Jed Williams

We got it all wrong.

In the seemingly endless weeks and months leading up to Virginia’s clash with vaunted Southern Cal – didn’t every day feel a bit like a Times Square New Year’s Eve countdown, with Pete Carroll and Joe McKnight replacing Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest? – so many of us (self included) misconstrued the USC ballyhoo. We started assigning expectations, elevating hopes, deducing meaning, and generally propping up this “showdown” into a much more bloated beast than it ever should have become. We made it into a referendum game on both the state of the program and the progress of a radically rebuilt team. Why? Because that’s what we do.

What we should have done was sit back and enjoy the sizzle-and-spice ticker-tape parade that is USC Football, the best professional college football brand anywhere in the land … and postpone any conclusions – or early assumptions – another seven days. Why didn’t we just enjoy the ride, even if that ride streamrolled right over the beloveds?

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