The makers of these odds have clearly taken the “Stun Factor” into consideration. That’s my coinage for the strange spell that settles on USC’s early-season, non-conference opponents. It explains why quality teams with terrific athletes come into these September epics looking to make a statement, but end up looking like dynamited fish, belly-up and wondering what concussive force just rocked their world in yet another Trojans rout.

A brief history of the Stun Factor: In 2003, the Trojans dispensed with Auburn, BYU and Hawaii by the combined score of 109-50. A year later, Va. Tech, Colorado St. and BYU were outscored by the men of Troy, 115-23.

And then things got really ugly for ‘SC’s early-season cultural-exchange partners. Recall the Leinart, Bush and White-led vivisections of Hawaii (63-17) and Arkansas (70-17) in ’05. So morale-killing was the latter beatdown that it was likened by Reggie Herring, then the Razorbacks’ defensive coordinator, to “having your dog run over, your wife left you and your house burned down.” So when the Trojans hung only half a hundred on Herring & Co. the following season, Arkansas’ sports info office celebrated the “vast improvement” of the defense, which had yielded a stingy 472 total yards (down from 736!) If only Arkansas had played the Trojans a couple more times, the Hogs would’ve held them to negative yardage!

Then he offers a plausible explanation for why SC has performed so well against early-season opponents—and why they’ve stumbled against lesser foes.

What Small didn’t discern, and I don’t blame him, was the method to this madness. In the end, says Carroll, the ritual is about trust. “The preparation [for the upcoming opponent] is done. We want them to trust that everything’s OK, that we got everything right. There’s no need to be all uptight or afraid of making mistakes, cause that part’s done. Now it’s time to go out, relax, have a little fun, play a little Trojanball.”

This explains, for me, why the Trojans under Carroll have been so adept at taking the pressure that attends huge games, national games, and making it their ally. The bigger the stage, the better they play.

Their problem is the converse: The smaller the stage, the greater the likelihood that the Trojans get caught sleepwalking, as happened against Oregon St. in ’06 and Stanford last season.

Hopefully this’ll hold true against OSU but not against, say, Washington.

Our only quibble is that Texas Tech should show up in the worst list, rather than the most boring list (although it certainly qualifies as boring too.)

• #1 USC left all of their crisp play in LA and squeaked by U-Dub by 3. SC looked terrible and I would not be surprised if LSU is #1 in the AP Poll.
• #2 LSU drove 90 miles to N’awlins and struggled with Tulane, but they won by 25.
• #3 Oklahoma was up 24-7 and should have finished off Colorado—however, they stopped doing anything well and CU got them at the gun with a FG.
• #4 Florida falls to Auburn. Apparently Tommy Tuberville knows how to stop Urban Meyer’s offense. So now their championship hopes rest on the trip to LSU; if they play like this LSU drills them by 20.
• #5 West Virginia (I was wrong about them) looked terrible and lost to South Florida. USF took advantage of Mountaineer miscues and now control the Big East.
• #6 Cal went to #11 Oregon and (I got this one right) Cal got the offense going late. Looks like they will move up to #3, thanks to Cameron Colvin’s fumble.
• #7 Texas looked awful. Living here in Texas, I got to see this game, and KSU kicked the sh*t out of the Longhorns. With both OU and Texas losing, the game at the state fair is now for staying in the race and not going 0-2 in the Big 12 South.
• #8 Ohio State beats the crap out of an awful Minnesota team. Maybe they will get Purdue’s best since Purdue played well (for 30 minutes at least) against Notre Dame before letting ND back in the game. The losing streak stands at 7 for the Irish.
• #9 Wisconsin survives at home against Michigan State. This game was a shootout and Sparty had a shot; just couldn’t execute late.
• #10 Rutgers looked very ordinary against Maryland at home and the middle of the ACC pack took down the Scarlet Knights 34-24.
• #12 BC plays a very tough 1-AA team in UMass and the the Minutemen keep it close. The Eagles squeak by with a 10 point win.
• #13 Clemson falls to the Ramblin’ Wreck of Georgia Tech 13-3. Tommy Bowden can’t seem to enjoy winning games and being ranked.
• #14 Kentucky wins again, and this after Coach Brooks claimed on the Jim Rome Show that his team could be as good as USC.
• #15 Georgia wins again, dominating Ole Miss in the second half.

So now the Top 10 will probably look like this:

1. USC/LSU (take your pick)
2. Cal
3. Ohio St
4. Wisconsin
5. Oklahoma
6. Florida
7. BC
8. Kentucky
9. Georgia
10. Oregon

Saturday: ABC Regional Cal at Oregon—be prepared for Dan Fouts’ homerism to get out of control when the Ducks play well. However, I think that Oregon has proven that when they are just concentrating on football they are very good and as soon as those silly text books get in the way it goes down hill. Prediction: Forsett goes nuts and Cal wins by 3.

