Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:02 am EDT
At least you can't say nobody saw this coming.

Jacquizz Rodgers is a star Thursday night, yes, but this has to be a 12-alarm siren for USC, and much more so for the pundits who keep voting the Trojans into the mythical championship on September. Four losses to unranked teams as a double-digit favorite in three years is more than mere cracks in the facade.
And this one is much tougher to dismiss than the others -- against Oregon State in '06, against Stanford last year, the Trojans still controlled the game on a down-to-down basis, as expected, and lost by giving the ball away. But there was nothing remotely flukey or dismissible about Oregon State's slashing consistency: USC didn't turn the ball over until late in the fourth quarter and was physically manhandled throughout the first half. A 5-foot 6-inch true freshman isn't supposed to make it out of the Trojans defense alive; Rodgers ran 36 times for 186 yards. The Beavers -- the same rodents that lost to Stanford and rolled over from the opening gun at Penn State -- controlled the ball for more than 38 minutes, converted more than half their third downs (to USC's 20 percent), allowed all of three first downs in the first half and made the USC offense one-dimensional from the first snap of the game. All ye praises be unto Mike Riley, because his team looked irredeemably terrible through its first three games, up until it convincingly outplayed the No. 1 team in the country.
That's a black swan of nearly Stanford-level magnitude, but USC can't keep getting passes for games like this. Three years in a row it's dropped out of the top two or three in the polls with a shocking, inexcusable loss to a vastly inferior outfit, with the same set of problems: inconsistency at quarterback, a sketchy, makeshift running game and no go-to playmakers anywhere on an offense ostensibly overflowing with them. The Trojans will be back, they'll probably still carry the Pac-10, and by the end of the year they'll be lined up for another Rose Bowl massacre with talking heads braying about the team "playing the best football in the country right now." We'll continue to be awed by their talent against other elite teams.
But if Ohio State deserves to be ridiculed and scorned and run out the mythical championship picture on a rail for its primetime, big game failures, when are we going to hold USC accountable for repeatedly losing the little one?
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Photo of Jacquizz Rodgers via Getty Images.
Dr. Saturday is a college football blog edited by Matt Hinton. Email him tips and feedback.

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334 Comments
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Tuck USC "Goodnight" until the media over-hype starts again next August. Last year USC was unimpressive early, but the media hype for USC, Cal and Oregon was ridiculous. All nose-dived before mid-season. This year it only took 3 games to write-off the conference.
Now we can focus on the two super-conferences. SEC has 4 teams in Top 10, 2 more in Top 25. Big 12 is 8 deep with 4 teams in Top 10, 1 more in Top 25 and 3 just barely out of Top 25. Colorado will enter if they beat FSU and Oklahoma State should already be in there. What awesome college football battles ahead in these 2 conferences.
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All that I can say is Oregon State played a hell of a game and deserved to win. Period. SC didn't show up at all. Makes me wonder if they didn't take their usual game by game approach and slept in today, and never woke up....
Hope Rey Maualuga is alright. Fight On!
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someone at SI deserves to get shot for that BS...I don't know how the SI curse began...or why it happens...I just know it will never die...
that said...Carroll and his staff have NO confidence in their team when it comes to little games like this...
all I DO know...is I saw this coming and I should have bet my house on it....I would be a rich man this evening...
Trojans have lost 3 of 4 in Corvallis...playing there is a cancer and USC flat out SUCKS in weeknight games..why they keep accepting the bait from ESPN to be shown nationwide is beyond me...stick to saturday Carroll...most marquee teams do and they don't go through the same hell you put trojan nation through....
I love my team...but this was not them...
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Turkey come on. I hate LSU and USC equally, but to say that the SEC would get manhandled by the Pac 10... You're dreaming. I'm not saying that Ohio State wasn't overratted but everybody's weak this year. Pac 10 went 0-4 vs the Mountain West. The Mountain West?!? That just shows you how level the competition is. The days of college football needing a playoff system is evident. USC lost to unranked Oregon State PERIOD! That means they need to prove that they deserve to be ranked. OSU has been overranked forever as evident by the SEC @$$whoopings in titlegames. So what they beat OSU, there's probably another 15 teams out there that could beat them.
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As an OSU fan, I think I can speak for most of Beaver Nation when I say that that was certainly an outstanding performance by the men in black and orange! However, after watching my team seemingly suffer an '"upset" at the hands of Stanford on week one, and then be completely humiliated by a very good Penn State team in week two, I had very little faith in the Beaves. I also have very little faith in teams being ranked seriously early on in the season. Too many "upsets" early in the college football season over the last few years has me convinced that preranking these teams (mostly based on brand names and previous season performances) stacks the polls and makes it more possible for teams that play lackluster schedules to be considered for BCS games with sometimes two losses.
The bottom line is this: A team is only as good as it plays the day of the game. Also: Even though brand name schools receive higher recruited players year in and year out, it doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things when it comes to losses at the hands like my Oregon State team. For know, I will gladly take the conference victory over a number one ranked team any day of the week! Congrats to Oregon State, and to the other teams in the top five to ten: watch out. There are plenty of lower ranked teams out there ready to steal your thunder and prove that these "meaningless" games can be huge steps for their programs.
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We should just ignore the pundits when they talk about a team in a major media market because they LOSE ALL OBJECTIVITY.
Real football is played in the SEC and the Big 12 to a lesser extent. Just set the TV to mute whenever they talk about the PAC-10 or the Big-11. Seriously.
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