Football

With USC having an open date on Saturday, Trojans tailback Allen Bradford went home for the weekend. And for the first time in his collegiate career, he did so without questions about his lack of playing time from family and friends waiting. Bradford, a fourth-year junior, enters this week's game at Notre Dame having carried the ball a career-high 12 times against California. Senior Stafon Johnson is out for the season because of a throat injury, so Bradford and fellow junior Joe McKnight will once again handle the rushing load for the Trojans.

USC quarterback Matt Barkley is not completely healed. Neither is safety Taylor Mays . But a day after announcing that Barkley would start Saturday night against Washington State despite a sore shoulder, Coach Pete Carroll on Thursday made a similar call regarding Mays, who is recovering from a knee sprain. "He's ready to go," Carroll said. Mays, though, said it was "50-50," and that it might be a game-time decision. "I think I'm going to play unless something goes wrong," he said.

Back when the "Desert Swarm" defense was terrorizing college football, burying quarterbacks under a torrent of blitzes, Matt Barkley was still in kindergarten learning his ABCs. On Saturday afternoon, Barkley could get a history lesson. That's because the USC quarterback will face a San Jose State team coached by Dick Tomey, the man behind Arizona's famed defense of the 1990s. It appears that, after all these years, not much has changed with Tomey. "If you've ever watched us play," he says of his current team, "you know that we get off the bus pressuring the quarterback."

Jake Harfman finally started doing double duty and it paid off for USC on Saturday night in its 27-6 victory over Washington State at the Coliseum. Harfman, a transfer from Mt. San Antonio College, has handled kickoffs all season, but Coach Pete Carroll installed him at punter in place of Billy O'Malley , who was averaging 37.3 yards a punt. Harfman punted three times and averaged 46.3 yards a kick. But his biggest play came in the first quarter after the Trojans took a 13-0 lead on Matt Barkley 's 29-yard touchdown pass to Brice Butler . Instead of kicking it deep, Harfman rolled an onside kick and recovered the ball before it hit a Washington State player.

In routing Penn State in the Rose Bowl, USC mixed running plays with short passes to tight ends and running backs, mid-range throws to wideouts and a touchdown bomb to their fastest receiver. It was a dynamic and diversified assault -- and an anomaly since the Trojans' opener against Virginia four months ago. Which is one reason why Oklahoma, Florida and Texas all passed USC in the polls. Oklahoma, ranked No. 1 nationally in scoring, meets Florida and its No.

The 2008 season started Labor Day weekend with UCLA's incredible overtime win against Tennessee in Rick Neuheisel's debut, prompting some in the Bruins' marketing department to believe USC's monopoly in Los Angeles might be over. UCLA finished 4-8, the Tennessee coach who lost to UCLA was forced out, USC's monopoly of L.A. continued and college football was as mind-bogglingly controversial and poll-powered as ever . . . just the way we like it.

Taking into consideration which players are staying in school and which are headed to the NFL, Times' college football columnist Chris Dufresne offers a sneak-peek at his preseason top five: 1. Florida Final 2008 record: 13-1. Final AP ranking: No. 1. Key loss: Receiver/running back Percy Harvin. Key keepers: Quarterback Tim Tebow, linebacker Brandon Spikes. Comment: Tebow and Spikes? Yikes. The return of the team's top offensive and defensive players makes Florida the clear-cut preseason No.

It didn't take long for the post-Mark Sanchez era to begin at USC. On Thursday, a few hours after the former Trojans quarterback announced that he was moving on to the NFL, former backups Mitch Mustain, Aaron Corp and Garrett Green moved in and supervised an informal passing-game workout that included newcomer Matt Barkley. "The playing field," said Mustain, standing ramrod straight inside the gate of the Trojans' practice facility, "is even now."

USC's Heritage Hall was shaking again Friday as demolition crews continued to tear down a nearby building to make way for a new one. Amid the din, Pete Carroll returned to his office from a recruiting trip and met with his reconstructed coaching staff for the first time. Among the newcomers was Jeremy Bates, who spent his first day on the job after being hired this week as quarterbacks coach and the Trojans' play-caller.

This month the real world finally lived up to Hollywood fiction by giving us two transcendent moments that many reasonable people expected might never happen. The first was the inauguration of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States, following through on the White House dress rehearsals by James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock and Dennis Haysbert. The second moment was even more staggering and unexpected: The Arizona Cardinals actually won a big game.