Oh that was wonderful.

Make no mistake about last night. It wasn’t just the usual USC egg-laying against inferior opposition.

No…in the first half, at least, the salient fact was that Oregon State was damn good. (In the third quarter, the two teams we expected to see showed up; but it was too late for the Trojans, especially since they couldn’t keep it up in the fourth.) This war was not lost by USC as much as it was won by Oregon State; and it was won in the trenches. (And thank God for that, since the Beaver secondary absolutely needed consistent pressure on the quarterback to survive.)

Which makes it worse for the Trojans.

There’s some comfort in being able to say “yeah, we didn’t show up to play, it was an ugly and weird contest, we’re clearly the better team but we gave the game away”. It leaves open the possibility that, on most Saturdays, you really are the #1 team in the land. You just couldn’t be bothered to act like it this time; but that shouldn’t happen again, and if it doesn’t, you’re still in the BCS hunt.

It’s a different story when you face an opponent who plays far enough out of their minds that they successfully impersonate a top-10 team for the first 30 minutes—and you’re just plain not up to the challenge that represents. It’s not that you get lazy and stupid and make mistakes and let an incompetent team stay in the game…no, you simply get dominated, on both sides of the ball.

Maybe you’re not as good as you, and everybody else, thought. Even on a good day.

Maybe that titanic Clash in the Coliseum wasn’t what we thought it was at the time—on either side of the ball.

Before that game: It’s #1 versus #5 baby! Early contender for game of the year!

After that game: The #1 team truly is awesome! In retrospect, though, it was more like #1 versus #22 out there, wasn’t it?

After last night: No, what that game in L.A. really was, was #14 blowing out an unranked opponent from a mediocre conference. Retrospective yawn.