USC has reason to be hopeful next year


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With just two practices and the spring game left before USC football hits pause until fall camp, there’s a new hype surrounding the team. It’s not the pressure and hype of 2012, nor is it the skepticism of 2013. It’s a feeling that, partly due to consistent dominance and partly due to constantly inflated expectations, […]

Rutgers’ Hermann sets poor example


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Last week, the Star-Ledger laid off 167 of its employees, including 25 percent of its newsroom staff. Company officials say the newspaper is on track to bleed $19 million this year, losses that publisher Richard Vezza said can’t continue if the largest circulated paper in New Jersey is to survive. Don’t expect Rutgers athletic director […]

QB battle creates useless drama


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Blah blah blah, quarterbacks.Blah blah blah, Cody Kessler.Blah blah blah, Max Browne. Blah blah blah blah blah. After USC’s football practice on Tuesday, head coach Steve Sarkisian said he “would suspect” he’d name a presumptive starting quarterback by the end of spring. Wow! What news! What a dramatic impact this will have on the season. […]

Browne is more than a backup option


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This time last year, the USC Trojans’ spring camp was marked by a three-way quarterback battle between then-incumbent starter Max Wittek, Cody Kessler and spring recruit Max Browne. This year, Wittek is gone and everyone moves up one: Incumbent starting quarterback Cody Kessler and Max Browne are officially competing for the starting job this spring, […]

Helton is key to the Trojans’ success


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USC junior wide receiver Nelson Agholor has made making people shake their heads — be it opposing players, coaches or fans — a habit during his two-year career at USC. He has big-play ability and explosiveness that few can match and, similar to former teammate Marqise Lee, watching him run with the ball in his […]

Trojans blossom in spring practice


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College spring football always comes at the perfect time. As March Madness winds down and with the College Baseball World Series still a few months away, 15 spring practices fill a void for college sports fans. This year at USC, the practices are even more significant as they introduce the Steve Sarkisian era of Trojan […]

Dodgers’ TV drama hurts fans the most


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We’ve reached that point of the year, folks. In the words of legendary Dodgers’ broadcaster Vin Scully, “It’s time for Dodger Baseball.” The boys in blue are indeed back on the diamond and off to a hot 4-1 start, but the majority of Southern California residents, including Scully, can’t even watch manager Don Mattingly put […]

Trojans must find success at Dedeaux


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There is a long-held formula for success in Major League Baseball, which says that a good team should strive to win two-thirds of their home games and play .500 ball on the road. Over the course of a 162-game MLB season, a team doing just that will win about 95 games — highly respectable, and […]

March Madness, NBA can’t compare


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Maybe I just don’t get March Madness. Despite the fact that the Final Four matchups take place this weekend, the hype just doesn’t seem to interest me. The NCAA men’s basketball championships are a strange tournament, one where excitement seems to move in an inverse direction, contrary to the nature of typical elimination tournaments. Other […]

Sarkisian winning over his players


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When former USC head coach Ed Orgeron sent in his resignation to Athletic Director Pat Haden, Trojan fans must have been experiencing that “Here we go again” feeling. Two months earlier, following a 21-point loss to Arizona State, Haden chose to make a coaching change midseason. Two months later, after USC’s 21-point loss to UCLA, […]