USA Today: USC's win-win-win mind-set

By David Leon Moore, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — Pete Carroll says he learned one of his most important lessons about coaching college football in his first season, in his first big rivalry game.
Hard to imagine now, but the Southern California Trojans were reeling back in 2001 — 2-4 and headed to South Bend, Ind., to face Notre Dame and try for some redemption.
Carroll built up the game all week to his players. This game is special, he said. This is the time for your best effort. Turned out to be the time for the Trojans to fall flat on their faces, losing 27-16. "Classic mistake," Carroll says of his approach to that game. "I knew I screwed it up. I knew I blew it. I could tell during the week, but I went with it. I just had to learn. "It's more fun probably to talk up these kinds of old historic 'this and that's.' But it doesn't serve the preparation of the athletes and the coaches. You don't need that."
That lesson helped Carroll build the winningest era in USC football history, one that has somewhat surprisingly continued this season despite the loss of Heisman Trophy winners Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. USC is 8-1 and No. 3 in the Bowl Championship Series standings going into an intriguing Pacific-10 showdown Saturday night with California in Los Angeles. Win that, win the following week against Notre Dame (also in L.A.) and win the regular-season finale against crosstown rival UCLA, and the Trojans could get a BCS title-game berth, a chance to win their third national title in four years. Big games. Special games. Time to pump up the troops for a special effort? "We don't need extra incentives," he says. "If you understand that every game is a championship game and you're going to give everything you possibly can in the preparation and participation of that game, then when would you ever decide when to (go all out) and when not to?
"That's the whole point. It's the same philosophy that goes through everything that we do in football. When are you going to decide that a play is more important than another play? When do I need to go full speed? When do I need to try my best? So you get out of that mentality. You don't allow for that kind of thinking in any phase.
"We're real hard about any indications of that being displayed by our guys. That's why we practice so fast and so hard every single day, every day of the year for six years." And, maybe, why the Trojans haven't lost to Notre Dame or to UCLA since Carroll's first trip to South Bend. Or to anyone else, almost. Since Carroll's 2-5 start at USC, the Trojans have won 60 of 66 games. They have been outplayed but never been beaten as badly as they were in that 2001 Notre Dame game. The six losses since then were by four, seven, three, three, three and two points. The loss this season was three weeks ago, 33-31 at Oregon State, ending a record streak of 27 consecutive Pac-10 victories for USC. After the defeat, another run at a national title seemed a long shot. But the Trojans continued to go about their business, routing hapless Stanford 42-0 and ripping apart a good Oregon team 35-10.
"We didn't look at (the loss to Oregon State) like our hopes were lost," USC linebacker Rey Maualuga says. "We looked at it as a wake-up call. We realized things weren't going to get handed to us." The Trojans delivered focused efforts against Stanford, an opponent that would have been easy to look past, and Oregon, a dangerous, well-coached team. Now another talented, well-coached team comes to L.A. to challenge the Trojans. Cal (8-2) is coming off an upset loss to Arizona but could still get to the Rose Bowl — for the first time since the 1958 season — with a victory Saturday. Huge stakes. Pressurized atmosphere. Championship implications.
Or, simply, as the Trojans look at it, game time.