Well, They Did Seem to Lack Their Usual Drive

Merv Johnson, a former Oklahoma assistant who is now the school’s director of football operations and the Sooners’ radio commentator, spoke at Friday’s Pasadena Quarterbacks Club luncheon.

Of the Sooners’ 55-19 loss to USC in last season’s BCS national championship game in the Orange Bowl, Johnson said, “We went into that game on cruise control. We had never had to come from behind before.

“It was sort of like if you are a golfer playing a friend who is very good and you hit it out of bounds on the first four holes. It’s hard to recover from that.”

Trivia time: Brett Favre has passed for 178 touchdowns at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, two shy of the NFL record for most touchdown passes thrown in one stadium. Who holds the record?

Checkered past: On FSN’s telecast of tonight’s USC-Arkansas game, look for a photo of Pete Carroll that was taken when he was a graduate assistant at Arkansas. FSN producer Brad Zager, who procured the photo, said, “His pants look like something I’d eat Italian food off of.”

What a kidder: When Carroll was a guest on radio station 1540’s “USC Insider” this week, host Pete Arbogast said, “Matt Leinart is an All-American and Heisman Trophy winner. What else can be said about him?”

Said Carroll: “He’s overrated. Once you get to know him, you find out he’s just an ordinary kid.”

What impediment? Petros Papadakis, who’ll be the commentator on tonight’s USC-Arkansas telecast, had FSN broadcast partner Barry Tompkins on his 1540 radio show Friday.

“Am I getting better on the radio?” Papadakis asked Tompkins. “Because of my lisp, I used to think I had to scream all the time to get through my show.”

Said Tompkins: “Let that lisp be your best friend. Look what it did for Barbara Walters.”

Cerebral: Arkansas defensive coordinator Reggie Herring told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette this about his job: “I’m not splitting atoms here, and I’m not operating on anybody’s brain. But what I do I consider very, very important to me.”

A year early: When ESPN takes over “Monday Night Football” next season, it will have a flexible schedule the latter part of the season. After the NFL took the New Orleans-New York Giant game away from Fox to show on ESPN and ABC this Monday night Fox Sports President Ed Goren quipped, “I didn’t realize we were implementing the flexible schedule this year.”

Looking back: On this day in 1994, Nevada Las Vegas receiver Randy Gatewood caught 23 passes for 363 yards and a touchdown in a 48-38 loss to Idaho.

Trivia answer: John Elway, at Denver’s Mile High Stadium.

And finally: Peter Barron, playing golf in Darlington, England, hit his first shot so badly it looped over several trees and plopped into the cup on the 18th hole, about 160 yards away.

Barron told the Guardian of London: “I am so bad at golf that I will never get a real hole in one, so I will settle for this happily.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.