Another list of college football’s top coaches, another top slot for Pete Carroll:

The buzz: Carroll has made USC arguably the premier program in the nation. Carroll’s 76-14 record in eight seasons gives him the best winning percentage of any Division I coach with at least five years’ experience. He has won 74 of his past 83 games along with a share of two national titles and a record six consecutive Pac-10 championships.

But wait—here’s a list that puts Carroll at #2.

2. Pete Carroll : USC : Talk about tough. How hard is it to put this guy into the 2 slot? Easily the most respected team in the country amongst his coaching brethren, year in and year out. Pete has built an absoulute MONSTER in South California since his arrival 8 years ago. In his 7 years as head coach, the Trojans are merely 76-14. And that includes his 1st year with a 6-6 record with a very poor team. Take away the 1st year dagger, and Pete is 70-8 over 6 years. He also has 2 National Titles to claim (although LSU fans will debate that). Since his 2nd year in LA, Pete has held the Trojans as serious National Contenders in EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Bar none. His recruiting has been 2nd to none. His coaching, could be questioned, but I don’t know that I could. The absolute talent that he has brought into LA is unquestioned. Simply the best of the best in the country.

So who’s #1, and why? Jim Tressel, because

Pete’s record at USC may look to be more impressive, but his legacy has some certain conspiracy rivaled around it right now as well. Mr. Tressel has no contenders to the cleanest and best run program in the nation right now. NONE. Sure, he has had his few stragglers, but for the large part, “The Vest” has brought in solid young men who want to play football and get an education at the same time. That has to be respected.

There you have it. I’m not sure what it means that Pete’s legacy has some certain conspiracy rivaled around it, but whatever it means, it was enough to knock him from the top spot. That and the academics, apparently, even though USC’’s program has a higher graduation rate.

Reader Bryan writes in with the following:

A few years ago, ESPN created the perfect drug for the general college football degenerate: College Gameday Live, a once-a-week quality-produced show that is not only insightful but also entertaining. Needless to say, I quickly became a regular weekend user. But after growing accustomed to the euphoria of this early Saturday morning show, it would take months for me to come down and re-enter normal civilian life. I considered this a good thing. A once-a-week user. It didn’t affect my life negatively and I could only convince myself of the positives. I’ve now realized it was only a gateway.

The geniuses at ESPN, knowing my addiction, decided to street College Football Live—the crack to College Gameday Live’s cocaine. They have helmet contests and sound offs. They rotate anchors, giving any columnist who has ever written an article in a major publication a chance to give his thoughts on why the grass (actual grass, not the mary jane) in Florida seems to blow out as many ACLs as Joe Pa does birthday candles, along side an over-hyped, overrated College player who never did anything at the next level, so he can say things like “Well, when I played” or “Back when my coach [fill in the blank]”. Every day, some player that’s in line to be placed on the mantle of over-hyped tell us he and his team are going to take it one game at a time.

But here’s the catch, the thing about crack: I can’t stop watching it. I watch it nightly as soon as I get home, like a jonesin’ junkie. I need to watch FSU beat USC in a helmet on-line vote off. (Really? It doesn’t help that it airs when we’re still at work and they’re already a few drinks past happy hour.) I need to watch unwatchable Sound Off smack running videos. I need it until College Gameday Live returns in three weeks (and even then I’ll still probably watch). I simply need it.

Please—if anyone has any good cures for getting me off this crap until the good pure rush of College Gameday Live returns, I’ll gladly take it.

Please feel free to post suggested cures in the comments.

Rivals.com asked its college football round table to name the school that is the most prohibitive favorite in its conference. The answers were BYU, Ohio State, and yes—USC.

This shouldn’t be a news flash. USC already has won six Pac-10 championships in a row, dominating the league like it never has been dominated before. Since its iron-fist run on the conference began in 2002, USC is 34-6 in the Pac-10. And this is happening in an era when parity is supposed to rule.

There are many things working in the Trojans’ favor. That USC is far and away more talented than any other team is reason enough to think the Trojans will run roughshod over their Pac-10 brethren again. Sure, USC has issues on offense—including solidifying its line—but a killer defense should help cover rough patches the Trojans’ offense incurs while taking shape.

