Defense highlights:

History repeats itself for the Golden Bears; they enter the season with lots of hype, only to fold like a bad hand in poker. Time for them to enter hibernation!

Cal's Heisman hopeful tailback, Jahvid Bust, was held to a season-low 47 rushing yards against USC. Meanwhile Joe McKnight looked the best out there, rushing for 119 yards and two touchdowns.

Cal's quarterback, Kevin Riley, really outdid himself this time. Just when you thought his passing completion rate of 38.7% against Oregon could not get any worse, he sunk to a new low against the Trojans with a completion rate of 37.5%.

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.

Coaches pour a lot into their profession, and sometimes it comes at the expense of their home life.

Arizona's Mike Stoops announced this week that he and his wife, Nicole, are in the process of getting a divorce. Stoops is 47, Nicole 33. They were married in July 2001 and have two young children.

Stoops was visibly emotional when he made the announcement and said he will have no further comment on the matter.

So what went wrong? Wouldn't a marriage to a big-time coach be a dream life?

In November 2004, the Arizona Daily Star profiled Nicole in a piece titled "First lady of football — Coach's wife busily adjusts to life in the media spotlight." Here's an excerpt:

"She was working as an apartment property manager at the time she met Stoops, who was visiting Dallas for a football convention when the two struck up a conversation at a restaurant bar.

"She always expected someday she'd become a teacher and stay in Dallas the rest of her life, to be near her family. But then came an unplanned pregnancy and a choice. She and Mike weren't married at the time, and they ruled out getting married solely because of the pregnancy — they wanted to be sure they were meant for each other. They married when their daughter was 2.

" 'I've always had the utmost respect for him,' Stoops said of her husband. 'He's never let me down. I know that he will never abandon me or the children, no matter what happens, because he is just a good man. He takes care of us.'

"The couple have an age gap of 14 years. It keeps him young, she jokes, and her grounded. They're different in other ways as well.

"She's a sentimental sop, she admits, even to the point that she cries at greeting card commercials or the TV show 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.'

"He's the least romantic person on the planet. She tried to help, buying Mike a book with 1,001 ways to be romantic. It's been forgiven, but not forgotten, that while in Oklahoma, he once forgot her birthday, which happened to fall on a big game day."

Thanks to the Midwest Correspondent.

Eighth in a series on grounds for optimism and worry.

Biggest reason for hope -- An intact offensive line leads nine returning offensive starters.

Coaches often say it all starts with the offensive line (though this is an interesting contrarian argument), so the Trojans should be off to a good start with five starters returning and depth so talented it might unseat a veteran or two -- see tackle Tyron Smith challenging Butch Lewis. Kristofer O'Dowd is an All-American and may be the best center in the country. Guard Jeff Byers and tackle Charles Brown are All-Pac-10 guys who may get national honors, too. Last year, USC averaged 195 yards rushing per game and surrendered just 18 sacks, fewest in the conference. Best line in the nation? Maybe.

Biggest reason for concern -- This is probably the nation's toughest schedule.

Unlike many other programs in other conferences that hope to compare themselves to USC, the Trojans are not afraid of playing tough nonconference games on the road. Good for them, but some years it sets up a brutal slog of a schedule. USC figures to be the only team in the nation to play four nationally ranked opponents on the road -- Ohio State, California, Notre Dame and Oregon. The opener against San Jose State? Heck, the Spartans have won 20 games over the past three seasons since Dick Tomey took over. Toss in the quality depth of the Pac-10 and the round-robin conference schedule and no other team in the nation faces fewer weeks off than the Trojans.

"As of 1 p.m. today, I am resigning as head basketball coach at the University of Southern California. I deeply appreciate the opportunity afforded me by the university, as well as the chance to know and work with some of the finest young men in college athletics. Unfortunately, I no longer feel I can offer the level of enthusiasm to my duties that is deserved by the university, my coaching staff, my players, their families, and the supporters of Southern Cal," the letter said. "I always promised myself and my family that if I ever felt I could no longer give my full enthusiasm to a job, that I should leave it to others who could. I intend to contact my coaching staff and my players in coming days and weeks to tell them how much each of them means to me. I wish the best to USC and to my successor."

Coach Floyd led the Trojans to 3 straight NCAA tournament appearances, 3 straight 20 plus win seasons and a Pac-10 tourney championship. All are firsts for USC basketball. TrojanWire has nothing but love for coach Floyd and we wish him the best. It is just a bad situation right now.