Honestly that is all I can recommend, beyond saying that if you are an SC fan and having nothing better to do, get your booze ready and play the Musburger drinking game and thank me for your hangover in advance.

Eric Smith of USA Today (multi-colored Fish wrap) likes SC to win by 3 scores.

I guess John Smith doesn’t want anyone to watch the Flagship network Saturday afternoon Oct 20th. Well, if ND is 0-7, those of us that like watching a team try and score 100 against a rival might be fun.

Now, I know you will say, “Wait—Cal is at Oregon!” And yes, if you live in Californa, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, or Idaho you will get to see that game. (If you have GamePlan, of course, then you are set.) Everywhere else, ABC is regionalizing it all to death. I wish they would flip the UW/SC game for Cal/Oregon, but then again SC is a national draw. Oh well.

Here’s to ND taking the days since last win to almost 330.

At any rate, it won’t be hard to improve upon VY’s throwing motion …

As SI considers the ‘Pac-10 vs. SEC’ question, Bill Trocchi seeks some outside help in constructing his latest conference power rankings:

For this particular exercise, I forwarded Ken White, the senior oddsmaker for Las Vegas Sports Consultants, 10 hypothetical matchups. Keep in mind that White’s company sets the odds for 90 percent of the casinos in Nevada. These matchups were created by the following: The teams in the SEC and Pac-10 were ranked 1-12 and 1-10 based on SI.com’s current 119. In an effort to be as balanced as possible, the SEC’s sixth and seventh teams (Arkansas, Kentucky) were thrown out. So the top five teams in the SEC were matched up against the top five teams in the Pac-10, and the bottom five teams in the SEC were matched up against the bottom five teams in the Pac-10. Seems fair, right?

The results

• USC over LSU by 3.
• Florida over Cal by 3½.
• Oregon over Alabama by 3.
• South Carolina over Washington by 8½.
• Arizona State over Georgia by 1.
• Tennessee over Washington State by 7.
• UCLA over Vanderbilt by 7.
• Oregon State over Mississippi State by 7.
• Auburn over Arizona by 4.
• Ole Miss, Stanford is a pick-’em.

show a slight edge for the Pac-10.

So there you have it. The Pac-10 squeaks out a 5-4-1 record in these 10 matchups. Armed with this new information, and given the Pac-10′s record vs. BCS foes this year is 6-2 while the SEC’s is 4-3, and considering the Pac-10 won the only real matchup between the two conferences, the Pac-10 grabs the top slot this week.

It’s a little bit early to get too excited about these results, but we’ll take ‘em all the same.

• College Gameday: live from Lincoln, Nebraska, 10:00 AM EDT (Fowler/Herbstreit and the other two)
• No. 5 Florida (2-0) vs. No. 22 Tennessee (1-1), 3:30 PM EDT, CBS (Lundquist/Danielson); Florida -8
• No. 10 Ohio State (2-0) at Washington (2-0), 3:30 PM EDT, ESPN (Franklin/Cunningham); Ohio State -4
• No. 16 Arkansas (1-0) at Alabama (2-0), 6:45 PM EDT, ESPN (Patrick/Blackledge); Alabama -3
• No. 9 Louisville (2-0) at Kentucky (2-0) 7:30 PM EDT, ESPN Classic (Collins/Curry); Louisville -6.5
• No. 21 Boston College (2-0) at No. 15 Georgia Tech (2-0), 8:00 PM EDT, ESPN2 (Jones/Davie); Georgia Tech -6.5
• No. 1 USC (1-0) at No. 14 Nebraska (2-0), 8:00 PM EDT, ABC (Musburger/Herbstreit); USC -10

Please plan your Saturday accordingly.

Two weeks into the season, the Pacific-10 Conference has earned plenty of woooooo-eeeeeee’s. The Left Coast League is the second-best only to the Southeastern Conference.

The conference went 7-0 Saturday. The only loss of Week 2 was Oregon State’s stumble at Cincinnati on Thursday.

Top-ranked USC was idle. The Trojans play at Nebraska on Saturday, but it’s becoming evident their road to a national championship will be long and bumpy because of the competition in the Pac-10.

Two of USC’s road games will be at Washington (Sept. 29) and at Oregon (Oct. 27). While Cal and UCLA have been considered as “circle the calendar” games, the Huskies and the Ducks proved Saturday they’re worth the worry.

Plus, we’ve got that October trip to South Bend … oh wait, never mind.

Actually, given the developments of the past two weeks, you can make a case that the Pac-10 does stack up to the vaunted SEC. Now that Auburn, Georgia and Tennessee have had their pants pulled down, we can see that there are only two really good teams in that conference and ten teams that are no different than any other conference.