Open Forum Answers, Act I

O.J. Mayo is probably closer to 6-4. Petros and I were not at Madison Square Garden because we both needed three days to get over the excitement of the USC-UCLA football game.

Steve Sarkisian frequently calls runs on third-and-long because he's afraid of putting too much pressure on the quarterbacks, especially if the Trojans are deep in their own territory.

If you won two tickets to the Rose Bowl, you should be happy. Why would you want to spend a week in New Orleans, if only the Trojans didn't lose to Stanford.

USC had several big recruits visit last weekend, highlighted by linebacker Arthur Brown of Kansas. Another interesting recruit was linebacker Jerrell Harris of Alabama, who made an unofficial visit with his uncle. Patrick Johnson of Miami did not visit and is supposed to come later this month.

If Lofa Tatupu and Rey Maualuga exchanged each other's size and instincts, they'd be as good as Dick Butkus.

During his injury, John David Booty could have come in against Oregon although his finger still had swelling and he did not have total command of his passes. In retrospect, there was never a danger of Booty losing his starting job during that period.

USC will eventually put up money for Coliseum improvements and control the facility. The question is how much will it control it and for how long? The mayor's declarations are just for the public's comsumption and lack any real substance.

How many starters do i anticipate will return next year? A lot.

Pete Carroll sees Mitch Mustain quite a bit when during scout team but even if he didn't he could always watch the film.

How many Heisman voters watched Colt Brennan play? 3. And they all live in Hawaii.

Every day more coaches express interest in the UCLA job. It's really impossible to say who will get it because of the financial constraints. With that in mind, DeWayne Walker will probably be in the hunt by default.

What percentage of assistant coaches have aspirations of being head coaches? 97.5. In the old days, there were guys who could work at Penn State or Florida State as loyal assistants and be content but no longer. Today, even a GA thinks they can be a head coach. And no one wants to wait anymore, so they take a head job, get fired and happily take their buyout, then go back to being an assistant.

I've never been against the idea of USC running the Coliseum. I would prefer it. I'm against public manipulation and USC planning for months to spring all this and act like it's suddenly in a corner. It's going to get settled, but USC could relax a little bit with its behavior.

Broderick Green was especially impressive in scrimmages and training camp and should break into the rotation. Marc Tyler still needs to get into shape after his injury problems and this is a make or break time for Allen Bradford, who needs to get on the field next season or transfer.

The Rose Bowl might be a lousy BCS game but by New Year's Day the players will be fired up. Remember last year, everyone on the team was in a daze for a week or two over the UCLA loss but eventually got over it.

The Sports Arena does make a small amount of money. It was scheduled to be torn down when an NFL team came to Los Angeles. With a scaled-down remodeling ($100 million isn’t much, $50 million just improves the crumbling infrastructure), it’s probably unlikely the Sports Arena gets torn down.

It’s too, too early for Rose Bowl predictions or matchup discussions.

There’s not that many tailbacks right now, so none are expected to change positions. Josh Pinkard’s knee injury is less severe than last year’s because he did suffer a bone bruise or any other complications, so he should do some light stuff in spring and come back in training camp.