If you were alive this past Saturday, consider yourself lucky

As long as you weren't born after about 6 pm CST this past Saturday, the 15th, consider yourself lucky. You were alive during arguably one of the greatest college football games of all time. USC was able to pull out a win against rival Notre Dame in South Bend. If you need to understand how much this game meant to both of these teams, consider this. USC QB Matt Leinart spent extra hours in the film room studying not only Notre Dame film, but also some New England Patriot film, Coach Charlie Weis' former team. As far as Notre Dame, all you need to know is that they busted out the Green Jerseys! Two things about this game. First, you may have heard that there were some possible errors in the last two plays of the game...

1. After Leinart was hit and lost the ball out of bounds, there were :03 seconds on the clock when the ball went out. When the ball was spotted for the last play of the game, the clock had been reset to :07 seconds.
2. During that same play, the ball was knocked away from Leinart and went out of bounds at the 3 yard line, but was spotted at the 1...Where Leinart was hit when he lost it. The ball should have been spotted where it went out of bounds, as it was a fumble.
   
3. The most important error (one that even Regis Philbin couldn't let go unnoticed) was that RB Reggie Bush (#5 pictured) pushed Leinart (#11) over the goal line! It wasn't as if he may have pushed him over, Bush said in the locker room after the game, "I was pushing as hard as I could." For those of you who don't know what I'm getting at, let me educate you. Section 3, Article 2, sub point b of the Official 2005 NCAA Football Rules and Interpretations guide says, "The runner shall not grasp a teammate; and no other player of his team shall grasp, push, lift or charge into him to assist him in forward progress." it can't be stated any clearer then that.

And second, regardless of all the errors that happened...it was still one of the greatest college football games ever played. It's not every week that we get to see 2 top 10 teams play each other, let alone 2 top 10 teams who are part of the most storied out of conference rivalry of all time, dating back to 1926. So like I said at the beginning, be lucky you were alive to see it.

p.s. Gene Wojciechowski of espn.com wrote a great article on this game and its place in history check it out.