What’s Your Deal? For Stanford, a Wry, USC-Poking Ticket Promotion

↵↵Last fall, Stanford whipped USC, 55-21, a result shocking enough before you remember that Stanford maybe ran up the score a bit, and maybe made Pete Carroll a little mad. His “What’s your deal?” exchange with Jim Harbaugh made the rounds after that game, and amused those in the college football flock who found Carroll having to ask other coaches about running up the score rather beautifully ironic.↵

↵↵This spring, Stanford’s turning the exchange into a promotion.↵

↵↵It’s genius, really: Stanford’s selling tickets to a group of games that includes the Cardinal’s home date against USC by marketing that phrase. That’s all. It’s a pun on deal and a nyah-nyah-we-won-last-year gesture, an atypical bit of gloating from a program that hasn’t been able to do a ton in recent years. But with Harbaugh at the helm, Stanford has been good enough to do a little bragging, and has an outside chance at a Pac-10 title this year, should Andrew Luck become the superb quarterback many suspect he can be.↵

↵↵The only reason to be at all miffed by this is because deference to Carroll apparently would have derailed the plan.↵

↵↵⇥I’m told that Harbaugh thought about the “What’s your deal?” idea for several days and, along with a few department staffers, decided that it wasn’t in poor taste because Carroll has moved on to the Seahawks.⇥↵⇥↵⇥Were Carroll still at USC, there’s no way Stanford would be doing this.⇥↵⇥

↵↵Stanford being scared about irritating an opposing coach is a tip-off that the Cardinal are new at this. For what it’s worth, our resident Stanford fan, The Baseline’s Eric Freeman, thinks it would have been funnier if Carroll were still in Los Angeles, and I agree.↵↵But getting the wry joke in at USC’s expense is still fun. And lest we forget, USC’s now coached by Lane Kiffin; I’m sure if Stanford wins again, there will be a biting joke to be made in the aftermath of this year’s matchup.↵

↵↵(HT: The Wiz of Odds.)↵

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