A Problem That Does Not Matter

There are some rumblings in the blogotubes about what's going to happen after this weekend at quarterback. The basic rundown being this: it looks pretty likely that Barkley won't play this weekend, due to shoulder soreness and he has a test to get his learner's permit, meaning Corp will get the start. So let's play out a hypothetical situation that is stupid. Corp plays well against Washington, solid win. Barkley's shoulder, next week, is still sore. Corp gets the start against Wazzu, because he's healthy and he just started. An easy win. Then what? The game after that is at Cal, presumably our hardest game left. Who do you start? Corp, who has played the previous games? Or Barkley, who was created in a lab by football scientists, and was given the charm of John Elway, the piety of Steve Young, and the playing-football-in-jeans-ability of Brett Favre. This is actually a tricky situation, seeing that Matt Barkley is the starter because Aaron Corp isn't the starter, but hey now he can be.

Answer: It does not matter. Say that you really love McFlurries (spoiler alert: incoming analogy), and you ate McFlurries for two weeks, and you were like "this is the best, this is the Heisman of milkshake-style desserts." But then you couldn't have McFlurries, all you could have is a Dairy Queen Blizzard. But a Dairy Queen Blizzard is also good, so then you ate that for two weeks. You are now in Berkeley, and you are offered either a McFlurry or a Dairy Queen Blizzard. What do you choose? Who cares. They are essentially the same thing. You just don't want a cup of milk that someone poured some M&Ms into (that is Garrett Green).

Long story short, I think it's possible that this is a debate the media might create in the next few weeks, if things play out this way. I have just solved it, so let's all just direct Lou Holtz and the ilk to this post and just stop anything before it starts.

Gut Reaction, Five Hours Later

Remember last summer, when there was all the talk of Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals, and you thought to yourself "no way, that's too many"--not because there was some apparent problem with Phelps, just because nobody wins eight gold medals with a true freshman quarterback (spoiler alert: it's an analogy). And then he goes and wins some, and you're like "oh, this dude is pretty good, but nobody wins eight gold medals." And then came the 100-meter butterfly, where he was losing the whole time, and you lean over to your friend and say "told you--dude just can't do it." Then out of nowhere, Phelps surges, slaps the wall, wins by 1/100 of a second, and you're not really sure what you saw.

I'm not saying that USC is now about to go win 8 Pac-10 gold touchdown medals (not a thing), just that coming into this game, there was no reason to expect Barkley to be able to do anything considering it was his first collegiate road game in a notoriously hostile stadium against a completely respectable team. And during most of the game, you leaned over to your friend and said "well, I guess we shouldn't have expected too much." Then out of nowhere Barkley put something together, and you were just glad to see it.

So maybe in January we can look back on this and think, well that was USC's 100-meter butterfly, when we knew this was legit. Or maybe we'll look back on the game before USC lost to Washington. Ha, jokes! But seriously, Nick Holt is for realsies.

Okay, I'm sure we'll have more to say about this later, but until then, it was a fun night. And by fun I mean miserable for like 55 minutes of play and then whew.