This coming from a man (more like a boy!) who kept Reggie Bush, Reggie "The President and 2005 Heisman Trophy Winner" Bush, on the bench on 4th and 2 that fateful night of January 4th? A boy who said that he would have still kept Bush on the sidelines if he had called a different play? One who doesn't regret the decision to have "THE most explosive player" in college football during the last 15 years watching from the sidelines?

It is this philosophy that is going to cost us this year, and even next year, assuming PC is too scared to get rid of this loser after this season's bowl loss (I am thinking the Las Vegas Bowl, not Fiesta)!

Moreover, it is specifically Lame Kiffin, rather than this "all or nothing attitude" that is the root of our problems. Sure, all you SC homers who hang around wearesc will probably say, "We went for the win vs. ND. That's the right philosophy. Go for the win! We would have lost if we went to overtime in South Bend". Well, take off those cardinal and gold glasses you all have on, and try to be more objective for a second.

There is a reason things have gone south since the 2005 Orange Bowl win. All those top tier coaches are now gone, and we have losers in their place (specifically Lame). Seriously, all you homers shouldn't be shocked in one month or so. I predict in November, we could have as many as three losses (Cal, Oregon, ND). At least 1 for sure. See Cal's dominance Saturday night? Don't expect a repeat of 2004, when Tatupu's jumping at an Aaron Rodgers' pass at the goal line on 4th down secured that victory. We won't be that lucky this time around, I presume.

So I guess we should all book hotels for the Las Vegas Bowl, because that is where this team will end up. Even Holt has sucked the last few weeks.

I wonder what it would take to bring back Chow? Hell, I know plenty of people who'd pay part of Chow's salary if we could drop this loser (Lame Kiffin). God, this looks like Hackett's offensive teams all over again!

Lane Kiffin has only lost one game (for the National Championship). And really, USC's defense lost that game.

Kiffin has a much better record than any other offensive coordinator out there.

Redcorn,
This is where such an obsession leads. Just trying to help.....

Forget about the dream of having Chow come back. Carroll screwed that whole thing up a long time ago when he created an unbearable situation for Chow and ruined their relationship ... all in the name of receiving more credit for USC's dominant offense.

Well ... Petey ... you and your boy Laney now get all the credit AND BLAME for this poor excuse of an offense. Keep figuring out more trick plays on FG attempts so that we can get on the scoreboard.

Frauds.

J.R., don't stop, I like your posts dude. I'm much more optimistic, but you make some points.

PC will take over all coaching duties himself if he has to to get the W. We'll squeak by those teams if the Booty / Moody Show is in gear by then. If not, it'll be time to judge Lane & Co. on won-loss results, which are often harsh, but always fair.

Realize Yoda Chow isn't coming back, he'll get plenty of head coaching offers ala Stanford.

And don't bet on sports, bet on stocks brutha. Much better odds, (AKAM) is up over 70% in 3 months!!!

Spend the rest on beer.

I'm not so sure things have gone south since the '05 Orange Bowl. The team went undefeated last year until VY went unstoppable. The SC offense scored 5 touchdowns in a row in the second half of that game. The only time they didn't score was when they tried to run out the clock and when they had a whole 18 seconds to go 70 yards. By the way, they had their share of close calls in that 2004 season as well. Does anyone remember the VT, OSU, and Stanford games? All very close calls, much like the past two games versus the Washington teams. What Kiffin & Sarkisian need to do is change up the play calling a little. Go deep more often to stretch the defense vertically and run JD Booty on bootlegs. Booty runs far less than Leinart ever did and he is supposed to be a much better runner than Matt. The play I'd really like to see at the goal line is a play action to one side of the field and a bootleg/pass option to the opposite side with one receiver or tightend dragging with Booty. If he's open, hit him. If he's not open, run it into the endzone. If I have any criticism of the current O-coordinators, it is that they are too predictable. Mix it up some guys.

john ...you're a little crankey today...you need to get some and soon.....!!

OMG, I'm glad I'm not a college football coach!

Pete inherits the worst football team in USC history, delivers 3 Heisman Trophy winners, 2 Nat'l Championships (and nearly a third), undefeated so far this season, dwarfing the accomplishments of every other football program in the country during that time, and people are complaining!

What do you people do for a living? Are you delivering a comparable level of accomplishment?

There's a real disconnect from reality here...

