Monday Smiles – 12/1/2014

This has been a Thanksgiving week for the grandkids, almost to the exclusion of everything else, but Saturday, I took the afternoon off to watch my USC Trojans play Notre Dame with my son-in-law, Lars, at their house.  Oh, the kids were around but there are a million kids in the neighborhood, so the grandsons were content to play outside.  Savannah drifted in and out, insisting on a game or two of Old Maid.  There are only three people that could get me to play Old Maid during a USC football game but Savy is one of them.  This has been a disappointing year.  We (the spectator we) lost several games in the final seconds and worse, we were beaten soundly by the basketball school across town last weekend, a loss that made it likely that they would play in the Pac-12 championship game.   Still, in spite of the delusions of most UCLA fans, our biggest rivalry is Notre Dame, a game that Forbes Magazine, no less, calls college football’s greatest because of the long time excellence of both programs.  The game started well, with USC going up 35-0 before Notre Dame’s second string quaterback led them on a touchdown drive to end the firat half.   Given, the Trojan’s penchant for second half collapses this year, I was happy but anything but confident.  But the second half went much like the first, the game ending with a 49-14 score.   Yay!

But imagine my delight when after the game, Lars informed me that UCLA had lost their game at Stanford on Friday, making it what I’ve come to call a Perfect Weekend (USC wins and both UCLA and Notre Dame lose).  It means I won’t have to watch UCLA play in the Pac-12 Championship game … or read delusional posts by UCLA fans about playing in the National Championship Playoffs.  Instead, I can go to the Bruin Nation website and read post after post about how Coach Mora has to go, the very same coach who was the savior only a year ago.  It isn’t quite as much fun as beating both UCLA and Notre Dame but it’s not a bad second place.  And this is the last year of USC’s scholarship sanctions.  We’ll be back.  And UCLA will always be UCLA, a basketball school whose crowning football accomplishments are a National Championship 60 years ago and a few Rose Bowl wins. And yeah, an occasionally victory over USC. USC? Eleven National Championships, 37 conference titles and 21 Rose Bowls. It’s Monday … I’m smiling.

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Tags: football, grandchildren, humor, Monday smiles, sports, USC Trojans

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