In my College Football Best Bets of the weekend, I mentioned I was a little weary about the home underdog on Thursday night games. But come on, this was USC! “They’re the best in the country!.” “They can beat an NFL team.” No, no and no. The mighty Trojans were thoroughly outplayed from the opening kickoff and are now forced to pick up the pieces after a 27-21 loss to Oregon State. 

Lets get this out of the way right now. USC is all but eliminated from the National Championship race. Why? Because of how much fail is in the PAC-10. With every team in the conference already having at least one loss the Trojans are going to be hard-pressed to pick up any quality wins in conference play. Sure, they get Notre Dame to close things out. But even if the Trojans emerge from this wake-up call and run the table, they’re still not going to have enough on their resume to surpass a one team loss from superior conferences like the SEC and Big 12. Running through the likes of Texas/Texas Tech/Missouri/Kansas or Georgia/Alabama/LSU/Auburn is a lot more impressive than UCLA/Arizona/Oregon/California.

Most upset-minded teams usually have the benefit of some good calls, a turnover returned for a touchdown or a variety of trick plays. This was not one of those games. Oregon State did get lucky on their 3rd touchdown, but USC’s defense was pushed off the ball all night. Credit the Oregon State offensive line and true freshman Jacquizz Rodgers (all 5′7 of him) for smacking USC in the mouth for 60 minutes. 

In a nutshell, what we saw last night was shocking. It was unexpected. It was college football. With conference play getting into full gear over the next couple weeks, don’t expect things to change anytime soon