Please Scott, please ban John Redcorn.

Really, if the Daily News wants to help grow its brand with blogs, then they are going to have to figure out a way to keep the blog comments free from the trolls, and John Redcorn is the trolliest of the trolls.

Whether or not Kiffin is a good coach (I think he's as good an OC as you can get in college), whether or not the program is on the verge of imploding (not even close, unless the Reggie Bush things busts out), whether or not PC is beginning to make questionable coaching moves that eventually lead to his end of his NFL career (maybe Bill Simmons has a point), John Redcorn doesn't really add anything to this blog, or any blog.

I understand that unless there is profanity, more or less all the comments eventually are posted, even the one that rip on you, but at a certain point if you want this blog to ever be more than a series of small, tangentially related factoids followed by the unhinged ravings of lunatics in the comments section, then a good start would be to start monitoring or making the comment section invite only.

And a good start to this, naturally, would be to ban John Redcorn, and let his post is drivel and spew on the free sections of the rivals and scout boards.

Things have gone south since the Orange Bowl, eh? Wow, you are an ignorant moron dumb ass piece of crap. I believe we are 17-1 since then.

You are a spoiled USC fan, the nickname holds true here. Do you realize that what happened in 2003-2005 doesn't happen all the time? Most programs would be lucky to have 1 of those years in their history. We had 3 in a row!! And we're working on 4 in a row!!

Kiffin and Holt, bad coaches? You gotta be kidding me. Kiffin did more game planning than Chow where Chow was here. And Carroll is involved with Kiff/Holt calls, mark my word. You think Carroll sucks too?

It's not every year that you have the players to score 40-50 ppg. USC is winning in different ways, and that's fine. At the end of the day, its all about the W.

I'm not saying we're a lock to go undefeated, but c'mon, lay off. Until we start to lose consistently, don't question coaches.

I know you've NEVER played or coached Division 1 football in your life, so it's okay that you don't understand that IT'S HARD TO SCORE TOUCHDOWNS AND ITS HARD TO WIN FOOTBALL GAMES!! WINS DO NOT COME EASY AT ANY LEVEL!!

Enjoy wins when they happen and look to improve. Honestly, if we turn 2 FG drives into 2 TD drives, we will win handily every week. Games usually come down to 4-5 plays. Execution is key. We are "this close" to blowing teams out. It will happen when injuries come back and with more game experience.

I AM SICK AND TIRED OF ALL THE CRAP ABT THE 06' TROJANS....YOU WD THINK THAT THEY WERE O-5 RATHER THAN 5-0...THEY HAVE HAD 17 INJURIES, THUS THE TIMING AND EXECUTION HAS BEEN WAY DOWN AND WITH THE MANY FR. PLAYING,IT IS NO WONDER THA USC PLAYS CLOSE GAMES... I FOR ONE THINK PETE HAS DONE HIS BEST COACHING..... HE IS PATCHING, CHANGING AND TRYING TO MAKE A TEAM WORK WHILE HAVING NEW HOLES TO FILL EVERY DAY...HAIL PETE

I'd have kept Reggie on the bench for the rest of the game after he tried that screwy lateral. That, my friend, is what lost SC the NC. If it wasn't for Matt's heroics in the second half along with Kif's play calling it wouldn't even have been close.

I finally figured it out. John Redcorn is Norm Chow. Why couldn't I see this before? Only Chow himself could be so obsessed with the USC offense (seeing as the Tenessee offense is garbage).

I bet Norm Chow (oops I meant John Redcorn) would trade VY for JDB straight up right now. Wouldn't you Red?

I'll admit that the offense isn't as good (I meant great) as when you were here. You had 30 yrs experience, Lane has 2. Too bad you wanted a head coaching job so badly that you kept going on interviews from the time you got to campus though. I wonder where USC would have been today had you been actually offered the Stanford coaching job you interviewed for (and badly wanted) before the Orange Bowl? You sneaky little minx.

Thank God Pete had the insight to realize that you couldn't be trusted to maintain any semblance of offensive stability at USC. I probably would have made the same decision. I rather have a young guy that knows the system and will be here for 5-10 years, than some guy who wants to coach at Stanford and will bring in QBs only to abandon them a year later.

P.S. How's Vince Young working out for you? Matt looked pretty good this weekend huh?

