Patch Blog: Another Noble USC Win

Don’t know what kind of week you guys had but two people actually told me I looked just like Ozzie Nelson. And if you hadn’t noticed, Ozzie’s been dead for a while (and if you’re under 40, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about.)

So much for the good news.

Rolling into and through most of Thanksgiving weekend I could only dream about the sweet hum of high speed electric dental drills without the company of the noise that comes from saws and hammers and the big tools oral surgeons and contractors use every day on the job.

On Thursday (the contractors rested on Turkey Day), I came in to give thanks for the lack of existing bills to pay but if that were true I wouldn’t have missed the first two NFL games.

But I guess I oughta give thanks for all the noisy distractions. Seeing the business area of the office looking like the inside of my garage after a virtual tornado struck took my mind off the real major issue of the weekend.

Lately, when USC plays UCLA, the bruins have tended to look something like Sarah Palin starin’ up at the mug of Katie Couric. And I’m not complaining; gotta love that K.C.

Saturday night at the Coliseum, my beloved alma mater humbled the powder puff blue little bears 50-0. In the old days, the Christians woulda had a better chance. I’ve seen more aggression generated by guys carrying a white flag (maybe that’s what those white jerseys were all about.) The powder puffers have really never had a true fight song; after Saturday night, I would suggest “Give Peace a Chance.”

And I know I shouldn’t feel so good and be so obnoxious just because my former school won a football game. Even worse, why should the quality of my life depend on the behavior of 20 year-olds on a Saturday night?

Thing is, with all the contracting going on around here on Saturday morning, the most constructive stuff I could do was hit the Internet and look for a USC-UCLA quote.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Murray has always been my favorite writer. And miraculously, for shallow, primitive types like me, Murray somehow landed on the Sports Page. Between 1961 and Murray’s passing in 1998, reading his Times’ column was like sharing breakfast with Stern and his violin or Picasso with a pencil and napkin.

I just knew I could come up with some sort of poetic Murray wisecrack that would embellish Trojan tradition or see the humor in the “gutty little Bruins.” Best case, maybe I’d find a quote that would fashion Murray’s opinion of the fraud that was and is the NCAA.

Instead, I found something that took me back to my youth and my pride in being an Angeleno and a Trojan. I can clearly remember Murray’s column, published in the Times one fall Sunday in 1970, the day after integrated USC administered the Bruin Treatment to white-only Alabama.

Titled “Hatred Shut Out as Alabama Finally Joins the Union,” the column read in part:

On a warm and sultry night when you could hear train whistles hooting through the piney woods half county away, the state of Alabama joined the Union. They ratified the Constitution, signed the Bill of Rights. They have struck the Stars and Bars. They now hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal in the eyes of the Creator.

And it makes you wonder about the NCAA’s stance on too much institutional control before 1970.

Back then I was just a first-year dental student. I wasn’t so sure about dental school or my future but I knew I’d be a Trojan forever.

Don’t know about “the Gipper” but thanks for winning another one for Ozzie.

Fight on!