WordCamp, USC, Kobe, IHOP & No NFL … Gotta love L.A.

I heart L.A. - Minus the 405, smog and no NFL.

So Ryantific and I spent the weekend at WordCamp L.A., trying to improve this blog for our West Coast peeps, and in the process, missed nearly the entire opening weekend of the NFL.

But since L.A. doesn’t have a team, who cares, right?

Think again: L.A.’s got USC, and when you got them Trojans, what more do you need? Since there was no WordCamp Ohio this weekend, watching them break the Buckeyes’ backs in L.A. was the next best thing.

Sorry SweaterVest, you can’t give Pete Carroll a whole offseason to prepare for you and expect to pull out a win: even if it’s at The Shoe, against a freshman quarterback.

Here’s to USC-Florida for the title in January.

Only other thing we were bummed to miss was Kobe Bryant, who ate at the IHOP near LMU a day before we did apparently. Sources close to the Bias said he ate Jameer Nelson, Mickael Pietrus and J.J. Redick for breakfast. Even double tweeted checked my sources, take notes ESPN, and it looks like it was the second time in a week that Kobe hit up the IHOP: he’s probably just bummed the A-town Denny’s went out of business.

Back to the topic at hand, after watching highlights of all the NFL action, and the two better than expected Monday night games, here are my takeaways from conference weekend:

-          NFL might want to rethink throwback unis, and get the teams to wear different colored helmets. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out two teams wearing white helmets is going to cause some confusion. Case in point: Tom Brady getting pick sixed. When does that happen?

-          Speaking of the Brady Bunch, how slow is he now after that knee injury, not that the bulky, 20-ounce brace of his helps. But I bet that thing doesn’t squeak like RK’s when he runs. At the same time, I bet RK coulda outrun Suzy Kolber’s postgame interview like Brady was unable to do tonight.

-          Kolber showed off her wheels, but the rest of ESPN’s crew still sucked. Seriously, how many jocks can you guys fit in the box? How about bringing on some journalists for once, so we don’t have to listen to Mike & Mike & Steve butcher player names all night.

-          And Jaws and Chucky weren’t much better in the early game. Tarico made a reference to Tom Brady being the 199th pick in the 2000 NFL Draft, to which Jon Gruden made the wisecrack, “I guess 198 were better.” If memory serves me correctly J.G., you were in Oakland for that draft, correct? I guess burning your first pick on a kicker and closing things out with DT Junior Ioane, P Shane Lechler, FB Mondriel Fulcher and S Clifton Black wasn’t much better.

-          Speaking of the Raiders. Silver + Black = undisciplined. That was the difference tonight.

-          Officials and video replay are also killing the game. The Raiders were robbed by a touchdown because of the replay and the Bills got hosed by the “Brady” (i.e. QBs are soft) rule twice.

-          Speaking of soft, Terrell Owens might be with the Bills, but he’s not on the team (mentally), you could see that on the bench all night. The T.O. show doesn’t have any co-stars, and dude was going through the motions again. 0 catches in the first half. Nice debut.

-          One last thing we missed: RIP 2-Pac, 13 years later.