Idiots Write About Sports

Amidst our crowing over having taught overmatched teeney-bopper columnist Erica Lucero a hard lesson about graciousness in victory, reader mtvcdm made the following request:

Phil, I insist that you link to Lucero’s next column.

And sure we could that. We could link to her post-Rose Bowl column very easily, even going so far as to offer a line-by-line analysis. But would it be right? Would it be fair or even right to parse every last syllable written by an undergraduate who is very clearly out of her depth? Then again, since I’m only fulfilling the request of a loyal reader, then maybe it wouldn’t be fair not to tear apart this column sentence by sentence. Oh, dilemmas!

Ah well, enough deliberating. These fish aren’t going to shoot themselves while they swim around that barrel. Lazy fish.

Let’s have fun by denigrating the work of others!

The very last thing I felt like doing Wednesday night was writing this column.

Which is only fitting, since my guess is that the very last thing most ESPN.com readers feel like doing most weekdays is reading your column.

I had looked forward to it earlier in the evening, thinking that I would be writing flushed with victory.

Was that the proposed title? “Flushed with Victory?” That’s not very evocative.

Oh… you meant that you would be flushed with victory while writing. I was confused, you see, because that modifier appears a trifle misplaced.

However, with 19 seconds left in the game and USC down, I knew it was over.

Well, that’s dedication for you. Nineteen seconds, the past two Heisman winners on your team, you only need to get within field goal range for a chance to tie it — yeah, warm up the luxury sedan, you might as well try and beat traffic.

It was depressing.

Not if you’ve laid a whammy on USC it wasn’t. It was downright orgasmic.

After such an inspiring season, it hardly needs to be said that I, along with most other Trojans fans, firmly believed that when I sat down to watch the game armed with tortilla chips and my TiVo, I was about to see history made.

Wow. A lot going on in that sentence. But I think I’ll just concentrate on a pet peeve of mine that bedevils a lot of terrible writers — the old “we could be seeing history made” cliche.

Folks, every time something happens and is documented, history is being made. It may not be monumental history, it may not be the history you want to see happen, but it’s history nonetheless. And I would contend that the crowing of a national champion in a fairly back-and-forth football game between the consensus No. 1 and No. 2 ranked teams in the country would constitute making history, even if said champion wears burnt orange instead of maroon.

However, it didn’t happen,

Yes, it did. I just explained how.

and it took me all morning to sort out how I felt about this game.

Perhaps using less muddled sentences would help.

I could sit here and bash Texas, whine about Vince Young’s controversial knee, and like so many e-mails I received, calculate the score that “should” have been.

You could, but you’d come across as a sore loser. Even mentioning it in this off-handed, passive-aggressive sort of way makes you seem petty.

Because championship teams don’t put themselves in a position where the game can turn on an unlucky bounce, a bad call, or a quirk of fate. You can woulda, coulda, shoulda things all you like, but in the end, a team either comes up big when it counts or it doesn’t. That’s why scoreboards are so easy to decipher.

I could point out the Longhorns were fighting a grudge match against a team that had stolen a lot of glory from them this season, consistently keeping them in the No. 2 spot, both in the polls and the Heisman voting.

I suppose you could do that too, only it’s non-sensical and makes you sound like a crazy person. As that sentence is constructed, you make it sound like USC players spent the entire season making intimidating phone calls to any Top 25 voter who dared to cast a first-place vote for Texas or that Pete Carroll conspired to fix the Heisman balloting.

Or I could sit here and pick apart USC’s flawed play.

But that would require a depth of knowledge about sport. So you just better find some other approach.

I could complain about the interception, the missed fourth downs, and like so many e-mails I received, calculate the score that “should” have been.

Wait a minute… that’s the second time in as many ‘graphs that “like so many e-mails I received, calculate the score that “should” have been” has appeared.

Did anyone at ESPN even bother to edit this column? Or did the poor sap tasked with trying to make chicken salad out of Erica’s chickenshit figure that, “The hell with it… this is the last time we have to run this ill-conceived column. I’m just slapping it up as is, and going back to defacing this picture of Skip Bayless.” I’m not passing judgement here — we’ve all had days like that. I just want confirmation that running the exact same phrase just a few sentences apart was an oversight and not some deliberate affront toward composition.

For USC, the 2006 Rose Bowl played out like a perfect Greek tragedy.

Uh oh. Someone was taking notes during her humanities class this semester.

Glad she didn’t take O-Chem. Our team was like a supersaturated solution that failed to precipitate…

We were a team that had it all: an amazing director in Pete Carroll; some of the most endearing lead actors you’ll find in the NCAA, from Reggie Bush to Mario Danelo; and the perfect stage — sunny Southern California.

Don’t forget a banal Greek chorus, overstating the obvious!

But we also had our tragic flaw:

Arrogance? Poor game planning? A failure to take a pretty skilled Texas team seriously.

In the end, when it came down to the wire, it was almost inevitable that our defense would open the door to our first taste of defeat.

That too.

There was a bond created this season, a special one, one that could only exist in college. A far-flung collection of people invested themselves in one ideal and never looked back.

Great ideals that a far-flung collection of people have invested themselves in throughout American history:

• “No taxation without representation!”

• “Give me liberty or give me death!”

• “One day we will be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.”

• “Dude, the Trojans totally rule!”

