Welcome back to campus my faithful readers, fans and critics. I am sure you missed me as much as I missed all of you, and I hope you all had wonderful holiday breaks. I for one watched a lot of television over my break: movies, shows, sports, you name it.
One of the biggest television events of the season was the college football Rose Bowl featuring No. 5 USC and No. 8 Penn State, the winners of the Pac 10 and Big 10 conferences, respectively. While watching the now-familiar dismantling of the Big 10 squad by USC, I thought of something that may be controversial: Since winning the national championship in 2004, USC has been the most underachieving college football program in the country.
This statement, at first glance, must seem wildly off-base. Since 2004, Pete Carroll's Trojans have gone 46-6. In 2005, Reggie Bush won the program's seventh Heisman Trophy. USC has won three straight Rose Bowls and played for another national championship.
But my claim that USC has been the most underachieving program since 2004 is not based on what the program has accomplished, it's based on what the program should have accomplished and didn't. My central point is this: USC has the talent every year to win every game -- and anything less than that should be considered a disappointment.
Think about this: Year in and year out, USC has NFL-level talent two-deep at every position on both sides of the ball. The premier athletes across the country line up to play at USC. Take this year's team as an example. USC's defense is rumored to send 10 out of 11 players to the NFL. The play-making positions are stacked on the offensive end as well, with one of the country's best quarterbacks, three of the nation's best running backs, one of the best tight-ends and three NFL-level talents at wide reciever. When these players leave, there will undoubtedly be a new slate of high school studs ready to fill in immediately.
It's bordering on ridiculous at this point. At quarterback the Trojans have moved from Heisman-winning Carson Palmer to Heisman-winning Matt Leinart to John David Booty to Mark Sanchez. All four were incredibly successful at USC, but the team's most successful representative at the professional level was a backup that never took a snap (Matt Cassel, now leading the New England Patriots in Tom Brady's absence). Most collegiate programs are lucky to recruit one player the caliber of Palmer, Leinart, Booty, Sanchez and Cassel, but USC recruited five in succession. In total, there are 34 ex-USC players now making a living in the NFL, a truly astounding number.
Given the talent level of USC year in and year out, I can't think of a single reason why the team shouldn't win every single game. For those of you who saw USC beat Penn State this year, I think we can agree that there isn't a team in the country that can beat USC when they play that well. They are just too big and too strong at every position for even a great team like Penn State. And it's like this every season.
Yet every year, USC manages to fall to a team or two that it should have beaten. In 2005, USC was heavily favored to win against Texas in the national championship but lost, although it was admittedly a fantastic game. In 2006, USC lost to an unranked Oregon State squad, 33-31, early in the season, but then rebounded to come within one game of earning another shot at a national title. All they needed to do was beat heavy underdog UCLA. USC failed to secure the win, however, and settled for a Rose Bowl victory. In 2007, USC was once again an easy pre-season No. 1 selection, but the team lost two more games, including one at home to 41-point underdog Stanford, and once again settled for a Rose Bowl championship. In 2008, the team was once more unable to live up to its full potential. A loss to Oregon State early on kept the Trojans out of national title consideration.
To me, this seems unacceptable. Pete Carroll and the Trojans insist that they are happy with Rose Bowl championships, but this cannot be the case. Carroll undoubtedly recruits so many stud players based on the promise of national championships. Year in and year out, they have the talent to end the season as a clear No. 1, yet each time they fail.
This is why USC is the largest underachiever in college football over the past four seasons. Six losses in the last four years is far too many.
