Please join us in thanking Roman Meal for their continued sponsorship this season. Roman Meal, the bread Caesar supplies his legions as he convinces them it’s great to be in the Rose Bowl.

My lasting memory of the season is of course, the loss to Stanford. The fourth and 20 conversion and fourth down touchdown pass were simply unforgettable plays. What’s interesting now is the revisionist history that’s taken hold since that game, with so much focus on John David Booty’s broken finger.
At the time, Pete Carroll said Booty’s passes were not noticeably worse to warrant his removal.
But a few weeks later, Carroll changed his story and said Booty should have been removed. Why? Because he wanted to take heat off Booty for that loss. Of course, many swallowed that line and somehow assumed Mark Sanchez would have made a difference. Did they see the first half of the Arizona game? USC’s offense would have been extremely limited against Stanford, so I don’t the lack of a QB change as the reason for the loss.
USC’s defense faced a backup QB making his first career start, so it had no excuses on the final drive.

Sam Baker will probably have the most productive NFL career, in my opinion. He’s extremely consistent and should be able to make a smooth transition to the NFL. A sleeper pick? Maybe John David Booty. Quarterbacks always have a shot. Who thought Trent Edwards or Matt Moore would be rookie successes? They’re taller than Booty, but I suspect he’ll get an opportunity at some point.

Penalities are usually the result of coaching, either for a lack of discipline or failing to stress fundamentals. It would be easy to blame it on officials’ bias, but I can think some controversial calls in 2004 and 2005 alone (offensive pass interference against Virginia Tech, touchdown called back for Oregon) that significantly helped the Trojans.