THE MARK MAY FACE OF EVERLASTING SMUGNESS

So here's the first email I received when I turned on my 'puter upon arriving here at the L.A. Coliseum this afternoon. It's from my dark and twisty friend Billy:

I feel like the spaced out kid in Almost Famous who says to the Cameron Crowe character outside the hotel in Manhattan, "It's happening. It's all happening."

--Arkansas loses.
--West Virginia loses again, completely exposing that conference. (I almost wrote "Big Least" but I'd like to think I'm a tiny bit better than that)
--Florida wins, but looks terrible.

In my pea-brain we've got our other semi-final game tonight.

And then we'll have a couple weeks of either:

USC: "You had your chance"
Michigan: "You lost to freakin' Oregon State"

or

Notre Dame: "You had your chance"
Michigan: "Shutup, we killed you guys"

Really, though, isn't this fun? It happens every autumn. In late October you hear the critics talking about how we need a playoff because all of the unbeaten teams and someone's going to be left out. Check out the number of unbeaten or one-loss teams as of October 21st (and the number of losses they now have):

UNBEATEN

Ohio State...........0
Michigan..............1
USC.....................1
West Virginia ......2
Louisville .............1
Boise State..........0*
Rutgers................1

One-Loss

Texas......................3
Tennessee..............3
Auburn....................2
Florida......................1
Notre Dame..............1
Cal............................3
Clemson...................4
Georgia Tech...........2*
Arkansas.................2
Oregon.....................5
Nebraska..................3
Wisconsin................1
Boston College.........3
Texas A&M...............3
Wake Forest..............2*

games in progress at the moment.

In other words, things have a way of settling every year by the time you've christened your Turkey Trot T-shirt with salsa stains. What is never taken into consideration enough is that come November, the air gets thinner for the schools in the national title hunt. And so a team such as West Virginia has to realize that it will make South Florida's season to upset the Mountaineers in Morgantown, which is exactly what they did.

The other aspect: let the ENTIRE regular season play out before you start moaning about the inherent unfairness of the BCS system. Because as it stands now, there are three schools with a legitimate shot at meeting Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl, and there's still one week left to play. Believe it or not, in college football they really do settle things on the field.

L.A. MAUSOLEUM UPDATE

It's 3:11 p.m and the only players on the field thus far are four Notre Dame special teams players (Carl Gioia, Geoff Price, Bobby Renkes and Ryan Burkhart). They've been on the field for seven minutes. Traveler, USC's equine mascot, was out here about 45 minutes ago getting in some light trotting. Hank Goldberg has installed him as a 2:1 favorite to win at Santa Anita tomorrow.

Clear, beautiful skies above. A light breeze is blowing. From our press box vantage on the stadium's southern side, you can see the HOLLYWOOD sign...and I believe with my high-powered binocs I just spotted Ryan Phillippe at the gates of Reese Witherspoon's home begging her to forgive him.

One very cool thing USC does is allow a special student spirit section into the Mausoleum half an hour before anyone else. They occupy two entire lower sections behind the Trojan bench between the goal line and the 30. Right now they're boosin lustily as Brady Quinn, Jeff Samardzija and a few other Irish players loosen up near the east end zone.

3:18 p.m. The entire USC squad enters the Mausoleum from the northeast corner in their scarlet sweasts. Pete Carroll, looking spiffy in a gray suit, leads them. Now the entire team is assmebled in a circle at midfield around the SC ("Simpson Casualties"?) logo.

3:20 p.m. The SC students have broken into a "Go Play Baseball!" chant directed at Samardzija. A little more creative than Michigan State's "F___ You, Irish!" pregame cheer.

Okay, that was uncalled for. Unsportsmanlike, NBC blogger, loss of wireless service for five minutes.

FRIDAY'S ACTION

How much fun to watch was Friday's Texas-Texas A&M contest (unless if you were Colt McCoy's mom)?

A few observations on that one:

1. A&M QB Stephen McGee, who never slides at the end of a run, may have a short shelf-life, but he's everything that's right about college football.
2. ABC's Brad Nessler had a pretty good line about 280-pound Aggie running back Javorskie Lane: "Javorskie Lane is more like HOV lane."
3. So, if you were paying attention, A&M had an O-lineman named (Yemi) BAbalola and Texas had a linebacker named (Rashad) Bobino. I think Nessler missed a huge comedy opportunity by not doing sone one-on-one analysis there: "Babalola blocks Bobino!"
4. If you were following and, unlike me, devoting entirely too much time to sports and not enough to family the past few days, you noticed that Stacey Dales-not-Shuman was the sideline reporter for the NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night as well as the s.r. at the A&M-Texas game on Friday. She's fast becoming the platinum-blonde Erin Andrews.

Okay, it's 3:31. I'm going to make my way as close as I can get to the field (armed with disposable camera) to see what celeb photos I can snap (totally transparent excuse for Song Girl ogling, I know).

Be back soon.