General

Road to Game Day: L.A. Boggles the Mind

Sep 12, 2008, 7:55 PM UTC

Words by Keith Arnold, whoâ†µis touring the country with his brother Phil as they invade a differentâ†µcollege campus each Saturday during the football season. They’ll be reporting back in this space with their various adventures. You can also keep tabs on their vagabonding over at RoadtoGameDay.com. This weekend, they're in

L.A.

for the Ohio State-USC game.
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There really isn’t another place like Los Angeles. And I feel like we’re more qualified than ever to say that after we just drove virtually coast-to-coast, from Gainesville, Florida to Los Angeles, to get here. â†µâ†µWhether it’s the sheer enormity of the city, stretching for miles off the Pacific, or the suburban metropolis it spawned in Orange County, there is a 70 mile bubble that is packed to the brim with people. Whether it’s the traffic, the weather, or the women, everything in Southern California is just “more” than you’re used to experiencing. Having lived here for a few years, I’m used to it, but when you see people just getting here, like the dozens of Buckeye fans I’ve seen wandering around this week, you can just tell people struggle to grasp the enormity of this place.â†µ

â†µâ†µThere isn’t a team that embodies a city more than the USC Trojans. And there isn’t a coach who “gets it” more than Pete Carroll. Even if you grew up cheering for a team that hated USC, if you spend 20 minutes around Pete Carroll, you still may not like USC, but you’ll have a new respect for them. We walked into the Thursday practice before the game of the year, and saw guys kicking around a soccer ball and messing around with a volleyball. It might as well have been Track and Field day on the last day of school before summer break. But that’s USC. â†µ

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â†µThe practice was full of visitors, everyone from Brent Musburger and Desmond Howard, to high school recruits and random fans of the program. Apparently it’s like that every day. Everything is an open book at USC, and for the most part, everyone is welcome to watch. Even two days before the biggest game of the season. You can’t help but think about other programs that keep everything they do under lock and key, and wonder why they can’t check out how Carroll runs his program. They might learn something. And I’d pay serious money to watch Mark Mangino sprint down the field with the kickoff team like Carroll did yesterday three or four times. But I wouldn’t want to be the paramedic who had to give him mouth-to-mouth after. â†µ

â†µâ†µThe buzz for this game has reached a suffocating level. The wall-to-wall coverage from the local media, and especially ESPN, is overkill. When you’ve got Brent Musburger reporting news on SportsCenter that he clearly states is not based on something that anyone else told him, but only his gut feeling, it means that we desperately need this game to be played before Dr. Lou gets punched out by Mark May.â†µ

â†µâ†µSo Saturday night can’t come soon enough. The Arnold brothers are fairly split on the outcome of this game, with our provincial allegiances probably playing greatly into the thought process. That said, the local media think it’s going to simply be a “name the score” kind of game, and I always worry about games like that, even if it is the big bad juggernaut of USC, and the Sweatervest has been exposed a bit in the last two BCS Championship games, and Beanie’s big toe might make him doubtful for the game. (Don’t tell that last part to Musburger.) â†µ

â†µâ†µMore importantly, tomorrow’s tailgating scene should be unbelievable. We’ll be there bright and early, extra batteries and memory cards for the cameras ready, and we plan on sharing every little bit of the game day experience here and over at RoadtoGameDay.com. â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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