It was a good weekend to be a Trojan. Behold the glorious glad tidings I bring unto you:

TCU 31
Stanford 14

Maryland 35
Cal 27

BYU 59
UCLA 0

Ohio State 3
USC 35

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

This is like heroin for USC fans. I can literally feel my body becoming weightless and transcending this earthly sphere to the blessed realms of Valhalla, where Pete Carroll eternally coaches this absolutely perfect team over and over again. I’m really not just talking hot air when I say that this USC team could hold its own agains many NFL teams. An insanely aggressive defense (tackling? how about flying missile takedowns instead?) with a lightning-fast offense left no doubt. Ohio State and USC have danced around each other for years, and finally getting to see this matchup turn into such a thorough clobbering leave the Trojans with only one threat: the possibility of complacency. But they should have learned a lesson about looking at the bowl game before the season is over from last year’s game against Stanford and especially the stupid loss to UCLA in 2006.

If I passionately cared about the NFL, I would have found Sunday’s games as upsetting as Saturday’s were intoxicating. The Vikings proved yet again that despite having one of the most talented rosters in the league, gross mismanagement by their useless coach will leave them out of the running for the playoffs. Watching that game was astounding. Adrian Peterson is the real deal; he’s a pleasure to watch and a real talent. But the Vikings’ playbook is as unsophisticated as a high school JV team’s, and twice as predictable. I saw only one trick play, and almost every first down was very predictable; handoff to Peterson and running it up the center. The fact that he was able to pull about five yards off of each carry is a testament to how talented he is, considering that there were always four defenders dogging him. While I enjoyed seeing Peyton Manning get furiously frustrated from spending half the game flat on his back, I did not enjoy watching Childress blow a solid lead with uncreative plays executed poorly by Tavaris Jackson’s mediocre leadership.

While there were some absolute rubbish calls by the officials in the Colts-Vikings game, the Vikings’ loss was their own fault. Not so much for The Chargers, who got ripped off big time. It would be awfully nice if the NFL was more open about how officials are graded on their ability to call plays and how well they swallow their pride during reviews. It’s so rare for officials to overturn a call. Human error is part of the game, which is the point of having official reviews and coaches’ challenges. But either enforce proper play reviews 100%, or do away with it altogether. I’d rather have a system where teams just have to deal with a play as it’s called in the moment than a flawed system where review does nothing to set the record straight.