Report: Floyd resigns [espn.com]

"Gallup said, 'Look, why do you think they have curtains and booths for voting?'" [American Football Coaches Association] executive director Grant Teaff said. "They said it’s because you get the truest vote from an anonymous vote."

The Internet disagrees -- see, most prominently, here, here, here, here or here, all of which are variations on the same theme: Why does the Coaches' poll hate America? Or, at least, the fundamental American values of transparency and integrity? At random, I'll let ESPN's Pat Forde speak for the truth-seeking mob:

College football coaches love secrecy. This we already know.
[...]
So I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise to see the American Football Coaches Association announce Wednesday that, starting in 2010, the final Top 25 ballots in the USA Today coaches' poll will no longer be made public.

That's just coaches being coaches.

It's also coaches being cowards.

Deadline writers love pouncing on fat, slow-moving targets, preferably while also employing a ton of paragraph breaks. This we already know. That's just columnists being columnists. And yet, for all the ink pixels spilled over the coaches' affront to decency and democracy, only the Austin American Statesman's Kirk Bohls took the crucial step and got existential with it (emphasis added):

The coaches should remove themselves from the entire process because of clear conflicts of interest, some of which involve big financial bonuses in their contracts as well as biases for or against certain coaches.

While the rest of his colleagues wring their hands over the "integrity" of the process, Bohls is the only one who sees clearly enough to call the poll what it is, "a charade" hardly worth refining in any format. A poll of coaches has never made sense: They may know strategy, blocking and tackling, but no decent coach will have any good idea about any teams except his own and the other dozen on its schedule, much less the means for making a critical comparison across conferences with good data. Coaches are also perhaps the most self-interested parties in the entire process, and they vote that way: Contrary to Teaff's assurances, the poll has consistently reeked of bias since the final ballots were made public. Steve Spurrier famously undermines the poll's integrity on a yearly basis by reserving his final spot for Duke in the preseason; coaches at the end of the year are corralled into voting the winner of the BCS Championship game No. 1, even if -- as with snubbed regular season No. 1 Southern Cal in 2003, which fell behind No. 2 LSU for strictly bureaucratic reasons despite throttling Michigan in the Rose Bowl -- they don't agree with the vote. It only remains relevant at all by its intimate association with the biggest charade in sports, the BCS, from which even the old hacks in the Associated Press poll had the sense to distance themselves after everything hit the fan in 2004.

None of this changes by publishing or hiding the coaches' final vote, neither of which has ever produced the slightest controversy of any relevance; other than the semantic debate about Mack Brown and Kyle Whittingham's rebellious No. 1 votes in January, I don't recall a single headline over the last four years that relied on a specific coach's public ballot. (If it references a vote at all, the reporter probably just asked the coach on record.) Nothing changed when the year-end votes became public, and nothing will change when they go back behind the curtain. "Transparency" is not the problem. The problem has always been that there are votes at all.

Sunday, Oct. 25: Cardinal and Gold game (exhibition)
Saturday, Nov. 7: TBA (exhibition)
Tuesday, Nov. 17: vs. UC Riverside
Saturday, Nov. 21: vs. Loyola Marymount
Friday, Nov. 27: vs. Coppin State
Sunday, Nov. 29: vs. Nebraska
Thursday, Dec. 3: at Texas
Saturday, Dec. 5: at Georgia Tech
Tuesday, Dec. 8: vs. Sacramento State
Friday, Dec. 11: vs. Idaho State
Saturday, Dec. 19: vs. Tennessee
Tue.-Fri., Dec. 22-25: Diamond Head Classic at Honolulu
Thursday, Dec. 31: vs. Arizona State
Saturday, Jan. 2: vs. Arizona
Thursday, Jan. 7: at Cal
Saturday, Jan. 9: at Stanford
Saturday, Jan. 16: at UCLA
Thursday, Jan. 21: vs. Washington State
Saturday, Jan. 23: vs. Washington
Thursday, Jan. 28: at Oregon State
Saturday, Jan. 30: at Oregon
Thursday, Feb. 4: vs. Stanford
Saturday, Feb. 6: vs. Cal
Saturday, Feb. 13: vs. UCLA
Thursday, Feb. 18: at Washington
Saturday, Feb. 20: at Washington State
Thursday, Feb. 25: vs. Oregon
Saturday, Feb. 27: vs. Oregon State
Thursday, March 4: at Arizona
Saturday, March 6: at Arizona State
Wed.-Sat., March 10-13: Pac-10 Tournament at Staples Center

