America’s sports moralists had just begun to breathe again after the hyperventilating response to LeBron’s Decision, when a new issue is sure to send them back to looking for their inhalers and paper bags.

After the extensive NCAA investigation and subsequent punishment for crimes by Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo, USC has taken action. Athletic Director Mike Garrett is gone and USC has sent back Bush’s Heisman to the Downtown Athletic Club. What they are supposed to do with it I am not sure. Does Cash4Gold accept bronze?

While I don’t condone Bush’s taking improper benefits during his time as a Trojan, I just can’t get overly wound up about USC’s newly found effort to pretend Bush never step foot on their campus.

To my mind, retro-active punishment of USC is the most ridiculous thing in the world. But then maybe I am the only one.

In a poll on ESPN.com, 54% of SportsNation says what the USC program lost as a result of having Bush on the team outweighs previous gains. How? Bush helped resurrect the Trojans. Before the Bush era USC vacillated between mediocre and above-average. With Bush, USC played in two straight national title games and won one.

And they haven’t been back to a national championship game since he left.

So, my understanding of the poll, is that the majority of ESPN.com users believe it would be better to for USC to be consistently mediocre? This point of view to me reeks of the convenience of hindsight.

How many USC fans, if asked in 2004 “would you take two national championship game appearances and one win in exchange for probation in 5 years” would say no? Not a lot. Maybe Mike Garrett, but even he would pause to think about it.

Putting aside the expunging of games, which only really matters to people who need to go back and look up records, stats and scores, what does all of this erasing of the past mean?

During his time, Bush was the most exciting player in the country to watch. He did things on the college football field that I still don’t understand. Does that mean I have to erase my memories of Bush Men In Black style?

Bush was probably one of the 6 most exciting offensive players I have seen play college football – (off the top of my head: Charlie Ward, Bush, Vince Young, Jamele Holieway and Tommy Frazier). Am I now supposed to pretend that didn’t happen?

Yes, he broke rules. But the particular rules he broke had no impact whatsoever on his performance or on USC’ performance on the field.

Would USC have won fewer games if he didn’t take money?

Does him taking money mean OU wasn’t embarrassed in a national title game on TV?

If anything should add an asterisk to USC’s domination in that time period, it is continuing steroid busts that have occurred of players in and around USC at that time – the Ting brothers and Brian Cushing come to mind.  

But after seeing that poll, I started wondering if I am the only one. Are my memories of watching Bush dominate the opposition coloring my view on what is justice? So I posed the following question to my THH cohorts today.

“Does Reggie Bush’s retro-active tainting of everything USC did change your thoughts about that team? Will you mentally add an asterisk to that team in your memories?”

The responses:

Turner: No asterisk.  They were great and Reggie getting a few thousand more dollars in college then I ever made will never change that.

Shadow: No.  I never feel that way when it is money involved (unless the money also involved point shaving or something like that). 

SIDEBAR: To Shadow’s point: if expunging wins from a team is punishment for illegal activities, what would be the punishment for point-shaving? Expunging losses? Switching the result of the game to the team covering the spread? Congratulations, the 1978-79 Boston College Eagles just went undefeated and covered every spread.

And remember Turner is a Sooner fan. If anyone would want to pretend that the Bush allegations change history, it should be a fan of the team that lost 55-21 in the national title game to Bush’s Trojans.

So who are the 54% of the country that feels USC is worse off for having the Bush era? Are they people that are too young to remember Bush playing? Do they not watch college football? Or more likely are they naïve fans who believe every athlete is a saint and when they later learn that isn’t the case feel betrayed and would like to pretend that whole sordid affair never occurred.

To me, college football games are like losing your virginity. Once it has happened it has happened. No matter, what you find out later doesn’t change that you did the deed.

You can pretend all you want that it didn’t happen, but the memories will always remain.

The hardest thing in the world is to recognize the end of something before it happens. In retrospect it is easy to look back and say ‘yep, The Cosby Show really went downhill when they brought on Raven Symone’. But did we know it at the time? Did we assume instead, she would step into Rudy’s shoes and things would continue on as if nothing changed?

Or that Steve Guttenberg leaving the franchise after completing Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, would represent the beginning of the end. Both of that movie franchise and Guttenberg’s career?

