Week One : 4 Star Pick

Cue the drum roll, please.  It's time for the big bet of week one.

OK, skip the drum roll. 

Some may accuse of us of hypocrisy.  That's not wholly inaccurate, as we rail on regularly in this space about the creepy goings on of various coaches and programs across the college football landscape, while our stated purpose here is to turn a profit from their performances.  If we pull back to a macro viewpoint, an indictment of the entire college sports world is unavoidable: kids going to school for free in return for playing games that are sold to the public.  If I ran the IRS, I'd like to figure out how to tax all this tacit compensation (free tuition and stipends and equipment and who really knows what else) that flows to all these athletes, tax free.

But our mission is not to debate that.  It is to exploit it, and so we shall.

Google your own photo of the USC cheerleaders.
This week it's all about the money. 

Our four star spotlight in the very first week of the season falls on the lovely and talented...Lane Kiffin, and his USC Trojans.  They are traveling this first week to the islands of Hawaii, where they are going to pound the hula-hula crap out of the University of Hawaii Rainbows.

Kiffin is despised in Tennessee, where he played the role of the king of the carpetbaggers.  His legend grew, as did the revulsion he elicited from Tenneseeans (how often do you see that word, Tennesseeans?) when Kiffin hired a coach from the NFL's Titans right before training camp, leaving a gaping hole where the backfield coach formerly toiled.  It mattered not to Lane Kiffin that he was further villified, as he is king of football in southern California, and the Pacific shores have very little resemblance to the Tennessee valleys, and Nashville cats don't hold up against the hardbodies of Malibu beach. 

It is this single minded narcissicism that makes this a beautiful four star play.  The spread on this game, USC @ Hawaii, opened at 19, it stands at 21, and when the actual results are final, should be over 30 points.  USC, the pantheon of PAC 10 football, along with its coach, has a lot to prove.  The school has been disgraced, its former coach fled up the coast, one of its heroes has been expunged from its history...they even returned Reggie's Heismann, for heaven's sake, the Heismann!  The administration, the heavy handed alumni, everybody connected with this team, LA's biggest autumn show, needs to get their public squarely back behind them, or realistically just give their supporters something positive to feed on, as none of them really abandoned the program.  It's all about winning.

What better setting than beautiful Hawaii?  The Rainbows haven't recaptured the glory of the June Jones years since he galloped off to save SMU.  Hawaii is overmatched, and Lane Kiffin needs to launch his legacy in grand style.  The spread is big, but not big enough.

The Trojan horns will blare, the crimson and gold will run wild, new SoCal heroes will emerge, and Kiffin will be just fine.  USC 42, Hawaii 10. 

It's all about winning.