USC offensive coordinator Sarkisian: We need to improve in face of adversity
USC offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian said the Trojans' biggest weakness with two games left in the regular season is dealing with adversity.
"Where we need to improve is when we're hit with something going wrong,"
Sarkisian said. "If there is a penalty. If a guy slipped on a route. If someone missed a block. If someone throws a bad pass. We need to move on to the next play."
When he reviewed the first 10 games, Sarkisian said the offense tends to be at one extreme or the other.
"When we get into a rhythm, we're as good as we can be,"
he said. "All teams all go through problems at different times. When we've gotten penalties, we've let it stall drives. That's something we're addressing now."
Another famous moment of the season was quarterback Mark Sanchez overthrowing wide receiver Patrick Turner for an early touchdown against Arizona and letting it affect him the rest of the game.
"We've been addressing that for a couple of weeks with Mark since the Arizona game,"
Sarkisian said. "He can't let one play decide things. I think he's responding well to it."
Strength of schedule
USC's last two games will be against teams that will not help their computer rankings much. Notre Dame, before its embarrassing loss to lowly Syracuse, was ranked 46 th by the Colley Matrix and 47 th by the Sagarin computer rankings. Both are used by the BCS.
UCLA is ranked 82 nd in the Colley Matrix and 93 rd in the Sagarin poll.
USC-Notre Dame anniversary
This year is the 60 th anniversary of the first telecast of a USC-Notre Dame game. On Dec. 4, 1948, Channel 13, then known as KLAC-TV, televised the homecoming meeting between the Trojans and the undefeated, No. 2-ranked Irish.
Notre Dame's Emil Sitko scoring on a 2-yard touchdown run with 35 seconds left and Steve Oracko kicked the extra point as the Irish escaped the Coliseum with a 14-14 tie. Notre Dame entered with a 27-game undefeated streak.
Despite the late, disappointing tying score, excited USC students carried Trojans coach Jeff Cravath off the field to celebrate the end of a 21-game Irish winning streak.
Channel 13 had only gone on the air a few months earlier, on Friday, Sept. 17, 1948. It was only the third television station in Los Angeles. Its first day of broadcasting included that evening's USC-Utah game. "Lucky Channel 13,"
as it called itself, televised all USC and UCLA home games live that year.
In 1950, KTTV Channel 11 broadcast USC's home schedule, including USC's 9-7 victory over Notre Dame, USC's 300 th victory. In 1951, live national broadcasts became possible, and that year's rainy 19-12 Notre Dame victory over USC at the Coliseum went out over NBC. It was seen locally on KRCA Channel 4.
NCAA oversight of college football television then went into effect, and, in an attempt to "protect"
the live attendance, only a limited amount of televised games were permitted. After these three early telecasts from the Coliseum, the USC-Notre Dame series disappeared from live television until 1964.