Others, however, disagree.

The LA Times reports that the Trojans have priority of use over the ‘SC’ logo, now that

the administrative tribunal of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has ruled that the local USC has priority of use when it comes to the “SC” logo, including the interlocking version.

The battle between the USCs has been quietly raging since 2002, when USC challenged South Carolina’s application to federally register a version of the “SC” trademark for use on clothing and baseball uniforms. South Carolina fired back with a counterclaim to cancel USC’s federal trademark registration for its interlocking “SC” logo.

We would’ve called South Carolina “the other USC” regardless, but it’s still nice to have some legal backing.

The Austin American-Statesman (or, as some like to call it, the Austin-American Statesman) has attempted to identify the most exploitable vulnerabilities for some of this year’s title contenders. They point out line play as USC’s weakness

2. Southern California’s offensive line: The Trojans’ line is one of the least experienced in the country. This could be an issue for a team that hasn’t settled on a featured back yet and has only four starters returning on offense.

and it’s hard to disagree, since that was our problem last year (albeit largely due to injuries) and it’s not obvious that we’ve improved significantly in that area.

Brian Walker of TheStreet.com has posted four daring college football predictions. They’re all worth a read, but this one naturally caught our eye:

Southern Cal will not win the Pac-10.

I’m picking only one USC to have a shot at their conference title this year, and if you read above you can see it’s not the powerhouse Trojans. Once again the Men of Troy are stocked with NFL-caliber talent, but the rest of the conference is catching up, and I don’t think the past couple seasons are an indication that Southern Cal has what it takes to make it eight in a row in the Pac-10.

QB Mark Sanchez did fine last season filling in for John David Booty and RB Joe McKnight is a playmaker that’ll have people soon forgetting all about Reggie Bush. Still the Trojans lost some good talent, especially on defense, from a squad that dropped two games last year — including the shocker to Stanford.

I wouldn’t expect another clunker like that out of this team but anyone who thinks they can look past Oregon just because Dennis Dixon is gone might be in for a surprise. Combine that game with a date the very next weekend against last year’s conference co-champion Arizona State and the Trojans have a tough time ahead if they expect to hold on to the crown.

Of course out-of-conference schedule doesn’t go very far in determining the Pac-10 winner, but to say Southern Cal has a huge game in week three when they host Ohio State is a massive understatement. If the Trojans lose that game they’ll be waiving goodbye to their national title hopes before they’ve even started their conference schedule and it could be the catalyst that eventually sends them down from the Pac-10’s top spot.

We’re not going to predict a national title game berth, as some have, but the conference championship seems relatively safe. After all, couldn’t you say the Trojans lost some good talent, especially on defense, from a squad that dropped two games last year pretty much every year? And we’ve certainly lost later than week 3 and still been in contention for the national title.

Colin Cowherd this morning was describing ESPN’s big college football meeting, with Herbstreit, Corso, Saunders, Musberger, James, Flutie, etc., and they took a straw poll among their experts. 75% of them said USC would play in the national championship game.

Discuss.

We’re pretty sure that this has nothing to do with UCLA, but we’re going to try to pin it on them all the same: Westwood is the home of the stupidest bike lane in America.

Rocky Top Talk is running an interesting series of posts on college football logos, focusing so far on failed attempts to be scary and the boring ones. (Coolest and worst are yet to come.) No sign of SC yet, although pretty much every other Pac-10 team has shown up on one of the two lists so far.

Our only quibble is that Texas Tech should show up in the worst list, rather than the most boring list (although it certainly qualifies as boring too.)

I’m sure we all like sorority girls (and the Kappa house at USC is particularly good*), but this is a bit much.

The top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was obsessed with a sorority that sat less than 100 yards away from a New Jersey mailbox where the toxin-laced letters were sent, authorities said Monday. Multiple U.S. officials told The Associated Press that former Army scientist Bruce Ivins was long obsessed with the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, going back as far as his own college days at the University of Cincinnati.

* Or at least was when we were there.