EMERALD BOWL PICKS AND ANALYSIS: BOSTON COLLEGE VS. USC

To say that the 2009 season was a disappointment for the University of Southern California football team would be an understatement.  For a school that won at least 11 games in each of the past seven years, the last place that college football betting enthusiasts would expect to find them is playing in a bowl game on the day after Christmas.  That is where they’ve landed, however, after three losses in their final five games and an 8-4 season that saw the Trojans drop out of the top 25 for the first time since 2001.  Their consolation prize is a trip to the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco, where they’ll play Boston College.  The Trojans are a -7 point favorite with the total set at 44.

Nothing has been easy for this Trojans team this season, and that trend is continuing in the days before the game.  Most recently, the status of USC’s star running back Joe McKnight has come into question after revelations that he’s been driving around campus in a SUV paid for by a supporter of the program in potential violation of NCAA rules.  He’s been cleared by the school to return to practice, but there’s yet been any resolution of his status that would allow him to play in the game.  While coach Pete Carroll remains optimistic, his official status for the game is ‘doubtful’.  USC has a solid backup in Alan Bradford, who ran for nearly 600 yards on 6.1 yards per carry.

Boston College has been the picture of bowl mediocrity over the past decade.  The Emerald Bowl will be the 11th consecutive year in which they’ve played in a bowl game, but like this game all ten of their previous bowls have been the lower profile ‘early’ bowls scheduled before New Year’s Day.    The Eagles enjoyed a run of eight straight bowl victories until losing to Vanderbilt in the Music City Bowl last year.
 
The Eagles were a very inconsistent team in Frank Spaziani’s first season as head coach.  On offense, one bright spot was running back Montel Harris who rushed for 1355 yards and 13 touchdowns.  The reliance on the running game was necessitated by poor quarterback play.  The Eagles had no quarterbacks with college football experience on their roster when the season began, and eventually settled on freshman Dave Shinskie as the starter.  Shinskie was clearly the best of a bunch of bad options, but he struggled throughout the year and finished as the lowest rating starting quarterback in the ACC.

Despite the anti-Pac 10 bias in many of our bowl positions this season we have to pay attention to Pete Carroll’s comment that he’s going to treat this game ‘like the national championship game’.  Few coaches are as good at preparing their team to play a specific opponent as Carroll.  Realistically, the Trojans’ biggest problem this year has been inexperience—particularly on the defensive side of the ball after losing 8 starters to the NFL draft.  The Eagles simply don’t have the offensive talent to match up with the superior athleticism of USC, and BC’s tendency to turn the ball over makes this even more problematic.  With or without McKnight, USC’s offense should be able to move the ball against the Eagles’ physical defense.

At the end of the day, you have to respect USC’s performance in bowl games during their run of success in the past decade.  They’re currently on a 6-1 SU/ATS run in bowl games, and Carroll is putting a big emphasis on this game as a building block for next season.  He’s got a young but very talented team, and if he gets them in the right frame of mind to play this could be a blowout.  No real opinion on the total, but USC -7 is our position on the side in this game.

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