 "Photo: Alix Drawec | Daily Trojan")
In a college football season when everything has been topsy-turvy, at least one thing has remained constant: the fans.
No, not in their undying support for their Trojans, but in their apathetic "So what?" attitude that was apparent last season and is becoming so this season.
It seems as if USC's fans are only devoted to the team if it is undefeated. Any imperfection whatsoever, and the fans move on.
Take the Stanford loss, for example.
I've never heard the Coliseum so quiet and so stunned, and walking out that night, I thought to myself, "This one is going to sting for a while."
But within two days, people already had moved on. Aside from those end-of-the-dynasty articles written by those with a flair for the overdramatic, it was as if the season had been wiped from the fan base's collective conscience.
By Monday, I heard more talk about O.J. Mayo and Trojan Fever than I did about the remaining half of the football schedule yet to be played.
So after a narrow victory over Arizona and a rout of Notre Dame, the swagger was back. This USC team wasn't going to be denied. We (the fans) might have been down (read: out, given up), but we were back. We were behind the team 100 percent.
Then, the loss to Oregon. After that, the first mention of the words "Meineke Car Care Bowl" sent people running in fear, unable to accept that their team was not going to win the national championship. And just like that, the season was over.
There are still four games left to be played, but you'd think Oregon was the final game of the regular season.
Trousdale will still be packed tomorrow morning, but more so because it provides an opportunity to start drinking at 7 a.m. and less because there is still football to be played. (Which leads to another question: Why do people feel the need to get drunk to go watch a football game?)
So you think this is an anomaly? Try again. Does 2006 ring a bell?
After last year's stunning loss to Oregon State, I needed a high-powered scientific calculator to figure out how many times I heard the season was over and that it was time to look toward next year.
Not that I'm Nostradamus or anything, but I knew the season wasn't over after last season's loss to OSU. I told anyone who would listen that USC just needed to take care of its business, and everything would fall into place - which it almost did.
Still, nobody seemed to care. The team wasn't perfect, so it didn't matter. I heard people say they weren't going to go to the games anymore.
Really? One loss completely kills your devotion to a team? That doesn't sound like a true fan to me. True fans are supposed to stick with their team through anything.
Then, after a 23-9 victory over Cal and a 44-24 throttling of the Fighting Irish, the buzz was back. People began to realize that the loss a month prior did not end the season. So they put their Dwayne Jarrett jerseys back on and geared up for a showdown against UCLA.
Of course, that's what any true fan would do: Give up when all seems lost and get pumped when it turns out that isn't the case.
This whole cycle makes no sense to me.
I hail from New York, where people live and die by their sports teams. Whether they're undefeated, 6-2 or 1-7, New York sports fans are dedicated to their teams. So when I came to Los Angeles, and to USC in particular, I was surprised to see that there is a lack of such spirit.
I know this isn't characteristic of every single USC fan (at least I hope not). There are die-hards out there. But I've seen enough of it to be completely stunned.
- To comment on this story, visit www.dailytrojan.com or e-mail Grant at tunkel@usc.edu.
