And this year's Rose Bowl could be the best one ever played.  USC and Texas are playing for all the marbles, as both come in with 12-0 records and offenses that can hang up 50 points on pretty near anybody.  However, college football fans might want to get ready for a let down.  After last year's edition of the national title game, where USC completely annihilated Oklahoma to the tune of 55-19, we have USC looking for a threepeat, while Texas is this year's Big 12 representative in the national title game.

  Why am I saying this when everybody else is saying that this is going to be the past bowl game ever?  I am simply looking at history, and history tends to repeat itself.  USC's Pete Carroll is an awesome coach, and the talent at Southern Cal is just amazing.  Some NFL scouts think Pete Carroll could have 40 future NFL stars on his roster.  Besides that, USC has won every January bowl game they've played in over the past 3 years, and each one of those has been by a considerable margin.  Three years ago, USC beat Iowa in the Orange Bowl to the tune of 37-16.  Two years ago, the score was 28-14 over Michigan in the Rose Bowl, and that win gave USC the AP National Championship.  Last year, USC beat Oklahoma 55-19 in the Orange Bowl, and the game was over by halftime.  The main thing these games have in common is that each and every one of them were played after Pete Carroll had several weeks to get his team ready to play.  This trend continues.

  Look at what happened when USC played UCLA in the very last game of the season.  Pete Carroll had two weeks to prepare his troops, and proceeded to pound the Bruins 66-19.  On the other hand, USC had only a week to prepare for Notre Dame, while Notre Dame had two weeks to prepare for the Trojans.  The result was much closer, and USC had to pull out the win on the very last play of the game for a 34-31 escape. 

  So if Texas and USC played in the regular season, Texas is the better team, and the Longhorns would win, provided each team only had one week to prepare.  But Pete Carroll has a month to rally his troops for a national title showdown in the Rose Bowl, and the result isn't going to be the awesome game that will go down to the very last play that everybody thinks it's going to be.  In fact, I think USC will win this game by two scores.  Pete Carroll never loses when he has this much time to prepare, and in fact, the other team usually isn't close.  So when the final gun sounds, USC will walk off the field with a 45-28 victory over Texas.