If you want more information on the 2009 USC Coaches Tour featuring Pete Carroll and Tim Floyd click here and here. The tour will take place in California. These are the dates and locations:

Wednesday, May 27 • Irvine
Friday, May 29 • Indian Wells
Monday, June 1 • Pasadena
Thursday, June 4 • Bay Area (Burlingame)
Monday, June 8 • San Diego
Wednesday, June 10 • Manhattan Beach
Thursday, June 11 • Westlake Village

The evening will include cocktails, dinner, a silent auction and Q&A with both coaches. Proceeds from the event will go to the Mario Danelo Endowed Scholarship and the Ryan Francis Endowed Scholarship.

You can also call the USC Athletic Development at (213) 740-4155 for more information.

Online RSVP and Event Information [usc.edu]
2009 USC Coaches Tour Ready To Kick Off [usctrojans.com]

USC staged its spring finale at 1 p.m. at the Coliseum and UCLA started its festivities at 7 p.m. at the Rose Bowl. The two venues are only 17 miles apart, but there is risk involved — namely congested freeways.

I was one of the few, the proud to pull it off and live to tell about it. Here are some images from both scrimmages.

That's Mitch Mustain under center. The one-time Arkansas quarterback has tumbled to third on the USC depth chart.

Freshman Matt Barkley launches a pass. ESPN analyst Mel Kiper said this on Saturday about Barkley: "I said three-and-a-half years ago, Matthew Stafford to be the No. 1 pick and I'm going on record now to say ... three years Matt Barkley — who will be a true freshman this year — will be the No. 1 pick in the draft. Three years from now."

Barkley wasn't perfect. In this sequence, he throws an interception.

Starting quarterback Aaron Corp, when told that Ohio State drew 95,722 for its spring scrimmage compared to only 22,565 for USC: "Ohio State doesn't have a beach! I don't blame our fans. It gets loud in here in the fall."

An estimated 12,000 were on hand to check out the Bruins at the Rose Bowl.

Rick Neuheisel addressed the fans several times during the scrimmage. He introduced Dick Vermeil, who 33 years earlier coached the Bruins to an upset of Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. Vermeil told the crowd that UCLA "got the right guy" when it hired Neuheisel.

UCLA alumni cheerleader Geoffrey Strand was in the stands. Check out this YouTube video of Strand at the 2006 USC-UCLA game.

Korey and Kyle Bosworth posed for photographs after the scrimmage. Uncle Brian Bosworth was nowhere to be found.

The end of the road. No better way to complete a memorable day.

Filed under: Arizona State, USC, Pac-10, NCAA Basketball Coaches, NCAA Basketball Media Watch, NCAA Basketball Video

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Tennessee reported two secondary violations last month that occurred while hosting football recruits on official visits.

Nine prospects in Knoxville for an official visit on Jan. 16 participated in a mock press conference in Neyland Stadium’s media center after touring the stadium. Coaches asked the prospects questions while they were being filmed.

More evidence that, even when they seem fun or like a good way to keep you from sticking your foot in your mouth, fake press conferences are always a bad idea (unless you're selling beer, but that opens up a whole new can of regulatory worms). I'm serious about the video: Based on their actual press conferences, the fictional version is guaranteed gold, especially if Monte Kiffin got into it.

Also addressed: The smoke machine thing that hit both Kiffin and his old Southern Cal colleague, new Washington boss Steve Sarkisian, with slaps on the wrist for "simulating a game experience" with recruits on their respective campi last month? That's a Pete Carroll routine -- "Kiffin believed the use of a fog machine was permissible because he had seen it used while employed at another school. ... That was most likely Southern California." But the Trojans, they get away with everything.

(Speaking of Sarkisian, his new offensive coordinator, Jim Michalzik, is leaving Washington after less than two months on the job to take a position with Kiffin's old boss, Al Davis, and the Oakland Raiders; this comes less than two weeks after the Huskies' new receivers coach suddenly decided to return to Utah about a week into the job. No word on how much of Michalzik's $350,000 salary he'll keep for failing to make it to his first spring practice.)