We will use as a presupposition for this column that I have spent the majority of my time since the end of basketball season perusing Google Earth (and also presuppose, by my use of words like presuppose, that I have recently read “Pride and Prejudice,” found it oddly enjoyable, and now endeavor to write like a Victorian-era woman). Booya!
In the course of my viewing travels, after scrolling minutely from Yreka to Pasadena without a pee break, I arrived at my destination of the Rose Bowl.
There, I came upon a travesty.
Upon our lovely end zones, there are scrawled two names: Texas and USC.
Yes, the photo Google chose, in all its sublime wisdom, is from the 2006 Rose Bowl. Judging by the color of the field, it likely was taken sometime after the game.
I do not know how I should feel about this.
While that game is of course the moment when all of USC’s hubris ““ with Reggie Bush attempting his idiotic handoff ““ began to work against it, I cannot get over the fact that for all of the world (and by all of the world, I mean anyone looking at a Google Earth map of the Pasadena) it is USC and not UCLA that has its name stamped on the Rose Bowl.
So I am of mixed emotions.
This all would have been settled in our hearts and minds, of course, if UCLA had just gone ahead and beaten Arizona and USC two years ago, but we will maintain here in reality for now.
There are many ways to look at this situation. First is with complete abhorrence. I cannot abide having our stadium, no matter its national acclaim and no matter the fact that USC has played in it almost as much as UCLA over the last few years, sullied with the stain of ill-repute that comes with having those three letters emblazoned on it (Texas, you’re absolved).
A second way of looking at the situation is with humor. Yes, those letters are on the field; that cannot be helped. But it is, in a way, strangely perfect that the photo was taken not after a victory by USC over UCLA at the Rose Bowl, but after the game that began the Trojans’ recent fall from grace. Being reminded of Vince Young completely tearing apart an immensely talented Trojan team is not so much of a bad thing.
The third way of looking at the situation is, of course, to not look at it, because anyone who has time enough to not only view this but to develop an opinion of it is someone of such indolence and intemperate rationality as to be little found in the world.
I have now written somewhere in the neighborhood of 460 words on the subject, so it can safely be assumed that I do not subscribe to the third way of thinking. However, both the first and second ways of thinking have their charms.
To be sure, if I had to choose an image of the Rose Bowl to display to all of the world on Google Earth, it would be of UCLA’s victory over USC this past year, not of USC’s loss to Texas. So in that, I am disappointed.
I am also disappointed with the very idea of having USC’s emblem on the field.
But I wonder: Was this intentional? Did some higher being working at all-powerful Google come to the conclusion that it would be fairly hilarious to have USC losing in the Rose Bowl as the satellite image to use on Google Earth maps?
I must say, I sincerely hope so.
E-mail Woods at dwoods@media.ucla.edu
if you too recognize that the only way to turn a 100-word idea into a 600-word column is to write it as if you are a Victorian-era woman describing the
floor of a dining room. Booya!