America's Team?

Only in college can the comedic styling of Will Ferrell and the chronic *cough* chicanery of Snoop Dogg represent the whole of American culture, but that's what makes that period of your life fun: it's wildly irrational and wholly uninformed.

So maybe I shouldn't blame U.S.C. linebacker Brian Cushing for his comments to the New York Post a few days ago. They were wildly irrational and wholly uninformed, but I'm here to help him with that.

Cushing had this to say in the story:

We're America's Team. The best players want to come here. The tradition is amazing. Everyone wants to play us. People love to be around the program. I mean, there are celebrities at every practice.

Like, totally. I understand how the sight of Nick Lachey can make you a little starstruck, but America's team? Could the high ratio of celebrities to grad assistants at Trojan practices perhaps be a product of their location? L.A. loves a winner and forgets everyone else. It's a town that runs on yesterday's news, eternally searching for the next big thing.

U.S.C. is that thing now--in L.A.--but there are a couple million college football fans everywhere else in the country who absolutely salivate at the thought of seeing U.S.C. lose. College football is the best sport in America because this notion of universal popularity doesn't exist. It's a regional sport played on a national stage. Fans are tied to their schools in a way that can't be achieved with a pro franchise. Every Saturday there's much more at stake than a simple win or loss, the pride of a specific people and place, a local ethos, is on the line.

And, I'm sorry, but L.A. will never do that as well as places like Athens and Norman and Morgantown, cities and towns we know because of college football.

U.S.C. can claim right now to be the best team in America and get only a small argument. One day away from the first games of the season, that's the consensus. But claiming the mythical title of Amerca's Team?

The rest of the country will have something to say about that. Adam Duritz and Larry the Cable Guy are celebrities too. I think.