Welcome to The Orange County Register’s USC sports blog, Version 3.0.

We’re dedicating big-time resources to make this a one-stop shop for you, the USC sports fan. (Likewise, check out our repurposed blog for The Enemy, a.k.a., UCLA.)

Our primary focus will be football and basketball, but we’ll hit the other sports as well as news warrants.

Look for on-the-scene coverage all day long from Heritage Hall, the Coliseum, the football practice field, Galen Center — wherever USC athletes are, we’ll strive to be.

And if there’s something we aren’t doing that you’d like to see us do, please let us know.

Our lineup is as follows:

MICHAEL LEV

You’ve heard of athletes going pro? Well, I’m going college. After 12 years of covering the NFL for the Register and Pro Football Weekly, plus a one-year office stint in a variety of editorial roles, I’m going back to school (although some will argue that covering USC is covering pro football). I aim to bring my football expertise to the ‘SC beat, and I swear there’s no lingering bitterness from this Northwestern University alum over the 1996 Rose Bowl (OK, maybe a little). As far as hoops go, I plan a similar pro-to-college conversion, riding the wave from my first-place tie in our highly competitive NBA fantasy league with previously unbeaten (and untied) champion Kevin Ding, who happens to cover the Lakers for a living. (E-mail Michael at mlev@ocregister.com)

ADAM MAYA

I grew up a USC kid by virtue of my grandfather being a former season ticket holder and working at the Coliseum for 20 years. I was devastated by Rob Johnson’s interception in the UCLA game in 1993, but Keyshawn Johnson helped make for a happy childhood. … I arrived at USC when Pete Carroll did and graduated in time to see three Heisman winners, two national championships and one dunk by Mike Williams after he threw an alley-oop to himself off a wall behind the backboard in an on-campus gym. I also lobbed an alley-oop to Erick Craven in a pickup game. Or was it Derrick? … When I met Carroll for the first time I was wearing a Keyshawn Jets jersey, only to be told later it was a bad idea since Carroll had been fired by that team. Carroll laughed. If I ruled the world I’d wear just a plain white T-shirt every day. (E-mail Adam at amaya@ocregister.com)

MARK WHICKER

I have been a columnist at The Register for 21 years and have written extensively about USC and UCLA during that span, including columns on UCLA’s 1995 NCAA men’s basketball championship and on Rose Bowl victories by USC teams coached by Larry Smith and Pete Carroll alike. I also have written columns on Olympic athletes from those schools and have dealt with such coaching characters as Jim Harrick, George Raveling, Al Scates, Mike Gillespie, Ron Allice, John Robinson, Bob Toledo and now Rick Neuheisel. (E-mail Mark at mwhicker@ocregister.com)

SCOTT M. REID

I had been covering the University of Georgia for the Atlanta Journal Constitution for only a few weeks in the spring of 1990 when UGA IV, the school’s bulldog mascot, died. “We’ll probably need two stories,” my editor told me when I called him with the news. “One for the sports cover and one for A1.” Forget the Yankees and Red Sox — college football and basketball are the closest thing we have in this country to the passion soccer stirs in the rest of the world. I have covered that passion on and off for 20 years in the SEC, Big 12 and Pac-10, long enough to know that Cameron Indoor Stadium, Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge and Bob Stoops are overrated; that there is no better place to see a college basketball game than Allen Fieldhouse; that the best setting for college football is Husky Stadium in late Saturday (although Boulder’s Folsom Field comes close); that “Texas Fight” is the best fight song, period; and that Touchdown Jesus ought to be renamed Scheduling Jesus (as in weak scheduling). In my reporting here, I will examine college football and basketball’s big (and little) issues on and off the field, their brightest stars and their dark side. (E-mail Scott at sreid@ocregister.com)

Posted in: The bloggers |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.