In sports it is even more difficult. Look at the Patriots. They were 2 minutes from NFL immortality and then a career back-up made a miracle catch and a perennially underperforming number one draft pick quarterback threw a touchdown pass to a wide receiver who would later shoot himself in the leg. Eight minutes into their next game, Tom Brady’s ACL took out the eye of some kid sitting in the third row. With that the Patriots dynasty ended.

In college football, changes seem to come even more frequently and without warning.

With the rumors and news circulating today, I have the feeling we are again at the crossroads and a team many see as invincible is beginning the slippery slide into mediocrity. After a short decade on top of the college football world, we could be looking at the end of USC’s reign.

News this week of potential sanctions against USC including reduced scholarships and possible banishment from bowl games would seem to imperil USC’s ability to annually recruit one of the best classes in the country. Combined with Pete Carroll’s leaving for the money and autonomy of the head coaching job with the Seahawks (which looks more and more convenient by the day) and being replaced by Lane Kiffin who has accomplished nothing but tick off every fan base he has worked for and it is very easy to see the Trojan program going the way of Desperate Housewives: still technically around but not of importance to anyone not receiving a check to help produce it.

It is easy to forget now that USC is not pre-ordained to always be great at college football. For pretty much the entire decade of the nineties they were average at best, going 68-49-4 from 1990 to 1999 and piling up records of 6-6, 6-5, and 6-6 in 1996, 1997 and 1999.

But USC’s impending spiral into also-ran status is certainly not unique in college football. They aren’t even the only once-dominant program taken down in part by rampant NCAA infractions.

Miami’s domination of college football came to end in the early 1990’s with two national championship game losses in 3 years followed by their own NCAA sanctions (including scholarship reductions and banishment from playing in a bowl game). Miami disappeared off the national scene for nearly a decade and after a brief dominant stretch in the early 2000’s is again mired in mediocrity.

Oklahoma dominated college football through the 70′s and 80′s but after massive misconduct was found including a shooting, a rape and selling cocaine all out of the football dorm (which makes Reggie Bush’s taking money to pay for his parent’s home almost seem honorable). The Sooners were hit with (wait for it) scholarship reductions and banishment from TV and bowl games. The Sooners would not return to the national stage until 2000 and would so harm a young impressionable fan named Turner that he would choose to attend SMU when he finished high school.

Not all dominant stretches end thanks to rampant cheating though. Others end due to coaching changes. Interesting that this also has hit USC: they are the failing program perfect storm with Kiffin playing the Mark Wahlberg role staring up at the tidal wave about to send him to the bottom of the sea.

Alabama’s Bear Bryant retired in 1982. A decade later, the Tide finally made it back to and won a national championship.

Lou Holtz left Notre Dame in 1996. Not-so-coincidentally, the Fighting Irish have been irrelevant ever since. Despite the best efforts of the media.

Tom Osborne retired in 1997 after winning three national titles in 4 years. He was succeeded by Frank Solich who so infuriated the Husker faithful by having the audacity to go 9-3 in 2003 he was fired. Also in 2003 the final Matrix films were released. And since 2003, both the Huskers and Keanu Reeves have accomplished about the same amount. Which is to say not much.

Other eras just end with little warning and the compounding effect of several seemingly small events.

The Seminoles of Florida State, in 2000, fresh off 3 consecutive national title game appearances (and 5 in nine years), lost Mark Richt as their offensive coordinator and kicked presumptive starting quarterback Jared Jones off the team. They started the next season ranked in the top five. Needless to say, they didn’t stay there and have barely sniffed it since.

Did we Nole fans know at the time that the 13-2 loss to the Sooners in the 2001 Orange Bowl would be the end of our ownership of college football? Of course not. We had endured national championship losses before and naturally assumed we would bounce right back the following season.

That was a decade ago and we are still waiting.

Are you paying attention Trojans?

Less than a year ago, a young brash coach came into the SEC – loudly announcing his presence by calling out the best team in the league and employing a number of questionable recruiting tactics. Needless to say the brain-washed ideology-blinded boosters of his school jumped for joy while the rest of the conference seethed at the arrogance of the new arrival.

Amazingly I am not talking about John Calipari.

