John Walters

Orange County is the home of thousands of former and future University of Southern California students and, of course, Disneyland (where many of them work). Inside the Magic Kingdom, you may happen upon an attraction known as “Snow White’s Scary Adventures,” about which the theme park itself says “the ride itself is gentle, but some scenes may be too scary for young children.”

Trojans fans, I present to you the 2008 Pacific-10 Conference, aka “USC and the Nine Dwarfs.” After four weeks — and just two games — both major polls have declared Pete Carroll’s team to be the fairest of them all. However, even if the Trojans keep winning, how long will they remain atop the polls with a schedule that numbers exclusively the likes of:

• Sleepy (Cal, which missed its noon eastern wake-up call at Maryland on Sept. 13)
• Dopey (UCLA, which foolishly took out a full-page ad declaring USC’s City of Angels gridiron monopoly over just weeks before losing 59-0 at BYU) and …
• Bashful (Thursday's foe Oregon State, which succumbed to stage fright at Penn State, falling behind 35-7 at halftime)?

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, the Pac-10 it doth blow.

USC is ranked No. 1 in both the AP and coaches' polls, but none of its nine Pac-10 brothers are ranked in the AP Top 25. (Oregon is somehow still 22nd in the coaches' rankings).

The Trojans’ 35-3 defeat of Ohio State on Sept. 13 was the most emphatic statement any program has made in 2008. Yet, most of the news the Pac-10 has made has been woeful: the road nightmares of UCLA, Cal and Oregon State; Arizona State’s seemingly inexplicable home loss to UNLV; the 0-5 head-to-head record against its regional little bro’, the Mountain West Conference.

If you subtract USC’s two non-conference wins and the two victories against FCS foes, the Pac-10 is 8-12 in interconference play this season. Of those eight opponents that Pac-10 schools have beaten, only two — Michigan State and Purdue — have winning records.

So here comes Carroll with his No. 1 poll position and his Mickey Mouse schedule. Ten games remain for USC, all against currently unranked opponents: the nine other Pac-10 schools and Notre Dame. Does a 12-0 record guarantee the Trojans a spot in the BCS championship game? Or are folks who believe that spending too much time in Fantasyland?

As dominant as USC has been since Carroll arrived at Heritage Hall — the stat of the season, courtesy the Los Angeles Times, is that Carroll’s 14 losses in seven seasons have been by the same combined point total (59) as UCLA’s in one game at BYU — the Trojans have taken their eyes off the ball four times in the past two seasons.

Conference losses at UCLA, Oregon State and Oregon, as well as last year’s we-saw-it-but-we-still-don’t-believe-it home loss to Stanford, have undermined Troy’s aura of invincibility. None of those opponents were favored to beat USC, and Stanford was a 40-point underdog. Nobody in the Pac-10 should come within 10 points of USC if Ohio State could not come within 30, but it remains to be seen whether the Trojans can stave off distraction, in a city that manufactures them, for the next 10 weeks.

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That, then, is USC’s first mandate: Win every game. And win convincingly. If Carroll has to hypnotize his team into thinking that every opponent is Notre Dame — the Trojans have won the past five contests against the Irish by an average of 24 points — so be it. USC doesn’t have the luxury this season of playing in a conference as talented as the Mountain West (three Top 25 teams) or the WAC (two), so it has to play as if anything short of an undefeated season means another New Year’s Day in Pasadena.

The last two times the Trojans did go undefeated during the regular season, after all, they played for the national title (2004 and ’05).

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The second thing that Carroll and his team must do is … nothing. Sit back, relax, and let nature take its course. Both the Big 12 and the SEC have four schools in this week’s AP poll. Guess what, kids? The Big 12 and SEC, much like the Pac-10, have intra-conference play. They will all knock one another off, if not a national championship berth, at least the unbeatens list.

Take the SEC. Georgia is third, Florida fourth, LSU fifth and Alabama eighth in this week’s poll. The Bulldogs and Tigers play all three of their fellow top-10 SEC foes. The Gators and Tide, who will not meet, play two. And that’s before we even reach the SEC championship game.

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