Musings with Arledge: Caleb Williams, The USC Defense, and Bye George

Another week, another win.  Not a very satisfying one, if we’re honest.  And if this defensive trend continues, it’s hard to see the Trojans running that three-game gauntlet of UCLA, Notre Dame, and the conference championship game. 

Still, at the end of the year, they’re just going to add up all the wins, including the underwhelming ones.  And Lincoln Riley keeps lining up W’s.  The guy is now in his sixth year as a head coach and still has never lost three games in a season.  Let’s hope that trend continues.   

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To paraphrase Dennis Green, Caleb Williams is who we thought he was.  And that is immensely talented. 

Caleb’s average game this season is 22-34 for 298 yards, three TD’s and no picks. He’s third in the nation in TD passes and currently has a 24-1 TD to INT ratio. And his ability to move terrorizes opposing defenses.

He dominated that game last night largely throwing to guys who haven’t played much this year. His best two receivers — two of the best in the country — were out, and it just didn’t matter.

Granted, it was Arizona’s defense, and they’ve struggled all year. Still, Williams was a monster yet again.

And the crazy thing is that he’s going to get better. He can probably still afford to take off and pick up first downs with his feet more often than he does. He will continue to get better reading defenses and occasionally taking the easy 10 yards instead of settling for the low-percentage deep throw. But I don’t want to nitpick, because the guy is extraordinary already.

Do you remember that play last night where Caleb was moving to his left and fired an absolute dart across his body into the end zone, the one that Rice deflected with his chest? Yeah, plays like that will get the attention of NFL scouts.

We have a handful of games left this year, and one season of what I expect will be an even better Caleb Williams next year, and that’s it. Then he’s off to become somebody’s franchise QB on Sundays. So let’s enjoy this while it lasts.

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A few weeks ago I was trying to spin the positives of the defense. They weren’t giving up a lot of points. They were making big plays with turnovers and sacks. They had grown a lot since last year….

It’s getting harder to feel that way. The last eight quarters have just been brutal.

Jayden de Laura is good. His receivers are good. But that defensive performance was bad. Again. Almost 550 yards. Almost eight yards a play. Arizona’s offense did almost anything it wanted all night. It was, frankly, hard to watch.

The Trojans are in a good position to be 9-1 going into that UCLA game. And the Trojans can win that game. But it sure looks like they’ll need to score 45-50 points to do it, because at this point it’s difficult to imagine UCLA’s offense doing anything other than running up and down the field unobstructed all day.

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Last year USC fans almost lost their minds when Drake Jackson was dropping into coverage. This year Alex Grinch has decided to up the ante by putting Nick Figueroa in coverage.

I know USC has had a lot of injuries at that rush end position and they’re struggling to find some production there with guys who ordinarily play inside. But when Grinch draws up the defensive scheme and sees Figueroa with the responsibility of covering a running back in the secondary, does he pause at all and ask himself whether this is really something he wants to see. Because I know, definitively, that I don’t want to see it.

Is anybody else afraid that Grinch might get even more creative and lock up Brandon Pili on Jake Bobo in a couple of weeks?

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George Kliavkoff is a busy man.  He’s already tasked with overseeing the Pac-12’s current metamorphosis from the former Conference of Champions to the Conference of Teams the Big 10 Doesn’t Want.  He’s in chare of the Pac-12’s work furlough program where incarcerated juvenile delinquents complete their community service requirements by volunteering to officiate Pac-12 football games.  And he’s responsible for overseeing the Pac-12 Network, a massive undertaking that involves George and a team of 10 community-college film students recording Pac-12 football games for late-night broadcast to dozens, in some cases hundreds, of people. 

But George isn’t happy if he isn’t working, so he’s now taken on a new job: pollster.  George claims that the people associated with USC and UCLA don’t like the impending move to the Big 10.  “I have yet to talk to anyone in the UCLA and USC community who’s in favor of the move.”

Not one person likes the move?  Okay, then.  Sounds pretty scientific to me.  I wonder if George can take that polling methodology to Gallup.  I’d love to hear what he thinks about the Nevada senate race. 

Kliavkoff is a guy who can stand outside Staples Center where Rihanna is playing to a sold-out crowd and say with a straight face that he’s not sure Rihanna is popular because he hasn’t talked to anyone who likes Rihanna’s music. 

Well, George, if you’re really interested in talking to someone in the USC community who’s in favor of the move, give me a call.  I’m happy to talk to you.  Or come to one of the USC football message boards.  Or just find some random dude in a USC sweatshirt on the street and ask him. 

And while we’re on the topic of some things that people in the USC community are not in favor of, let me give some others. Things like donating $100 million a year to the other schools in the conference and then getting screwed by them. That’s right. The University of California’s analysis says that each Pac-12 will lose about $10 million a year in media rights alone because of USC’s departure to the Big 10. $10 million a year times 10 schools … that sounds like $100 million a year of charity to the remainder of the conference. And this doesn’t include additional benefits in ticket sales, bowl game revenues, and the like. 

Here’s the thing, George, if you’re donating $100 million to somebody – anybody – you kind of figure that will affect how you get treated. You might expect special treatment. At the very least you expect a fair shake.  You don’t expect that you’ll have your undefeated season ended and playoff prospects diminished by two horrific calls by an incompetent officiating crew that cost you a key road game.  You don’t expect to get shipped off to Thursday night road games.

You know what else the USC community doesn’t like?  The Pac-12 Network.  We don’t love playing games late at night on a network that nobody can actually see.  And I know the Pac-12 Network wasn’t your idea, George.  But you know who still hasn’t come up with a plan to get the Pac-12 Network higher ratings than our WeAreSC Inside the Trojans Huddle program?  You, George. 

