• Welcome to your Friday existential crisis. The verdicts are pouring in on USC's flat effort at Oregon State, and clearly the Trojans have hurt the ones that love them most: the Orange County Register gives the offense a 'D', the defense a 'D-minus' and the coaching, more optimistically, a 'D-plus' (the 'plus' is for making it look close in the second half, I guess). The L.A. Daily News' Scott Wolf is livid about recruiting rankings, and who the Trojans don't recruit. Conquest Chronicles is too perplexed to get angry, at least for a couple hundred words.

And on top of the anger, disappointment and humiliation, the defense was beaten up, physically, with assorted injuries to Rey Maualuga, Taylor Mays and Brian Cushing, while Mark Sanchez is having some sort of identity crisis:

"That wasn't us out there," USC quarterback Mark Sanchez said. "I don't know who it was."

If it wasn't USC out there, who -- or what -- was it? Mark Sanchez is blowing my mind, man. So much so that I'm probably coming back to that quote later in the day, just so it will stop freakin' me out.

• Cue annoying theme song for the rest of the weekend. That would be "Go Speed Racer, go Speed Racer, go!," in honor of Oregon quarterback Darron Thomas and a pair of teammates who gunned it a little too hard early Thursday morning:

EUGENE -- Three Oregon football players -- including freshman quarterback Darron Thomas -- were involved in a speed-racing crash early Thursday in Springfield that sent two of them to a hospital.
[...]
Pleasant, a redshirt freshman linebacker, was cited by Springfield police for reckless driving and speed racing. Pleasant, 19, and sophomore receiver Jamere Holland, 20, will miss Saturday's game because of injuries suffered in the accident, Bellotti said before Thursday's practice.

Thomas won't be disciplined and still has a chance to start Saturday despite a bruise on his throwing arm. No word on the status of Chim-Chim.

• Don't blame me. I know nothing. Bruno Lecchesi, the sculptor who became a minor laughingstock for chiseling anachronistic Nike swooshes into Ernie Davis' shoes and putting the first black Heisman winner in a modern helmet for the statue Syracuse unveiled earlier this month, wants you to know this is not his fault:

“I was shocked to learn that the material given to me for the helmet and the cleats were mistaken,” Lucchesi said in a statement. “I want to make it clear that I did exactly what I was asked to do and the mistake was not made by me. They told me that they were thrilled with it.”
[...]
“Bruno is a sculptor. He’s not a football player,” Lucchesi’s wife, Ann, said Thursday. “He welcomed anyone to his studio to view it and nobody came. It wasn’t a mistake. He did what the school asked. They were given every opportunity to make any changes they wanted.”

Syracuse: where even the players they commission don't perform like they're supposed to.

• It's nothing a little old-fashioned anorexia can't fix. In more dramatic, uniform-related fallout, Idaho's cheerleader coach has actually resigned in the wake of complaints that the Vandalettes' uniforms were a tad risqué for potato/seperationist cult country -- on some of the girls, more than others. Don't they understand that parading half-naked in front of lecherous crowds is motivational?:

The uniforms helped promote physical fitness, Helm said.

"The kids were real motivated to look as best as they could," she said. "When you walk out there and you feel so proud about what you're doing, that's the goal of the whole thing. The kids had the package."

Helm said some girls were crying when the scanty uniforms were confiscated, which, seriously, get a grip.

Quickly ... When Knowshon Moreno is earning them, not all rushing yards are created equal. . . . Florida may have found its cornerback in Janoris Jenkins, one of those Pahokee rabbit chasers. . . . Jim Tressel wants his offensive line to "let loose" all of a sudden. . . . Suspended Penn State defensive linemen Maurice Evans and Abe Karoma will play against Illinois. . . . Nicely-named Colorado guar Maxwell Tuioti-Mariner is out for the season with a torn ACL. . . . Neither Arkansas nor Texas is really interested in renewing an old SWC rivalry. . . . And Marshall at West Virginia would be a nice in-state rivalry, if any of the players were actually, you know, from West Virginia.

- - -
Photo of Mark Sanchez via the Los Angeles Times. Photo of Darron Thomas via the Associated Press.