The Sun Is Always Shining at Coliseum

Holy Paul Hackett! It’s great to be a Trojan football fan these days.

You get to sit with 92,000 of your closest friends, in a venerable stadium, steeped in history and gushing red, and watch your team put a 55-13 homecoming thrashing on some team from way up north where the weather forecast usually includes the word miserable.

Sure, the wind-chill factor late on this clear, blue Saturday afternoon brought the temperature down into the low 70s, but you can hang in there when you also have the kind of history and memories that come with a 30th consecutive victory. Plus, once victory is assured, say at 41-6 in the third quarter, you can beat the traffic and still make that dinner reservation in Newport Beach.

As the vacant expression of the day goes, “It’s all good.”

There is nothing to dislike about this team, even though those pimply faced computer nerds who lock themselves in dark rooms late on Saturday nights and spit out data shockingly made USC No. 2 in the BCS standings last week. It was fun to boo when they flashed those standings on the Coliseum’s big screen.

It’s also fun to wear those tags and buttons that say: “Leave no doubt.” Some have taken that as an inducement for Coach Pete to run up the score on overmatched teams from way up north where the weather is usually miserable, but he’s not biting.

“Was 55-13 a statement to the BCS?” he was asked in several ways by nosy sportswriters afterward. But his answer was always the same: “No.”

Who cares about the BCS, when you have:

* Coach Pete, who should figure out a way to bottle all his enthusiasm and get it on the shelves at Vons.

“It was a wonderful day,” Coach Pete said. “A proud way for us to play at homecoming. We’ve been away so long, so it was a special way to come home. Everything just went right. Our offense was ridiculously effective in the first half.” Also, “Dwayne Jarrett’s catch along the sidelines was ‘sick.’ ” That’s Pete-speak for “great.”

Who cares about the BCS when you have:

* LenDale White, who ran for two touchdowns, 155 yards and isn’t even in the top two among Heisman trophy candidates on his own team. “I’m just honored to be on the same team with them [Heisman candidates Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush],” said White, whose running style conjures images of a Greyhound bus bouncing through the bumper-car ride at Disneyland.

Who cares about the BCS when you have:

* Bush, who rushed for 99 yards, caught passes for 40 more and left the field after the game and headed up the sacred Coliseum tunnel to chants of “Reggie, Reggie, Reggie.” He didn’t score a touchdown, but he got the Trojans close one time with a short run that got about two yards longer when a teammate got behind and pushed. Must be in the playbook now.

Who cares about the BCS when you have:

* Winston Justice, a 300-pound offensive tackle, who was a man among boys on Saturday. Reggie’s namesake, George W., made a serious mistake when he sent all those soldiers to Iraq. All he had to do was send Winston.

Who cares about the BCS when you have:

* Quarterback Matt, who passed for 364 yards and three touchdowns on the day, and completed passes to eight players in the first quarter. After the victory, Quarterback Matt left the field amid a slow-moving caravan of picture-snapping cellphones, held high above the TV cameras, there to capture for posterity -- and for Trojan fans who got shut out of a ticket -- each twitch and dimple.

Quarterback Matt is so good that Trojan fans have taken to booing the referees each time he throws an incompletion. The assumption is there must have been interference.

And who cares about the BCS when you have:

* Quarterback Matt to put it all in perspective afterward: “We don’t really care about the BCS ... until maybe the last game or two. Then we care.”

Oh, to be sure, there were heroes from the team from way up north: running back Jerome Harrison, for gaining 147 yards and keeping his team’s offense on the field long enough for Quarterback Matt to catch his breath; return man Lorenzo Bursey, for taking a kickoff three yards deep in his end zone with his team trailing, 48-6, early in the fourth period and electing to play it safe and not to run it out; Coach Bill Doba, for bringing his team out for the second half.

All in all, the day couldn’t have been better. That Texas team that the computer nerds had at No. 1 struggled for much of Saturday, so that should be the end of that. The Trojans came out of the game with no serious injuries, and, best of all, the freeways down to Newport Beach were wide open.

Fight on.