You know what else the USC community doesn’t like?  Getting hosed by the NCAA infractions committee, which breaks its own procedural rules and manufactures evidence – so egregiously, I might add, that a Los Angeles Superior Court took issue with it – yet having the rest of the conference go along with the kangaroo proceeding without a peep.

Oh, I have another one: the USC community doesn’t like seeing the rest of college football’s blue bloods doubling or tripling USC’s annual media rights revenues so they can gain huge advantages in facilities, coaching staffs, and recruiting.  And we don’t like that the Pac-12 has no answer to that problem.

We also don’t like Oregon.  That’s not directly relevant to you, I guess, but it’s still true.  We don’t like ‘em.

Speaking of Oregon, doesn’t it bother you – at least a little – that what will soon have to pass for the Pac-12’s flagship program pretends that it’s part of a different conference?  The SEC of the West, they say.  It’s ridiculous that they say it, but isn’t that telling?  Oregon isn’t going anywhere.  Nobody wants them.  So, instead, they’ll just pretend they’re in a better football conference than they are.  They’ll just tell everybody that they’re basically an SEC program, even though everybody knows it’s stupid.  Dwell on this odd fact for a little while, George, before you again go around talking about how outrageous it is that USC has decided to go to a conference where they won’t be donating $100 million a year to the Titanic of conferences and where the other members of this failing enterprise seem eager to constantly bite the Trojan hand that feeds them. 

Or just go out and talk to USC fans and ask them what they think.  Then you can stop peddling this nonsense that no USC and UCLA people want to leave the Pac-12.  I can’t wait to leave.  I can’t wait until the Pac-12’s incompetence is somebody else’s late-night, can’t-be-seen-on-television problem.  I can’t wait until the drifters and carnies that you guys hire to officiate Pac-12 games can no longer affect USC’s fortunes.  I can’t wait until our program can stop getting poked in the eye by lesser programs that can meet their athletic department budgets just because USC is dumb enough to distribute $10 million a year to each of them. 

Bye, George.

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Do you remember that Wanna Get Away promotion from Southwest Airlines? Something humiliating would happen and the guy in the commercial just wants to fly somewhere far, far away.

How do we not have a Merton Hanks Wanna Get Away commercial by now? Every week his referees put on a Master Class in destroying a football conference’s reputation. Most games, if the Pac-12 officials decided to strip to their birthday suits and run three laps around the field — We’re going streaking! — that would be only the third or fourth most ridiculous thing they would have done that week.

It is beyond embarrassing at this point. It’s beyond unacceptable. So long as every Pac-12 game is marred by shocking breakdowns in officiating, George Kliavkoff should just shut his mouth about USC and UCLA leaving for the Big 10. If a fast food chain serves cockroaches and dog hair in every hamburger it sells, the CEO has no business complaining about customers choosing to eat at his competitor’s restaurants.

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If you were a garage band without a hit, would you insist on calling yourself the Beatles?  If you were an actor who only ever had bit roles in community theater, would you put on your business cards “The Real George Clooney”?

Then why does the University of South Carolina insist on calling itself USC?     

For a while, the Gamecocks were going by UofSC to distinguish their school from the real USC.  Is that fair, “real USC”? 

Well, go anywhere in the country other than the Carolinas and say “USC” and people will think you’re talking about The University of Southern California.  Even the Gamecocks know it: “Once you get outside the borders of the state, USC means something different,” said J.C. Huggins, South Carolina’s Director of Marketing.

Yes, Mr. Huggins, it does.  It means the school with the high academic rankings, the Heisman trophies and national titles, the girls in the white sweaters, and the white horse.  USC is a top-25 national university.  South Carolina is not close.  USC has 11 national titles.  South Carolina has none.  USC has won 25 Rose Bowls.  South Carolina’s best bowl win is probably the Outback Bowl.  Those other guys have never been to the Rose, obviously, or even the Cotton, Sugar, Fiesta or Orange.  They have only a few top-10 finishes in their history and a single conference title from the Nixon administration. 

Look, I have no beef with the UofSC Gamecocks.  Why would any USC fan care about that program one way or the other?  They’re cannon fodder for the Clemsons and Georgias of the world.  They don’t affect us.  It’s just nonsensical to think that they want to go by the name USC when even they recognize that in every corner of the world apart from the Carolinas that name means something very different.

And I suppose they have every right to insist on calling themselves USC if they want.  I suppose the University of South Colorado can, too, for that matter.  

It’s just kind of dumb. 

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I’ve started my own WeAreSC YouTube show, Musings from Arledge Solo Edition.  The first two episodes are here:

I thought the second episode was funny. Granted, I might be mistaken, since nobody seems interested in watching it.  I’m kind of like Don MacLean checking the charts for every song he ever released after American Pie.  Only I’ve never done anything nearly as popular as American Pie.  But you get what I’m saying.

Anyway, I haven’t settled on a consistent format for the show. I might not. It’s hard to come up with USC and college football-related topics that are interesting enough that I actually want to write up a rant about them.  That’s not an every week sort of thing, although I do have enough of a get-off-my-lawn vibe that they come to me more often than most.  Some weeks I’ll rant.  Some weeks I’ll have interesting guests.  (I’m working on a few really good ones right now.)  Some weeks it will just be me ‘n Clay, fishin’ and talkin’ ball. 

This week I’ll be taping a message for my friend and yours, Commissioner George Kliavkoff.  So check it out when you get a chance.