I go away for a week, and you people just lose it!
I'll get to the Fox TV executives, and their inappropriate and idiotic comments regarding Ralph Lawler, as well as the guy who won't let his 8-year-old son hear Mike Smith's lame attempt at humor but has no problem sending the kid to school now that everyone knows his father is a Clippers season-ticket holder.
But first of all I have to know this: Are there that many people who have fallen off the perspective cliff, or just the 20 or so who chose to send a Saturday letter to The Times' sports section grousing about the job Pete Carroll is doing?
What did they want to do, feel what it was like to write like Plaschke for a day?
It's kind of accepted around here Plaschke is going to flip out every so often, and especially about USC, writing excitedly about UCLA's chances of winning Saturday, still trying to make that 2001 "Westwood Ho" point, "this is a Bruin football town, and has been a Bruin football town, and will continue to be a Bruin football town."
But you people, what is wrong with you? You've seen the incredible job Carroll has done in an age of college football parity, and you write ridiculous things like this: "Before trying to build 'A Better L.A.,' perhaps Pete Carroll should first figure out how to create a better USC football team."
Sometimes, I wonder whether sports is society's way of identifying morons, just a figure of speech, of course, for sports fans who lose a grip on reality because someone loses a game.
Some of it is backlash -- no one really liking USC fans. They are obnoxious, over the top and down on life when their team doesn't fight on, instead of being thankful they are not UCLA fans.
But whether you are a USC fan or had no choice but to go to UCLA, it's shocking to read something so shortsighted as this: "It seems Pete Carroll has gone from being an overpaid genius just to being overpaid."
Carroll is one of the best things to happen here in nearly a decade, responsible for so many enjoyable Saturdays, and although the consummate competitor, he always has an eye on fun.
Now no one enjoys teasing, poking and prodding Carroll more than Page 2, but I would argue he's the master of perspective in a world gone BCS crazy, Carroll usually saying the right thing when it comes to what really matters in sports.
I guess that makes him different from most letter writers.
