FanHouse Taylor Mays

The Pac-10 has suspended one of its officials for failing to throw a flag on a facemasking penalty committed by USC safety Taylor Mays on Oregon State receiver James Rodgers, the latest in a long line of high-profile missed calls by college football officials this year.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Observations and opinions on Saturday's USC-Notre Dame clash:

Sure, Notre Dame came close, but imagine how much better quarterback Matt Barkley will be 13 months from now in the Los Angeles Coliseum. By the way, listening to both Pete Carroll and Barkley speaking to the media after the game, it sounds as if the USC head coach has engineered his own Mini-Me.

Here is a portion of what Carroll had to say about Barkley, who after all did toss for 380 yards, is 5-0 as a starter and has won on the road in Columbus, Berkeley and South Bend: "Matt Barkley is really something,'' Carroll said. "The plays he's capable of making, there's no limit for him. He's just remarkable -- there's no other way to describe it. There's no one else to compare him to in our history. He's so poised, so comfortable in the arena. He has this great inner strength."

And you thought Charlie Weis had a man-crush on Jimmy Clausen ...

Pac-10 teams begin their second week of play on Saturday, highlighted by No. 3 USC's trip to Columbus to play Ohio State. It means nothing but consensus leans heavily towards the Trojans despite it being a cover of darkness road game before what Eleven Warriors calls 105,000 of college football's best hooligans, despite starting a true freshman quarterback in Matt Barkley and despite Ohio State having the tiebreaker of all tiebreakers in Terrelle Pryor.

Yeah, USC's loaded. The rest of the conference lineup Saturday is a mixed bag filled with one big road trip to SEC country, a couple middling names and a handful of regional cupcakes. Mmm, cupcakes. Wait, no, bad Pac-10. Time to bag some fresh game out of say, Knoxville? Hmmm, maybe not.

What's your No. 1 fear if you subscribe to cable and you're a sports fan? Aside from the signal dying on the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament or on any Saturday or Sunday in the fall, it's that through no fault of your own you might not be able to watch your favorite teams play because of rights disputes between major companies.

We've seen it with the Big Ten Network and several cable companies, and we've seen it with the NFL Network and virtually every cable company. Nothing sucks more as a sports fan than being a paying subscriber, being willing to pay whatever you have to for the games you want to see, and still not being able to watch your favorite team play from the comfort of home. It's a constant dance between content providers and cable distributors over how much channels should cost, and fandom is the collateral damage.

The latest rights dispute that seemed likely was between ESPN and Comcast. Only it never materialized.

The 2010 NFL draft is still 51 weeks away, and yes, a whole lot will change during the 2009 college football season. But millions of us are obsessed with the NFL draft, so with the 2009 draft now behind us, let's take a very early look ahead at potential No. 1 overall pick Sam Bradford of Oklahoma, as well as the other top players in the Class of 2010.

Contrary to earlier reports, it seems Coach Carroll is not planning to move Dallas Sartz (pictured) from linebacker to free safety to replace injured Josh Pinkard. Reports from practice this week say that the job is freshman Taylor Mays' to lose, and that freshmen Antwine Perez and Garrett Green, cornerback Mozique McCurtis, and kicker David Buehler have also seen time in the newly-vacated free safety position.

Pete acknowledged that Sartz is an option, albeit an unlikely one. "He plays back there in certain defenses anyway," Carroll said. "We're not trying to pull away from another starting position if we don't have to."

Mays Might Replace Injured Safety Pinkard [L.A. Times]