Filed under: USC Football, Pac 10, NCAA FB Scandal, Los Angeles

The phrase “it comes with the territory” tends to trump most any grievances against the world USC can conjure.

There’s the Reggie Bush scandal, player arrests, coach Pete Carroll’s job flirtations and scrutiny about something as mundane as a redshirt third string quarterback taking a dance class constantly in the program’s face. With success comes envy. And billboards. And hateful toilets. And the bile coming from the UCLA fan base.

“It comes with the territory”

Florida’s learning some of those lessons as their program ascends to the heights in both football and basketball. Others will follow. They know they’re being watched and can’t make mistakes the way other programs can.

But this is plain silly:

A couple weeks ago during a USC football camp, participants ran 40-yard dashes. As it happened, people at the camp phoned UCLA because they thought it was an NCAA violation.

It turned out to be legal because you can run 40s if you teach drills on it too. But nothing happens without a reaction.

I get the whole ‘turning USC in if you see their players getting free cars’ or something crazy like that. But putting UCLA on speed dial because of a procedural no-no at a skills camp? That’s entering “get a life” territory. The Trojans aren’t angels, but they probably deserve the chance to relax at low-key events like camps and not have every miss-step sent real time to UCLA or the NCAA.

USC smartly hasn’t lashed out and made a fool of itself in dealing with this kind of splitting hairs scrutiny, but it certainly has to be a little annoying If not tiresome. USC’s been in the spotlight for a while now, and I wonder if that hasn’t started to burden the program not unlike the fatigue that hits second term presidencies worn numb from five to eight years of battles with opponents and the media.

In the end theoretically, they could lose their dominance not from something as large as the Reggie Bush scandal but instead through “death by pinprick”. It may not be the big battles won or lost that decide USC’s future, but simple fatigue from a million little incidents like how they conduct their camps or what they’re feeding the athletes or a million other things.

In the meantime, they’re a consensus choice for the #1 preseason ranking. It’s not all bad, but it’s not all roses either.

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