San Fransisco 49ers. Of course the 49ers are hoping to hire Pete Carroll, along with offensive guru Norm Chow, and while they're at it take Matt Leinart with their first round pick (which they undoubtedly earned all by themselves). Don't know anything for sure, but I doubt Carroll is ready to leave USC (and I think USC would gladly sweeten his deal to help him make up his mind).

Secondly, sorry for taking an extra day to post this. It took a little while to recover from the necessary celebrations of the utterly dominating performance of the USC Trojans over the Oklahomoa Sooners. It really was something to behold.

I want to thank lots of other people including Sooner lineman Birdine, Sooner coach Stoops, and all the experts out there in sportsland who suffer from eastcoastbiasitis. It was their "expert analysis" that really made this victory so much sweeter. Although Vegas had us favored by something around 3 points, everyone else and their grandmothers pretty much figured that the Pac-10 only plays 2-hand touch and couldn't match up with the big burly men of the Big-12 conference. And I've heard it all before. In fact it was one year ago that lots of people said the same thing about the Trojans when they played Michigan in the Rose Bowl (a game I had the pleasure of watching in person). Coach Stoops even said something like "our team is far and away better at running the ball". Hmmmm. Sounds like a complete lack of respect for how the west coast plays football. Don't get me wrong, I love the east coast, but not at the expense of appreciating reality. Football is football, blocking is blocking. A good running team on the west coast is probably gonna be a good running team on the east coast. I especially appreciated Birdine's comments on how Matt Leinart was an overrated quarterback playing for an average team. After whupping the Sooners' butts I wonder what he thinks of his own QB's and team's talent. Anyway, as usual, I digress.

We had a party to watch and celebrate the game on Wednesday (the game was on Wednesday, Antarctic time). We even had a couple of Oklahoma fans show up. As most of you know, the first 5 minutes or so was exciting, but the game that was supposed to be a classic matchup quickly turned into a classic blowout. Some of the biggest excitement came late in the 4th quarter when Dave Ginsburg and myself almost won a Harley Davidson motorcycle. We had entered a pool (one of those 10 x 10 grids) to win the motorcycle, it was a lot of money to enter, so Dave and I split the costs. Our numbers were OK=2 and USC=5. Once we found out our numbers we felt pretty sure we had no chance in hell to win anything. But lo and behold, 4th quarter, 7 minutes to go, USC has the ball on their 1 yard line. Dave was very excited about the chances of OK getting a safety, I said something to the effect of "there is no way in hell the Trojans give up a safety". Then, as if on cue, Heisman winner Matt Leinart fumbles the snap, recovers the ball and is sacked in the end zone, safety. The score is now 55 to 12. Those are our numbers!!!! But as you all know, that wasn't the final score, so although it was close we did not win the fully restored, beautiful Harley Davidson. Ah, but it was exciting.

So after the impressive USC victory, we all decided that we needed to let everyone on base share the joy. So we took the USC flag (it sure has been to a lot of cool places lately) and took the McMurdo galley by storm. Yup, it must've been something to see. We barged in running around with the flag yelling and screaming. Some people got it, some people were rooting us on and happy for the victory. Of course many people had no idea what in the hell we were doing. And I think it was those people that made the experience so much better for me.

After that, we went back to Hut 10 (where we watched the game) and continued to party until 3 in the morning (the game started at 2pm, so it really was a lot of work, and hence the recovery period was absolutely necessary).

So what follows are a few shots of us being drunk, happy, and National Champions.

Oh yeah, I've read lots of articles about the game (the experts sure have changed their opinions), but here's a kind of a funny one regarding the Auburn situation. I honestly feel bad for Auburn, but not that bad. They should've kept us on their out of conference schedule. But then again, we've got all the answers when it comes to Auburn, that's why we've beat them easily the last 2 years. Cadillac appears to be a great running back when he's playing SEC games, but man oh man, do we sure have a way of making him look old and busted when he tries to carry the rock through our defense. Anyway, here's the URL on the article (it's from the Cincinnati enquirer of all places):

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050106/COL03/501060395/1062/SPT

Here's a little taster:
"The Trojans are loaded like Fort Knox. Matt Leinart threw four touchdown passes in the first half. He looked as if he were knocking over milk bottles at the state fair.

Throw the beanbag through the clown's mouth, Matt.

Meanwhile, Auburn made its case for No. 1 on its knees. The mighty Tigers burned the last two minutes of a three-point win over ninth-ranked Virginia Tech by lying down as the clock dripped off. Auburn would have had no chance against the Trojans.

Here's the math: No. 1 beats No. 2 by 36 points. No. 3 beats No. 9 by three points. It's a big mystery how No. 3 would do against No. 1. There ought to be an investigation. Or at least another championship game."

GO TROJANS!!!!!
FIGHT ON!!!!