Well, in response to the original topic:

At some point this season maybe they will be able to but right now - Chauncey can't power like LenDale, Moody can't shake like Reggie and Booty doesn't have the poise of Leinart. I don't think they're ready for the 4th and short all-or-nothing play yet.

In response to the tangent post by John R:

Norm's gone and it's not about the money. He wants to be a head coach. Coming back to college ball as anything but would be considered a failure in his eyes. Expecting Lane to step in and be Norm is about as fair as asking Booty to step in an instantly become Leinart.

Not even the most biased fan would be surprised to see one or more of those three teams come in and get the upset. But instead of damning the coaches I'll choose to cheer the players for earning a bid to the Sun or Holiday Bowl. It's a great accomplishment for a group of such young kids.

Running doesn't mean you can't score.. Also screen or flat pass...something that does not stop clock. I would thin PC makes these calls. McKay did

Redcorn, get your nose out of Normie's ass, and join the "here and now". What is all this "we" and "us" bullcrap, did you ever play a down of football for the Trojans? Judging from all your other comments, I'd think you would be thrilled to go to the Las Vegas Bowl. Take ASU, and the points!

His comments ARE telling. It's as if beleived, after we drove down the field with big running plays, that there was NO WAY we could score on a run from 4 yards out.

I say blast them witht the run on that 3rd down. If you score, the game is over, if you don't, you take an extra 30 seconds off the clock and THEN kick a field goal.

Hi Scott,

If you read the blogs from other newspapers around the Pac 10 you will find a generally more thoughtful level of comment. I imagine many if not most of the posters here did not attend USC (or any college for that matter, at least judging from some of the communication skills). I hope you'll look at some of those blogs and perhaps get ideas on what we can do to raise the intelligence quotient on this board. I love insights you often provide, but care far less about the strategy of inciting comments with silly votes -- you're playing to the lowest common denominator and while it attracts the "screamers, they don't contribute much to thoughful analysis. The name calling and incoherent posts have resulted in my spending less and less time reading any comments on this blog.

Which one of you is the loser who tried to tell MSNBC to take down the post some SC hater put up about Reggie Bush or he would sue them!!!!! You guys are really something now John Redcorn is not allowed to have an opinion on this board!!!! Just because he is not an SC apologists like the rest of you losers, this is why outsiders call us spoiled children retards like you all. All of you who think that Lane is even a decent coach you are simply lying to yourself, the guy is in over his head anybody who knows anything about football can tell that!!!!

LBC Rob

"third-and-goal at the 4-yard line with about 1:42". With the run working fairly well, we should have been able to score in 2 tries, and burn the clock and time-outs at the same time. As posted, if we don't score, it's on the 1 yard line with about a minute to go and no time outs. After the "spike", there are just 3 downs left. When one passes, 3 things can happen, 2 are bad. One of the bad ones happened and almost cost us the game. In spite of this, I still love Pete. Larry R

One more thing. Has Lane never heard of "student body, right?" I think I saw it only once or twice the whole game.

SeattleTrojan...you left out a few commas in your comment. How does such a arrogant Trojan survive in Seattle? You insulted many, many loyal Trojan fans, who did not attend USC. Check the grammar in the comment, below yours, by Rob. He claims to be a Trojan, and refers to "outsiders". I hope we "outsiders" continue to help fill the stadium. This blog is a joke, and most comments are made in that vein. And Rob, "John Redcorn is not allowed to have an opinion". WOW!!! ST, you did not post anything about football.
I think the coaching staff is doing great, but underuse the pitch-sweep (Moody is perfect for it), and the players look tired in the second half.

To get to the Vegas bowl that would require finishing fifth in conference moron. You have us losing to Oregon and Cal, and said we could have as many as 3 losses. Doesn't quite add up to a fifth place finish. So if we lose those we finish third. Who else you think were gonna lose too? Oh and Cal is so dominant? Who have they beaten thats any good besides Oregon? And lets not forget Oregon hasn't beaten anybody either. In fact they should have 2 losses right now if not for the great Pac-10 officiating. I agree I don't like Kiffin's playcalling right now but we get all those teams at home and at the end of the season. There is still over a month to prepare the team before we play those games. Kiffin will realize he needs to pick it up or his job is on the line too. And one last thing big guy. On 4th and 2 Im going with the guy who has been our short yardage back for three years. That is one call im not gonna blame on Kiffin.