As the dominoes continued to fall from Pete Carroll’s epically bad decision to move to Seattle and coach the Seahawks, there was one domino I was not expecting – Lane Kiffin accepting the USC head coaching job.

Only a year into his tenure at Tennessee, I never expected Kiffin to leave one of the most passionate fan bases in the country to go back to USC. At Tennessee he had the backing of school re-emerging from the stagnating pool that was the final years of the Phil Fulmer era, played in the best conference in football, a backyard filled with the best players in the country and built-in headline inducing rivals in Alabama and Florida on his schedule every year. In short, he was on his way to becoming deified by one of the most ravenous fan-bases in the country like Nick Saban has been in Alabama.

Instead he returns to USC to become ‘the guy who coached after Pete Carroll’. Sure, he will have continued success as he slowly empties the cupboards of Carroll’s annual top-five recruiting classes but has anything this guy done foreshadowed him keeping USC at the level it is currently?

Not to mention the always on the horizon possibility that the NCAA could finally dust off their investigation of Reggie Bush and impose sanctions on the Trojans.

Looking at Kiffin’s career objectively and the best comparison I can come up with is that he is the Jay Cutler of football coaches. He is young, brash and has never won anything yet continues to convince people he knows what he is doing. He left his first job after a blow up with management that in hindsight appears to be as much his fault as the seemingly crazy owner.

By now, it seems like a lifetime ago but we must remember USC is not pre-ordained to be a college football powerhouse. Before Pete Carroll came they were an also-ran in the Pac-10 still trading on the glory days in the 1970’s.

they came to Florida State in 1998 and the most memorable thing about that 30-10 drubbing was that Giles Pellerin, who had attended every USC game for 75 years, was introduced and got a standing ovation from the Nole crowd. Really, that is it. Back then beating USC was on par with beating Louisiana Tech for us – just another patsy to practice on until Miami or Florida came to town.

Speaking of the Gators, it is pretty obvious they are the big winners out all of this. Beside the inevitable shifting of recruiting commitments from Tennessee to UF that will stream out over the next couple weeks, there is also the feeling that this is the anointing of UF as the owners of the SEC East for the foreseeable future. There are no challengers left for UF – whether “Tin Man” Meyer ever gets a heart or not. Georgia are perennial underachievers with a 9 win ceiling that are happy if they keep the losing deficit at the World’s Largest Cocktail party under 20. Steve Spurrier will never get the talent in Columbia to compete with UF. And now Tennessee is a colossal mess.

This doesn’t even factor in the psychological edge that comes along with the one person in the SEC that called out UF, scurrying with his tail between his legs back to southern California where football ranks on the priority scale just below a good fish taco.

So, in this one move, it seems to me that we have sealed the fate of two of the biggest programs of this decade. USC will spiral down into mediocrity while the beautiful people migrate away from the Coliseum to cheering on the new Los Angeles Jaguars in a couple years. And the Gators become perennial SEC Championship game participants and BCS Title game candidates.

Maybe I am being too kind to Lane by comparing him to Jay Cutler.

I meant to post the following yesterday but once the news about Bobby dropped, I decided to postpone for a day. So these leftovers are starting to get pretty ripe by now.

On this Tuesday I am thankful that:

 - Gary Danielson will announce only one more Tim Tebow game. If I wanted to listen to someone orgasmically moan and shout about someone’s greatness for 3 hours I would just go get a couple pornos.

- the ACC helped support my thesis that the SEC is overrated by going out and throwing up 3 stinkbombs on Saturday. FSU losing in Tebow’s final home game (rumor is that there were some other players on the field, but could not be verified) was a forgone conclusion but Clemson and Georgia Tech getting thumped the week before the ACC title game? Not exactly helping the cause guys.

- Pete Carroll and his coaching staff threw that long bomb for a TD in the last couple minutes against UCLA. After that incredible story on College Gameday Saturday morning, it was almost like Carroll was challenging everyone to debate whether he is a really good guy or an arrogant egomaniac who had to kick UCLA like a wounded dog after getting poop stuck in his face by that Stanford two-point conversion a couple weeks before.

- this week’s Civil War between Oregon and Oregon State will decide the Pac Ten’s Rose Bowl representative. Of course I am cheering for the Beavers, but even if the Ducks win it will be more fun than seeing USC yet again. Plus can you imagine the atrocity Nike will come up with for Oregon’s Rose Bowl uniform? Might want to ditch the HDTV on January 1.

