Recently, I've been resigned to the fact that this season is, for all intents and purposes, over.
Gary Rogers is done for the season, Kevin Lopina is out for weeks, and there isn't enough depth to back up what little talent we have left. We've been dismantled by college football powerhouses Oklahoma State, Baylor and California. We're the worst team in a downright awful conference. I thought we were done.
Not anymore.
Oregon State just beat USC 27-21. Let's just have a sampling of how mind-blowingly ridiculous this is:
- USC had a motherflipping bye week to prepare for this game
- Oregon State lost to Stanford and was blown out by Penn State
- In consecutive seasons USC has lost games where they've been favored by greater than 25 points
- USC's offensive and defensive lines got obliterated by inferior talent
- USC got beat by the college football equivalent of Darren Sproles, and Mark Sanchez was picked off by a defender who appeared to be wearing the world's largest neck scarf
- Oregon State won despite the most ridiculous early celebration in history - pre-rushing the field and Gatorade-bathing the coach with 2:30 remaining and the game far from over
- OSU's punter was a joke. How he got two balls inside the 10 is the luckiest thing you will see all season in the NFL or college
- USC seems to have an on/off switch for their offense, and decided to switch it off for 80% of the game
- College football's clock rules make comebacks much harder than they used to be. [NCAA Football(R) - working hard to give you more commercials and less football since 2006]
The point is this: if this game can happen, the Cougs can win any game remaining on the schedule. Seriously, any. If you're a Trojan fan, do you feel even remotely excited about traveling to Pullman now?
We're 1-3 with nine games remaining. 5-4 makes us bowl eligible, and with how [expletive deleted] crazy this season is, why not? We have an intriguing new starting QB, and we're healthier at defensive back and wide receiver now than we were at the start of the season. Plus we're coming off of the first decent overall performance our team has had all season (albeit against FCS-division Portland State).
OK, I'm probably making crazy talk, but as long as teams like USC lay eggs against teams like Oregon State, we have a chance against the multitude of mediocre Pac-10 teams. And there are many. There are no remaining teams on the WSU schedule that haven't suffered at least one embarrassing loss. Take a look:
Oregon: lost to Boise State at home
UCLA: 59-0'd by BYU, lose to Arizona at home
Oregon State: lost at Stanford, blown out at Penn St.
USC: tonight
Stanford: lost by 17 to TCU
Arizona: lost to New Mexico
Arizona St: lost at home to UNLV
Washington: blown out at Oregon, at home to Oklahoma
Hawai'i: obliterated by Florida and Oregon St.
Of all of those, Stanford's loss to #24 TCU is the least embarrassing. At this point, I'm not ruling out Stanford winning the Pac-10. It's insane.
I know the Cougs aren't good. I know they probably won't make a Bowl Game. But five hours ago, I was asking myself how much USC would beat OSU by. This season is just crazy enough that we have a chance. And if not, there's always an equally unpredictable basketball season to look forward to.