<p>Notre Dame did that way back in 2005, and all it really accomplished them was leaving a USC player with a season-ending injury (though it did slow Reggie Bush a bit in the 1st half). This time, Pete Carroll isn’t going to be caught off-guard by such tricks.</p>
<p>As for whether the “dynasty is over”, I might remind people of 2003, when USC lost to unranked Cal and ended up 11-1 with a national championship, or last year, with USC losing to unranked Oregon State and UCLA and still coming out 11-2 with a Rose Bowl win. Or that Carroll is 20-1 against ranked teams since mid-2002. Or that he’s never lost in the month of november. Those are still pretty impressive and haven’t been broken yet.</p>
<p>So I still predict USC going at least 11-2, with at least a share of the pac-10 title and a BCS bid.</p>
<p>And assuming Ohio State and BC fall, and USC wins out, they should be #2 again - they have the toughest schedule of the one-loss teams left (except the eventual SEC champ)</p>
<p>I was including the post-season, so that’s the case of USC going to the national championship game and losing, or of losing another regular season game (not speculating on who that would be) and winning their bowl game.</p>
<p>Besides, I still think USC has a shot at the championship. Everyone seems to have discounted that already, but when you consider that the offense that played against Arizona only includes about half of the players that started against Nebraska (QB Booty, RB Johnson, OT Rachal, OT Baker, C O’Dowd, and more all had to sit out due to injury) and that most of them will return by Oregon, there’s a great chance for USC to win out the rest of their season.</p>
<p>Ehhh, I don’t think USC has that much going for them. They haven’t actually proved anything this season; their most impressive win, in retrospect, was over a really mediocre Nebraska team. No one really knows how good ASU is at this point, but I don’t see USC winning out.
I’m envisioning an 8-1 tie in the Pac-10 between Oregon and Cal, with Cal going to the Rose Bowl on tiebreakers.</p>
<p>The difference is that when it happens in the Pac-10, it’s because the conference sucks and is overrated, when it happens in the SEC, it’s because it’s how deep the conference is.</p>
<p>(Which I admit that’s sometimes not an invalid point (uhhhh…UCLA anyone?))</p>
<p>I think a lot of people in the Pac-10 will be rooting for USC to beat UCLA this year, just to avoid the embarrassment of the conference champion be the only team that lost to Notre Dame :)</p>
<p>^ LOL…so true. I think UCLA loses a couple more games though…Oregon and ASU come to mind.</p>
<p>Could you imagine if Cal won against OSU, Cal would be No. 1, and then lose to UCLA…Cal would be the laughingstock of college football as the most over-rated team…All because Notre Dame and Utah were able to beat UCLA this year.</p>
<p>^ I never root for USC, under any circumstances. Embarrassment my foot.</p>
<p>I was rooting for Cal to win the Pac-10, but I can’t do that anymore because it would require them to win Big Game–and we can’t have that, can we?</p>
<p>I wasn’t able to watch the game but was following it on ESPN.com. Can someone tell me why Matt Ryan barfed on national television?</p>
<p>Plus:</p>
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<p>If BC goes to the National Championship, I’m going to bet it’ll be against either Ohio State or LSU. If its against Ohio State I probably won’t even watch. I might want to reorganize my desk instead. If it’s against LSU, it might be too painful to watch, even as a non-BC fan. And it’ll really make SEC fans just insufferable if LSU demolishes another non-SEC team.</p>
<p>A good game would be PAC-10 vs. SEC, a matchup you really don’t see often (besides Cal vs. Tennessee, was there one?). I’d watch Oregon/USC vs. LSU. I’d even watch Oregon/USC vs. tOSU. But BC? Eh…</p>
<p>yeah I agree a PAC-10 vs. SEC championship matchup would be the best combination…the only SEC team that might qualify for the championship is LSU only if they win the rest of their games…at least the SEC and Pac-10 conference championships will be great games</p>
<p>Unfortunately, USC’s loss to Stanford (3-4 !) might cause some people to take another 1-loss team over them - which I think is incredulous considering that no other one loss team (besides LSU) would have beaten as many ranked teams (if USC wins out).</p>