- the apparent early leader to replace Charlie Weis as Notre Dame head coach would not seem to be an obvious choice for a team that struggles to win Bowl games, regardless of a nickname of Big Game Bob.

- TV has finally started to move past the reality show + hour long Cop drama formula and actually rediscovered the sitcom. Shows like Community, 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family and the return of Scrubs mean there are more good comedies on network TV now than any time in the last decade.

- TV is so slow and formulaic that there are still enough awful shows on the air to give The Soup fodder each week to mock

- this is the year that the Broncos have to play the NFC East – a conference clearly on the downward slide to mediocrity (see: NFC West) but thanks to east coast bias and long held assumptions is still held in high regard by the football experts.

- football scouts still become so enamored by physique and measurables that they ignore performance on the field in college – letting the Broncos steal players like Elvis Dumervil and Wesley Woodyard who are two of the biggest reasons not named Brian Dawkins for the Broncos defensive resurgence this year.

- Citizen has not stopped running those commercials that say ‘Unstoppable…Eli Manning is…’ because there should be a segment on PTI where Wilbon and Kornheiser see who can come up with more ways of humorously finishing that sentence given the obvious fact that poor Eli is imminently stoppable.

- Vince Young has resurrected his career. I never liked him in college (damn Longhorns), but you can’t deny his athletic gifts. It is nice to see him get it together mentally and finally show the promise that made him a top-five draft pick.

- Matt Leinart must have consoled himself for another last second loss to Vince Young, by scouring the bars of Phoenix for local community college co-eds to accompany him to his hot tub

- Jeff Fisher took six weeks to put Young in the starting lineup, ensuring that the Titans wouldn’t make the playoffs. I think I speak for every AFC fan that the Titans are not a team I would want to see in the playoffs.

- Brett Favre is surrounded by the best collection of talent of his entire career. This lets us enjoy repeated effusive praise of Favre when his job description should best be described as “just get the ball to the playmakers and not the other team”.

- Troy Aikman made one of the most logical arguments I have ever heard yesterday. Pointing out Favre has averaged 17 interceptions per year in his entire career Aikman argued his current year stat of 3 interceptions is actually a cause of concern. Most analysts see his limited interceptions as a great thing. Aikman is smart enough to realize that the multi-interception game (or as I call it – “the Cutler”) is coming at some point. Better for the Vikings if this occurs soon rather than in the playoffs.   

- the NFL Network created the NFL Red zone channel. Getting passed to any game where a team has an opportunity to score is the greatest fantasy invention since point-per-reception scoring.

- the completion of Thanksgiving weekend means that we are that much closer to Christmas and the college bowl season. That is my holiday. And, yes if Bobby really does get to have his final game at a bowl in Florida, you are damn right I am flying across the country to say thanks to him properly.

Achilles was an ancient Greek warrior. The son of King Peleus and the Nymph Thetis, his mother decided upon birth to make him immortal by dipping him in the River Styx. Unfortunately for him, his mother had to hold on to him and chose to grasp him by his ankles while being dipped. Thus, his ankle was sheltered from the waters of the river and remained mortal.

Naturally, in the midst of a battle during the Trojan war, an arrow struck him in his mortal ankle and he died. What is not explained by Homer in his re-telling of this story in the Illiad is how an arrow to the ankle is fatal, though obviously extremely painful (see that scene in the movie Pet Sematary and see how you react when Mr. Munster gets a scalpel to that heel from that little kid under the bed).

This ancient story has had several effects on society today. The tendon running down the back of our heel is still called the Achilles; the mere thought of the severing (or the gloriously, icky technical term ‘rupture’) of the Achilles makes grown men weak and the band Styx is now considered immortal.

One of these is not true.

It also has one other outcome, one that is a little more pertinent to our discussion today than the band that brought us Come Sail Away. A person’s or team’s weakness is often referred to as their Achilles Heel.

Watching football this weekend, I realized that all the great college and pro teams have a weakness. Whether an opponent ever exploits it or not, it is there. Keep that in mind each time they enter a battle for the rest of the season.

