Cruising the CondomChronicles and other sites, it never fails to amaze me to what lengths these USC fans go to make excuses for their team. They are beyond apologists; into the uncharted territory of the irrational mind. We cannot begin to fathom it—not even with deep diving bathyscaphes, the reasonable cannot sound the strange twists of logic that lead to such views. Who are the ones with the Myrmidons I wonder?

 As far as I can tell, several themes have emerged from the standard SC fan:

1. "It’s not the player or the universities fault, it is the 'scumbag' hanger-on who it making all this up because he is jilted by the now professional player." As if their current players come with squeaky clean credentials. Scumbags they be, but they are scumbags amongst scumbags. However, these particular scumbags were smart and grabbed documents to back-up their stories.
2. "It’s not the universities fault because the athletic director, coaches, or compliance officers couldn't monitor everything these kids do." Here is where the term “INSTITUTIONAL CONTROL” comes into play. The two biggest scandals in college sports of late happened right over by Expo Park.
3. "Everyone violates the rules, we just happen to get caught."  No, you CONSISTENTLY violate the rules in MORE AND MORE PROFOUND ways.
4. "UCLA is just as crooked—remember the body-parts scandal or the handicapped parking scandal?" This is the best argument? Not only is it a variation on pot/kettle/black, it’s also a “straw man” informal fallacy. For every one of our scandals there is a far more nefarious story at USC. Senora Ross, OJ, Bush, OJ2, racist Facebook, the list goes on and on and on with NOTHING being done about it. 

Your scandals have nothing to do with ours. They do not take away from yours and the fact of the matter is, UCLA has done more to remedy the aforementioned scandals. We had a loose coach. He’s gone now. We had some shady people at the medical center. Guess what? They got fired. We had some players violate the law. Guess what? They were prosecuted. The difference here is that when something goes wrong, heads roll. When they go wrong over there, NOTHING HAPPENS! We can admit our scandals. You should try it sometime.

 If you think for one minute that your little lame jabs back at us are hurting, you are sorely mistaken. I think that if you care about the reputation of your university, you will stop blaming others and take care of your own house because in case you haven’t looked around…

 TROY IS BURNING.