Friday, November 21, 1997
Get ready for another win
for our Bruins against USC
COLUMN: Trojans should stop futile bolstering of spirit, accept
inevitable
Everyone with a drop of blue and gold in their veins knows that
being a USC Trojan is never a good thing, but this week must have
been especially brutal.
Knowing that the entire country is picking against you, that the
Associated Press thinks you’re going to lose by a point total
greater than the mean SAT score for your freshman class, and that
yet another senior class will finish its four-year internment – I
mean, education at USC – without a victory over UCLA, that’s really
gotta suck.
Yup, it’s a brutal life being a Trojan, which makes being a
Bruin that much better.
There’s a condition called Schaden-freud, where a person with
this affliction derives great pleasure from the misfortune of
others, and right now, man, am I afflicted.
To be sure, I wish no ill will on the Trojans.
I don’t relish the thought of them getting hurt or their school
burning down; that’s not what I’m talking about.
What I am talking about is watching our pigskin nemesis struggle
through one ugly season. I’m talking about watching our chief rival
slowly fading into an afterthought on the Southland’s football
horizon. I’m talking about the hitherto unforeseen collapse of a
former powerhouse.
Now, win or lose tomorrow, our hearty squad has had a tremendous
season.
But the campaign has been that much better watching the Trojans
suffer through brutal losses, a coaching controversy, a quarterback
vacuum, and a dearth of running backs.
There has been such a nice juxtaposition in the Sunday sports
section of the L.A. Times thrice this year, altering this warm
feeling into specific relief. At the top, a banner headline
declaring a UCLA victory; at the bottom of the page, a small
announcement informing the mourning of yet another of USC’s four
defeats.
They aren’t even preparing for tomorrow’s game properly.
First of all, one of their rally committees is called "Trojan
Knights." My goodness, that doesn’t sound like a spirit squad; that
moniker smacks of some kind of radical fringe group.
Anyway, to rally support for the showdown, these Knights hanged
and beat the bejesus out of three stuffed bears last Monday
night.
Now, that’s just strange.
UCLA students haven’t found it necessary to blow up condoms all
over Westwood, so why is destroying a cuddly toy a good thing?
Oh well, we’ll just have to tolerate such bizarre antics
because, hey, the Trojans haven’t seemed to care that much losing
six games in a row to UCLA, so if they want to do things like that,
that’s okay, as long as they keep losing.
All they’ll have to show for their destructive tendencies are
some mauled bears to throw away, being serenaded all the while by
some real Bruins ringing the victory bell for the seventh year in a
row.
Shapiro is a Daily Bruin staff writer and beat writer for men’s
basketball. E-mail responses to [email protected] Robert
Shapiro