Above, the only reason it was worth wasting 90 minutes – 60 of them driving back and forth in easy traffic – at the Penn State pep rally. Also, imagine – the field at Beverly Hills High School is turf!

Meanwhile, All Things Trojan reports on TMZ’s “Beef Bowl” encounter with various USC players, wherein a few of them cannot identify Joe Biden or Blagovecic.

Trojan Coach Pete Carroll wasn’t too pleased and told his players that he felt he had let them down by not preparing them for this sort of thing, but nobody I talked to was bothered by the incident. “Maybe some of these guys learned a lesson that they need to be more educated and understand what’s going on outside of their football world,” said offensive lineman Jeff Byers.

The actual video is not even up to “Jaywalking” standards, but Sanchez does handle the nonsense easy.

Just remember, if the Lions get their ass kicked, they already won the BCS graduation bowl. 18 players on the current squad now have degrees, including starting QB Darryl Clark, who got his in 3 1/2 years. That means he’ll likely start work on a Master’s through his final year of NCAA eligibility.

For the record, I feel about the Rose the same way that I did about the Alamo. I wouldn’t bet much money on Penn State (and have a rule against taking the points where they’re concerned), but it should be a good game. Penn State will probably need a defensive score to win. The USC game that I think about the most is not Oregon State or Ohio State (the two common opponents where Penn State measures up quite nicely) but Oregon, the only truly strong offensive team the Trojans bottled. On the other hand, the Ducks weren’t necessarily so strong back then. And lord knows shutting out Wazzu and Washington is no great feat. Hey, if Stanford could score 23….