• Sitting in an enemy territory: USC sections at Autzen
• National coverage: ABC/ESPN2 map
• We fight on: Cool new song
• One month later: Stafon Johnson "fighting on"
• Recovery issues: Forcing fumbles but not getting them
• Dispatch from Howard Jones: Wednesday's practice report
• Wednesday's photo album, by Po-He Tseng

Don't go into hibernation just yet; there are positives to be taken away from this game shown in the highlights.

Joe McKnight rushed for 100 yards on 11 carries, upping his current season total rush yards to 305. Could he be the first Trojan since Reggie Bush to rush for over 1000 yards in a season?

The offense struggled with the passing game, but there were some great runs by Stanley Havili, Stafon Johnson, and Allen Bradford.

USC's young defense did a great job containing Jake Locker and holding the Huskies to 16 points. If only the offense would have scored another touchdown or two. Sophomore Jurrell Casey and redshirt freshman Nick Perry set up camp in the Huskies' backfield.

Hopefully the Penn State offense will soon be joining you all in popping numerous Advils to help ease the pain that will be inflicted upon them by the almighty Trojan D.

Full game diary after the jump.

And that’s why I’ll be switching back and forth between CBS and ABC for the next three hours.

That’s right. The first ever two-game running game diary.

USC’s September 13th home opener against Ohio State will be the nationally-televised game of the week, as will Oregon at USC on October 4, Cal at USC on November 4 and Notre Dame at USC on November 29, all broadcast at 5 PM.  USC’s September 25th game at Oregon State will be the Thursday game of the week on ESPN and their season ender at UCLA will be broadcast nationally on ABC.

USC’s games against Arizona State, at Arizona, at Washington and at Stanford are all possible additions to the ABC schedule for regional broadcasts.

USC’s home opener at Virginia, curiously, is not on the ABC/ESPN schedule, and ABC will not be broadcasting any Pac Ten games the week of October 18th, when the Trojans travel to Washington State. (more…)

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The final numbers are in and have the Rose Bowl finishing No. 2 among households reached with the TV broadcast, behind only the BCS title game.

But the numbers also show the non-BCS Capital One Bowl right ahead of USC-Illinois New Year's Day right on the heels of the Rose. And that points out the one abiding TV bowl truth. The Big Ten teams from the frozen Midwest get the best numbers as Michigan, Illinois and Ohio State showed.

Here are the TV numbers for the major bowl games.

Capital One Bowl: Michigan 41, Florida 35, ABC: 10,301,679 households

Rose Bowl presented by Citi: Southern California 49, Illinois 17, ABC: 12,531,880

Allstate Sugar Bowl: Georgia 41, Hawai'i 10, Fox: 7,850,519

Tostitos Fiesta Bowl: West Virginia 48, Oklahoma 28, Fox: 8,736,935

FedEx Orange Bowl: Kansas 24, Virginia Tech 21, Fox: 8,345,715

Allstate BCS National Championship: LSU 38, Ohio State 24, Fox: 16,291,263

Chow will get paid a lot of money to sit out and get to know his family again. I also think Chow has too much pride to work for ucla in a capacity less than what he interviewed for. I also think Slick Rick is doing it just to poke SC in the eye and that is the wrong reason to hire someone.

Plaschke is on the bandwagon as well. He seems impressed that RN would go after Ken Norton as a coach and then have the temerity to after Chow.

Nice try Huckleberry. Bring Chow in, I know he can develop talent but without an offensive line to protect the QB I don't care how good he is at developing a QB. Case in point is Vince Young, VY was running for his life this season and with no one to throw to you can see why he tried to put team on his shoulders.

Anyway........

About that basketball game this Saturday, I'm not kidding myself SC is going to get hammered on Saturday. The bruins have too much depth and SC is playing too erratic for them to be competitive. There is an interesting article in the DN about the differences between the two programs.

It's a good read and pretty on the mark. The fact is SC has a long way to go and this team needs to grow. I am not going to fool myself into thinking that SC is all of a sudden going to be a powerhouse in hoops but I'm also not going to be intimidated by ucla. They have yet to win a title under "no offense Ben" and while getting to back-to-back final fours is nice the clowns from across town who like to tout all those old banners in Pauley won't have anything to cheer about until BH brings one home.

This game is more important to us than it is too them but don't be fooled its not more important than any other game in the conference. SC has played well against top talent in the past only to fall short, for ucla this is just a bump in the road but it is a rivalry game and anything can happen.

I will be more concerned about this team developing into a better unit, if we beat ucla great, if not I don't lose anything as it was expected but you never know.

AO will have his game preview up in the coming days so we will look at it more closely then.

I hope to have more later today.

Norton received a Gatorade bath following USC's Rose Bowl victories as if it were a send-off from his players and ABC News is reporting that he will be UCLA's new DC.

A USC source said that there was no official word but USC coach Pete Carroll sarcastically said that he was sure Rick Neuheisel would wait until after the Rose Bowl to talk to Norton about the job.

If USC is playing at the Coliseum, the game is Oct. 4, the change that ABC-TV has requested and the Pac-10 will approve.

If however, USC is playing next season at the Rose Bowl, the game will be Nov. 22, its original date, since that day does not conflict with a UCLA home game.

That's not as good a deal, back-loading the USC schedule that has the Trojans playing just three games the first six weeks of the season.

"The Marin (County) constituency is here,'' USC's Pete Carroll kidded of the two suburban San Francisco natives.

"I was thinking about asking him to turn around and not to watch,'' Carroll said with a smile, "then I realized he might not be on too close terms with UCLA anyway.''

Lavin said he expects to broadcast the Sunday championship game in the Anaheim preseason tournament that USC is in and then do more national games from the Pac-10 this year on ABC since the league is considered the best in college basketball this season.