I used to think, walking around campus, that here, in the heart of Los Angeles, I was among the only group of people who truly cared about USC football.

Yes, USC football is an obscure little program unknown to many outside the 213 area code. Mention names like John McKay or Pat Haden or words like Student Body Left and most of the time you will get blank stares and furrowed brows. Even here in Northern California, we rarely hear of the exploits of these plucky, unheralded Trojans, since many of their contests are relegated to UHF and Spanish-language channels. That’s just the way things are.

Or at least they would be, if I knew absolutely nothing about sports.

I was wrong.

About this and so many other things.

As my Bruin mother jumped around in her “Fight On!” T-shirt

I have nothing to say here other than the fact that the phrase “Bruin mother” makes me giggle like a schoolboy. I know what Erica means — that her mother, a proud UCLA alum, put aside her school ties to root, root, root for ol’ SC. And yet, the way that clause is written, it makes it sound as if Erica is the product of some illicit form of man-on-ursine lovin’.

And if the thought of an unholy love child ‘twixt man and beast is somehow off-putting to you, at least it’s not as distasteful as how readily Mrs. Lucero cast off those school allegiances to cheer on her mortal enemy. What other sacred bonds is she as eager to betray? I’m not willing to speculate, but it’s something for the Luceros to contemplate on their way to Gitmo, after I forward a copy of this column to the Department of Homeland Security.

as calls from around the country poured in, and e-mail messages from my peers from Maine to Missouri to Florida flooded my computer, I realized that I was in a rare position, at the intersection of a communal outpouring.

Yes, nothing brings out the bandwagon-jumpers like back-to-back national championships and the prospect of a third.

I may have to lock my door at night, and the heartless and desperate may attempt to commit fraud on my tiny bank account, but I am glad to see that when it comes down to it, people can still unite over something.

I am not sure what the heartbreak of identity theft has to do with USC football, but whatever helps you get through the night…

There is no doubt that we students are a disappointed lot as we return to class. But our bond is still intact. As far as I’m concerned, my football team did me proud: They went out there and played their hearts out. I have never been prouder to be a Trojan.

Hey, good for you, Champ.

So to summarize the major points of this column: I thought we were going to win. But we didn’t. And that makes me sad. Still, we’ll always have our memories. Boy, it’s been some ride.

There. It took me five sentences to say what Erica said in several dozen. And I didn’t even have to misplace any modifiers to do it.

Ah, but I don’t mean to pick on the 19-year-old. Well, I mean, clearly, I do, since I’ve just spent the last few minutes explicitly picking on her. But it’s not like this column was posted on some private blog or printed in some student publication or even written in a diary with little hearts drawn over the i’s where the dots should be. No, this was a column ostensibly vetted by professionals and published by a major media outlet. Clearly, someone drawing a salary from the Disney Corporation thought that running this piffle was a good idea.

It was not. Not at all.

You want to call yourself the Worldwide Leader in Sports? Fine. Then provide your audience with content befitting that description. That does not include fake press conferences featuring play-acting by your reporters. Nor does it include lengthy analysis of make-believe football games. And it certainly doesn’t include barely edited columns that you post in some ill-considered attempt to appeal to college kids or because you owe one of the kid’s relatives a solid or whatever other stupid reason someone at ESPN used to justify this fangirl wankery of a column. Your credibility is only as good as the last thing you publish, and ESPN’s is on increasingly shaky ground.

"I could sit here and bash Texas, whine about Vince Young’s controversial knee, and like so many e-mails I received, calculate the score that “should” have been."

Come now, Erica. Do you really think that if VY *had* been called down on that play -- giving Texas first-and-goal at approximately the 6 -- that the Longhorns wouldn't have scored anyway? Chances are, Young would have been allowed to stroll right in, untouched, on the very next play. (I exaggerate; that didn't start happening until later in the game.) And speaking of blown calls, how about the obvious interception by Texas that was waved off as "incomplete"? As I recall, 'SC scored on that drive; take away that score, maybe add some points for Texas, and what would "the score that 'should' have been" have been?

(On a different note, it should be noted that no self-respecting Bruin, mother or not, would be caught dead in a “Fight On!” T-shirt, let alone "jump around" in it. ON it, perhaps, but IN it, no. And the 'SC campus is *not* in the "heart of Los Angeles." More like its kidney, or perhaps its gall bladder.)

What about the "armpit of Los Angeles?"

I was "flushed with victory" while bar hopping in the City last Friday night.

How she even made it past junior high English is beyond me. Her birth is offensive, and I demand that both of her man-bear parents be slapped.

Well, even though it's a month and half late, I can't help but comment.

"Because championship teams don’t put themselves in a position where the game can turn on an unlucky bounce, a bad call, or a quirk of fate."

Actually, they do it all the time. Championship teams are in that position more often than not, in fact. Texas, for example, is a championship team that was in a position where the game *did* turn on at least one unlucky (or lucky) bounce, one bad call, and a couple quirks of fate. The point you're trying to make, that they're champions no matter what bounces, calls, or quirks ailed USC, is directly contradicted by your own refutation of Lucero.

Unless a game is a blowout, the eventual championship team was almost certainly in a position where a bad call, unlukcy bounce, fluke wind, random injury, or catch-all "quirk of fate" could have reversed the outcome. A bad call or quirky turnover in football can conceiveably result in as much as a 14-point swing, which is more than enough to crown a different champion in most games.

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