They Warm Up for USC Game by Roasting UCLA

What a great day. It was so much fun tailgating before the USC game, joining Donn and Meg Carper and all my fellow Trojan fans to laugh and laugh at the UCLA Frauds.

We stood around a huge bucket of Mary Richardson’s chili, which certainly had more kick to it than the Bruins’ offense, and talked about what it must be like to be a UCLA fan. That’s when everyone started drinking.

Miss Radio Personality, defiantly wearing her Notre Dame jacket but thrilled to know the Irish now are scheduled to play the Frauds next year, was sporting a “Fair Weather Trojan” sticker. Obviously, a chip off the old block.

It would be hours before the Virginia Tech score would start to trickle in -- speaking of frauds -- and I got to thinking while sitting there in the Coliseum why anyone in this great city would want a semi-pro team like the Saints to move here when we’ve already got a better team and our Sundays free.

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AT THE start of the second quarter, the announcement came that the Frauds had fallen, 52-14, complete with a big-screen TV view of Arizona fans rushing the field and Mike Stoops shaking Karl Dullard’s hand. It brought a rousing cheer, making it a very nice dress rehearsal for the Dec. 3 engagement with the Frauds here.

Now just how bad is UCLA? The week before, Stanford played UCLA off its cleats for more than three quarters before the Frauds rallied and won in overtime.

Stanford versus USC on Saturday night looked like the scout team matched against the National Champions, 24-0 at the end of the first quarter and 44-7 at the half, and then the Cardinal had to suffer the indignity of waiting before going up the Coliseum tunnel to avoid being trampled once again by the Trojans.

The Frauds, of course, might not win another game this season. As we know now, they were lucky to win as many as they did, coming from behind against the woeful likes of Washington, Stanford and Washington State, a combined 3-14 in Pacific 10 Conference play.

A few weeks ago after a win, Dullard took a surprisingly defiant stand in his postgame news conference, apparently miffed that some in media were not buying the turnaround, including quarterback Drew Olson’s seemingly overnight transformation into Carson Palmer.

That got me wondering how Dullard and UCLA might handle success. Well, when you lose to a team that’s 2-6 before the game starts and you were ranked in the top 10, I think the answer is obvious.

And that’s what makes USC’s 31-game winning streak so remarkable, and Pete Carroll’s work as guardian of it so extraordinary. As the USC stickers say, “Leave No Doubt,” and only four times during this streak, during this time of college parity and this year’s suspect pass defense have the Trojans won by fewer than seven points.

That speaks to the Trojans’ dominance, and the athletic arrogance that comes with it, which isn’t easy to keep under wraps. And something, at times, that puts me at odds with Carroll.

Take the previous week, the Trojans running off the field at halftime against Washington State and flexing their shoulder pads in the Coliseum tunnel to the point where one of their own had to save the Cougars’ coach from getting hurt.

And then there was the party incident, and the accusation that one of the Trojan linebackers had punched someone.

I would argue Carroll didn’t handle either situation well. Instead of all the Pac-10 meetings and policy discussions, I expected Carroll to tell his team to just knock it off. At the risk of stifling that athletic arrogance, I might’ve even stopped them from running up the tunnel, if they refused to listen to their coach.

I would’ve also expected not to see Rey Maualuga, the linebacker accused of throwing a punch, in uniform, and certainly not playing in the third quarter as he did against Stanford. As Carroll says so often, these things are taken care of internally, but looking from the outside, it suggests priorities are out of whack.

But then all that comes with the stewardship of such a high-profile program: distractions, media second-guessing and the ever-pounding pressure of not slipping up on any given Saturday. And a 31-game winning streak suggests Carroll is handling it all just fine.

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NOW AS I understand it so far, one guy elected to move to Philadelphia rather than consider life in L.A. as the Dodgers’ GM, while another must have thought the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have a brighter baseball future.

There have been conflicting reports whether the guy from Texas even wants to talk to Frank McCourt, and I can understand that. As for the guy in Boston who couldn’t put his heart and soul into the job any longer at age 31, does it make a lot of sense to hire Orel Hershiser as a GM-in-training to a kid?

That leaves Kim Ng, who proved Eric Gagne didn’t deserve a big payday and who is already on the Dodger payroll. She studied under Dan Evans and Paul DePodesta, and you’ve seen how well that went, but this would be different, of course, because she would be taking orders from the Screaming Meanie.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes from Okirk:

“Hey, you self-righteous [so-and-so]. Why don’t you play for the Lakers? You want to rip Devean George? Are you better? He is better at his job than you are at your job, I promise.”

Now you understand why they don’t let me write on Page 1.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.