Penn State gets no respect from the BCS

Last week, the BCS stunk.

This week, something else around here smells strange.

Penn State lost a football game Saturday and voters lost their minds Sunday. The Nittany Lions, for some reason, fell behind USC in all the relevant polls and, therefore, in the BCS standings, as well.

The Associated Press survey is full of sportswriters and broadcasters, so maybe insanity is the reason.

The USA Today poll includes football coaches, who are the most ethical of sports leaders, except for the lying they do. Or perhaps it’s all that binge drinking.

But, seriously, why would Penn State slip behind USC when there is evidence that suggests – rather strongly, no less – the Nittany Lions are the better team?

Like everything else this fall, this discussion starts in the same place for the Trojans: the Oregon State game, which was such an epic, season-scrapping event that it now is delivered in all-capital letters.

“That thing,” defensive end Kyle Moore said, “is going to haunt us forever.”

Maybe you recall that USC lost in Corvallis 27-21 in September. The result has been reported in a few publications since and on the Internet at least twice.

Well, about three weeks before that game, Penn State also had the opportunity to play Oregon State.

The Nittany Lions edged the Beavers – by 31 points!

That’s three-one, folks, as in nowhere near close, as in the score was 45-7 entering the fourth quarter. The game was so in-hand that Joe Paterno, according to some reports, actually coached at one point in the final minutes.

Now that’s one-sided.

So if Penn State and USC played each other – and this could happen in the next Rose Bowl – the Trojans, just logically speaking, would lose by 37, correct?

This thinking, of course, is moronic. But so is placing the Nittany Lions behind a USC team that keeps winning, certainly, but hardly is doing so in a manner that shouts superiority.

(Any games involving Washington or Washington State this season must be taken with a grain of insult, so dismal are the two programs. When the Huskies and Cougars share the same field Nov. 22, the coin that is flipped should be the first to land on a third side.)

But seriously again, USC ahead of Penn State, when one of their common opponents produced results so dramatically different, so utterly defining? This simply is wrong.

The teams share another opponent this season, another OSU, both having beaten Ohio State.

The Trojans did so convincingly at home, 35-3, while the Nittany Lions escaped the Buckeyes on the road, 13-6.

These results, too, were dramatically different, but the defining part doesn’t extend here. Debating the comparative quality of two victories is one thing; it’s something else completely to compare a victory and a defeat.

So why is USC ranked ahead of Penn State despite the logic? Two reasons: 1) Perception, which the Trojans don’t control; and 2) Perspective, which is 100 percent the Trojans’ doing.

The Big Ten has an image problem, its membership losing this season to Toledo, Bowling Green and Western Michigan. Add Ohio State’s recent BCS title game memories and this is a league with a limp.

The conference has burned all its benefit-of-the-doubt and now is viewed nationally through old-school eyes, the picture that of a slow, plodding version of the same game being played by the Big 12 at 10,000 watts.

The Pac-10 is even worse, but USC has distanced itself from all the underwhelming by winning the league title each of the past six years. Under coach Pete Carroll, the Trojans are 55-10 in conference games.

This is a program that has built up enough benefit-of-the-doubt support to fill the Rose Bowl, something UCLA can’t even do with fans. Saturday, USC will play its 88th consecutive game while ranked in the AP top 25.

Trojans football, as a brand, never has been an easier sell. These guys are Starbucks in stretchy pants. They are like any McDonald’s in any airport, popular enough for lines to form no matter what other food options are available.

Here’s hoping Trojans fans appreciate how fortunate they are. Thanks to Carroll, his staff and his players the last seven seasons, USC can lose and still live to tell the story.

Unlike Penn State, which loses once and immediately is sent to the corner and told to shut up. Keep in mind that the Nittany Lions have a little bit of tradition, too, and are coached by an almost mythical figure.

But Penn State football is so yesterday compared with today’s Trojans. College football is a young man’s game, and no team in the country can match the energy currently emanating from USC.

No matter how glaring the evidence, even when that evidence is as easy to read as the lighted numbers on two giant scoreboards.