Let’s cover the college kids today, and return in a day or so with the pros

Florida – Even as the Gators defeat of Mississippi State this past week seemed inevitable from the opening kick-off, the fact that the worst team in the SEC (located in Starkville, the most depressing, yet accurately descriptively named college town in the country) hung with them for most of the game, demonstrated that the Gators aren’t invincible. In short, a poor offensive line has a domino-like effect on the rest of their offense. Defenses are stacking the line to shut down the inside running game that the Gators live on but unlike in previous years, they don’t have the playmakers to get open downfield. Tebow also doesn’t have the time to wait, as he is constantly scrambling and running for his life. The only offensive weapon to counteract this – the 3-step drop, rhythm passing game – seems to be as gone from Gainesville as Dan Mullen – coincidence?

Not so coincidentally this also exposed Tebow’s biggest weakness – his inability to let a play go and live to play another day. Having so much success for so long, Tebow refuses to give up on a play, scrambling from rushers, forcing passes, etc. This ends up leading to the occasional Gary Danielson pants-wetting play but it also leads to turnovers. The really great quarterbacks get rid of the ball and turn a 10 yard sack into an incompletion rather than a 100-yard interception for a touchdown.

Apparently when Tebow was dunked in the River Styx he was held by his brain.  

Alabama – Much like their SEC compatriots down in Gainesville, the Tide’s weakness rests on the offensive side. Frankly, they have an inexperienced quarterback and don’t seem to be able to pass the ball effectively. As defenses increasingly shut down Mark Ingram running the ball, the pressure comes on Greg McElroy to move the chains with his arm. With blanket coverage on He-man Julio Jones can he do that? Against a mediocre Tennessee team, he certainly didn’t. How will he do against LSU and Florida?

Sidenote: A quick tangent. When did a 40+ yard field goal become a gimme? A week after the Vikings nearly blew a game by trying to run out the clock to kick a 40-yard field goal with 2 minutes to play. This week, Tennessee gets to around the 30 yard line with over 30 seconds left and rather than taking a couple shots to shorten the field goal attempt for their shaky kicker (who already had a blocked FG and a missed 47-yarder on the day), they just stood around and let the clock run. Why? Contrast that with Clemson who was in the exact same situation 30 minutes later. The tigers kept the momentum going and got down to the 10-yard line for real gimme field goal that propelled them to OT where they beat THE U. Hey Lane Kiffin, why don’t you shut up whining to the media for a moment or two and realize your conservative, idiotic coaching was what cost your team the game.

Texas – I know Texas won convincingly this week, so I will go back to the OU game. As they are starting to find a consistent running game, the field should get opened up for Colt McCoy and his BFF Jordan Shipley to start completing more passes downfield. But, Texas has another problem – sloppiness. The Horns are plagued by turnovers and penalties. There are only so many weeks when you can overcome your own mistakes through sheer talent. UF almost lost at home to Arkansas due to turnovers – if the Horns start Plaxico-ing themselves with penalties and turnovers can they overcome them (for example) at a hostile Oklahoma State stadium?

Iowa – While I was cheering on the Hawkeyes and am thrilled that the ‘Autumn of the Shadow’ continues unabated, their performance at Michigan State certainly raised some concerns. I saw the Hawkeyes get inside the 10-yard line on 3 separate occasions. A combination of Pat Buchanan-esque play calling and poor run blocking kept them out of the end zone on 9 of 10 plays. Luckily, they were outside the 5-yard line on that final game winning drive so they were forced to think beyond the “does the back go over the left or right guard?” play-calling that plagued their other two drives earlier in the 4^th quarter.

USC – USC is the most talented team in the country. When they are playing at their best, they are pretty much unbeatable – as they have been for the last several years. Unfortunately, they just don’t play at their best all that often. They seem to believe that opponents cower at the mere sight of the little dude on their helmets, rather than snickering at jokes about Trojans. In the last two weeks, they have squandered at least a 20-point lead in the second half before barely hanging on to win against lesser teams. If Pete Carroll could get his team motivated to play an entire game every week we could be looking a team that is on a John Wooden like run of national titles. Instead every year we have the same conversation: during the season we will wonder which week the Trojans will forget to show up and get shocked by a middle of the pack Pac-10 team and then come Bowl time we will loudly proclaim the Trojans as probably the best team in the country. Much is made of Pete Carroll’s laid-back California style, but no one ever asks if it is too laid-back. A coach instilling some discipline might have actually won more than 1 national title with the talent he has on hand every year.

