Eleven Lessons Learned: Trojans on top of a bad lot

It's official, USC is the best of the least in the West. Now you see why there will be no reason for the ESPN GameDay crew to go past the Great Plains again this season, because other than the Trojans, football in the West is awful so far. Read all about it in the 11 lessons from college football this weekend.

Lesson 1

Well, OSU's Roy Small was right, USC is all about football.

Pete Carroll's Trojans are flying high once again after an impressive home win. (US Presswire)

Forget Virginia, there's obviously nothing wrong with the Trojans. 35-3 ... yikes. But I will add a "but" to this. The Bucks did soooooo many things that hurt their own cause. It's obvious that you can't score a touchdown and have a holding penalty on the same play, you can't lay out a welcome mat and give the Men of Troy a defensive touchdown and you can't give the Trojans a short field.

Also, another aside, you can't have Todd Boeckman trying to run plays that are designed for Terrelle Pryor to run, and as you'll hear 50 times in various reporter's stories, having Beanie Wells wouldn't have made that much difference. That's just my two cents.

But it appears that Pete Carroll knew things might turn out the way they did.

"We've been preparing the last two weeks so well, we knew we would play well. We just weren't sure how good they (the Buckeyes) were going to play. And we found out they didn't play too well," Carroll said. "But we played great in all areas of the game."

The other big key? The one area of concern coming into the season, the offensive line. But even with four new starters, the line might just be one of the Trojans strengths.

"We had a pro scout come in last week and he said he's never seen that athletic of an offensive line." Carroll said. "And the way they played tonight, we think we've got something really special in the trenches."

Lone returnee Jeff Byers said it had to do with a new downsizing philosophy.

"You have to look at what we've got. Only one of our guys, Thomas Herring, is over 300 pounds," Byers said. "We aren't like most lines that are just so big, we have a lot of lighter, more athletic guys and it makes a big difference in the things we want to do on the field."

Lesson 2

All those college football fans worried about the way things will work out in January, don't worry, OSU just played itself out of a third consecutive national title game.

Yep, every Sunday morning quarterback with a computer or a microphone will say that about the Bucks. Truth be told, if they had lost 17-14 instead of 35-3, they would've won enough legitimacy points to stay in the poll voters minds for the rest of the season. Now? Barring some incredible chaos, maybe even more than last season, I don't see it happening because the pollsters won't let them get that high again. I know, call it a bias. But that's the nature of college football.