ShareThisLOS ANGELES - Woe are the University of Southern California Trojans.
How will they go on? Is football really worth pursuing anymore? Should the team even bother going to Arizona State this week, or would it be better off attending a Tony Robbins seminar to rediscover the merits of their existence?
"I've been asked in some of the interviews, 'How do you structure salvaging the season?'" said Pete Carroll on Tuesday.
"Salvaging the season" is not a concept he relates to. Carroll has made a very good living compartmentalizing each game as a separate entity unto itself, and getting his players to buy in.
"We've never talked about a season in terms of championships or rankings or bowl matchups," he said.
But it's a natural question, reflecting the disconnect between playing football and watching it. Media and the school's loyalists have been conditioned to regard USC losses as catastrophic.
It's the Carroll Conundrum. When your team has been so good for so long, and raised expectations, especially of fans that want nothing less than a national championship dream to follow, a two-loss season might seem, to them, barely worth finishing.
Fortunately for USC, those people won't be suiting up against the Sun Devils on Saturday.
"We're a two-loss team, big deal," said senior center Jeff Byers. "Losing feels like (garbage). But we can't change it. You just go back to basics, like 'Why do you play football?' It's because we love running around hitting people."
The Trojans, said Byers, also are antsy for another chance to "show who we really are. What we put on the field (last week) is not what we ever want to do again."
Until Saturday, though, Oregon 47, USC 20 is still floating like a dead gold fish in a bowl.
Whoops, shouldn't even mention bowls, should we? The Trojans' streak of seven consecutive Bowl Championship Series games is just one of several ongoing successes in jeopardy.
Seven-time Pac-10 champion USC is two games behind in the race with four to play. The Trojans dropped to No. 12 in the Associated Press rankings, with its streak of seven straight Top 4 finishes at risk, as well.
But that's why losses tend to set off alarms at the school, as if they signal the inevitable decline after this heady, unparalleled run of excellence.
There have to be reasons USC loses a game or two -- horrors! -- every year, scuttling its chance at a national title, which it hasn't won since the 2004 season.
One popular theory is the "brain drain." Well-regarded coaches such as Ed Orgeron, Norm Chow, Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian and Nick Holt have left since the last championship, and the new guys haven't quite measured up.
Another is that the Pac-10 is stronger. Schools have better coaches who recruit more consistently and do a stronger job countering Carroll's now-familiar schemes.
Both may be true. And just how devastating have these changes been?
We're still talking about a two-loss season, here, with four games to play in which USC will be favored. Then they will play a bowl game, still, possibly, of the BCS variety, and could end at 11-2, which could extend the streak of 11 wins to eight seasons.
But even if the Trojans would end up, say, a three-loss team, with this young defense coming back and an experienced Matt Barkley in charge of the offense next year, I'll bet you like their chances.
No doubt this is a crummy week for USC, but theories and heavy sighing aside, an occasional crummy week is still all it ever has.
(Contact Gregg Patton at gpatton(at)PE.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