As for the other contenders (Boise State, TCU, Cincinnati), they all have the same fatal flaw – a disrespected and underachieving conference. I don’t care how good they may appear on the field when you are playing the equivalent of Triple-A each week (or single-A in the case of Boise State’s embarrassing schedule), you don’t get much respect from SEC-brain washed pollsters.

Is it really fair to call a schedule of cream puffs a team’s Achilles heel? I am sure Achilles himself would have preferred a slightly lesser opponent back in the day.

How much would you have laughed at me in early August if I had told you that as I sit on a plane on Monday morning, October 5^th, the only shining light in my otherwise dim football universe would be the Broncos?

Yes, the team that led me to begin work on a (never-completed) post in the offseason comparing them to the Denver-based soap opera Dynasty (with a nifty compare/contrast to the Cowboys/Dallas) is the only team for which I cheer that has given me anything to cheer this season. Who knew?

Well, actually if you ask certain members of the Denver media they will say they did – after apparently suffering amnesia as they now can’t say enough great about Coach McDaniels after spending 4 months savaging him.

(Note: No word yet from Rick Reilly about whether he is willing to concede that his incompetent, pathetic shots at McDaniels all summer have now been rendered moot, with the Broncos winning as many games in 4 weeks as he projected for them all season. Of course, I guess the real question is whether anyone cares what a guy who hasn’t been relevant since John Elway retired and is now just a sad knock-off of Bill Simmons says. The only smart thing he has done is ignore me when I sent him a note requesting a bet on the over/under for Bronco wins this season.)

Anyway, enough gloating. With the Broncos 4-0, the Rockies prepping for the playoffs, the Nuggets coming off a Western Conference Finals appearance and the Avs starting the season 2-0, the Mile High city is going to start sounding like Boston fans soon.

On to my notes and observations from the weekend of football. Let’s start with the boys on Saturday.

In case, you didn’t notice, College GameDay was at Boston College, to raise awareness of the cancer battle by highlighting Mark Herzlich’s (apparently successful) cancer fight. A worthy fight if there ever was one. But I know I am not the only FSU fan that knew this was an omen that there was zero chance FSU would go in and win. What kind of God would let BC lose on that day?

Speaking of GameDay, there was a sign in the crowd: “Ponder This Bobby: Retirement”. You know the Noles are facing hard times when I didn’t know whether this was from a BC or FSU fan.

And news today is that the sign could have been held by FSU Trustee Jim Smith. While I may not think much of the Noles this year (see below) I am not sure if I can blame the uninspired, sloppy play on confusion on the parts of the players as to where to align their allegiances. The power-sharing of Bobby and Jimbo may not be ideal, but I can’t say that the Noles deciding to play hard once every couple of weeks is a result.

There isn’t much more to say about the Noles. They play sloppy and don’t seem to have much heart in them. Sure, they are young but that is just a convenient excuse for bad errors and putting together 15 minutes of good football during a 60 minutes game in which you are essentially playing for your season. Remember Miami has a young team too.

You know what is even more depressing than your team looking overwhelmed and incredibly ordinary in losing to a (at best) below average team? It is Matt Millen announcing and disparaging them. The worst NFL executive in history pointing out the flaws in your team is a new low that I may not be able to recover from. Of course, if there is anyone that is an expert on a bad football team, it is Millen.

The contrast between the Noles and the Canes was obvious, shocking and also depressing. After several down years, the Miami coaches have finally found a way to harness the incredible athletes they keep recruiting.

That’s not to say that Miami’s win on Saturday night wasn’t helped out quite a bit by the Sooners. I still disagree with the meaningless field goal with 4 minutes to play (Turner, Peffer and I debated strenuously in real time). Sure, it was a long 4^th down, but I hadn’t seen anything that told me the Sooners could immediately stop the Canes and get the ball back with time enough to march down and score again. Which of course, they didn’t. Add that to a draw earlier on a 3^rd and 6, and the Sooner coaches appeared to be play-calling slightly more conservative than Rush Limbaugh.

