Fall is in the Air

So I was waiting for my turkey burger at lunch today, when I spied on the counter at Fatburger a bunch of free "2004 Southern California Football Guide" brochures. And it began.

It's Fall. It may be only September first, not yet even Labor Day, and still a blindingly sunny 100 degrees in some parts of Southern California, but it is FALL. I picked up the football guide -- with a photo of Pete Carroll right there on the front, holding aloft his "national championship" trophy -- and casually flipped through it, scanning the schedules and commentaries and ads. And there it was. I felt it. That slight, barely perceptible, eensy-weensy rise in blood pressure that occurs just about this time of year, at my first notice of the cardinal and gold.

Now, you people know I don't deeply care about sports. I follow virtually no professional sports teams or events, and the Olympics barely held my attention long enough to get me to cheer for Michael Phelps and express my righteous indignation at the federation's "Please surrender the gold medal we gave you because we screwed up" letter to Paul Hamm. But when it comes to USC....

My apologies, first of all, for any of you out there who may be Trojans. If you even know about the existence of this humble weblog, that means I either already love you OR you are an associate of someone I already love. I respect that USC has a fine entrepreneur program and a fine film school. I realize that I work for someone who has a degree from USC. I know there are fine upstanding Christian apologists who teach there. I understand that there are probably just as many individual jackass Bruins as Trojans out there (well...almost as many). So please, please, PLEASE don't take it personally when I say that I hate you people.

Will the Trojans once again stomp the crap out of their gridiron opponents this season? Probably. Will they beat us again? Maybe. Will I use words on December 4th that I would not use in front of my pastor? Definitely. Will I be repentant in church on December 5th? Depends -- did we win?

Does any of this really matter? Not at all, in the grand scheme of things.

But I can't help it. I have four years of investment in the (solid gold sound of the) UCLA Bruin Marching Band. I have been (okay, voluntarily) brainwashed, and I would violently rail against the Trojans regardless of the event. Football. Basketball. Women's lacrosse. A pie-eating contest for charity. It just doesn't matter. Seriously, were there some Midwestern holiday bowl game starring the Trojans vs. the Al Qaeda All-Stars, I would have a serious moral dilemma on my hands. They just rile me up.

Why? For one thing, there's the 400-year-old man in his moth-eaten 'SC varsity sweater who starts shuffling from his side of the stadium an hour before kickoff just so that by about the third quarter, he can cross in front of the UCLA band (within beatin' range of the drummers, I might add, who are best described as criminally insane on a good day), taunting them with his wheezy cackling laugh and his obnoxious, arthritic "V-for-victory" sign, which he vainly attempts to time to the sloppy, ear-violating brilliance of the Trojan "band" as they blatt and shriek their way through the thousandth playing of their three-note fight song.

But I digress.

It's Fall. I love Fall. Bring it on, '$c.