On the bright side, at least the Sooners don’t appear to be on their way to another embarrassing BCS Bowl game loss. Sorry Turner.

The other big games of the day were entertaining but will only be remembered because the team expected to win was able to.

LSU still isn’t overly impressive but they have seem to have the Goldilocks principle down to a science (just enough offense, just enough defense). Will it be enough to knock off the Gators if Timmy is back to his normal self (well, as normal as the Son of God ever is)?

Notre Dame has been penciled into a BCS bowl since before the season thanks to their easy schedule. Can we still say that? Yes, the Huskies are greatly improved (right, USC?) but if Notre Dame was anywhere near as good as their press would indicate, would that game have gone to overtime? No chance. Notre Dame’s offense may be pretty good, but you have to wonder about their defense. I guess USC will give us a clue in a couple weeks.

Speaking of USC, ho-hum. They got their embarrassing, inexplicable road-conference loss out of the way early this season and returned to their Pac-10 dominating ways. The only difference being that the Pac-10 is improved enough this year that dominating the conference can’t be laughed at by all the 1-tooth, jean-short wearing yokel SEC fans down south.

One last comment. While I don’t really care about Michigan and their come-back ultimately fell short in overtime, big kudos to Tate Forcier and Wolverines. Forcier’s gutsy, exhausting performance leading the Wolverines to the tying score as time expired at MSU on Saturday demonstrated everything that the young guns in Tallahassee lack: heart, willingness to sacrifice and a knack for making a play when it is needed.

Notes from Sunday:

Can I start anywhere else but with the Broncos? OK, who am I kidding, I am going to start, continue and finish with the Broncos.

Yes, I recognize the Broncos offense isn’t the exciting but that is fine with me. Locals may still complain that Orton is not Cutler but you know what? It works for me. Sure, Jay may throw nice long passes but the problem is that he also throws nice long passes to the other team.

The biggest thing that hurt the Broncos was penalties yesterday but the difference in their winning was turnovers. The Cowboys committed them, the Broncos didn’t. You have an opportunity to overcome a false start. You don’t have an opportunity to overcome an interception. More on the quarterbacks later this week.

Joe Buck and Troy Aikman spent a lot of time trying to compare this Bronco defense to last year’s sieve-like unit but I am not sure why. The only thing this unit has in common with last year’s team is laundry. New schemes (4-3 to 3-4), new coaches (Slovik to Nolan), new players (Dawkins, Andre Goodman), this is a new defense in every sense of the word. Even the players held over from last year are playing new positions (and flourishing: 8 sacks in four game for an ‘undersized’ Elvis Dumervil). The comparisons to last year need to stop.

The biggest thing I noticed in this game was the coaching. You may remember that the Cowboys did all of their damage early, which given that they are (possibly) more talented but (definitely) more over-paid you would expect. But the game changed because the Bronco coaches were able to react and adjust while the Cowboys coaches could do little more than hope the same old plays would start working again.

I have to assume that after Wade Phillips is fired and replaced by Mike Shanahan for the second time, that it will be a first in the NFL right? That is quite a feat and something Wade can be proud of. Of course, if Wade didn’t look like an old man wandering a park looking for his lost puppy throughout an entire game maybe he wouldn’t be on the verge of that illustrious distinction.

All of this lauding of the Broncos doesn’t mean I am slotting them into the playoffs, let alone the Super Bowl just yet. They still have a brutal schedule ahead of them. Sooner or later, they are going to need Orton to complete a few of those passes down the field.

However, after watching the Chargers on Sunday night, I am feeling a little better. The two lynchpins of all of the Chargers mediocre success in recent years were a strong running game and strong defense. As Rashard Mendenhall and Big Ben walked through the defense like they were wearing Lions helmets, one of those pillars started to crumble. As LT stumbled his way to 15 yards total rushing the other pillar started to look like it may be about done too (along with my fantasy teams hopes).

Has the window closed on the Chargers chances or is this just their typical early season Norv-ian rust? Will they resurrect themselves and eek out another late season division title over the Broncos or are they to be relegated to history’s dustbin of talented teams to never make a Super Bowl?

It is too early to tell right now, but I know one thing. I feel better with McDaniels under the headset than I would with Norv Turner.