In short, the only thing we know right now is that we’re playing the University of Southern California Trojans on Saturday in Los Angeles. Everything else, to me, is speculation, despite Lane Kiffin’s announcement that Matt Barkley would not play against the Irish. Given his past, I won’t believe that until the game is over. Am I giving in to Fox Mulder-esque paranoia? Probably. But before you judge me, remember this:

1.  “I would not vote USC number one, I can tell you that much.”

2. USC has deflated balls.

3. USC fakes jersey numbers.

4. USC banned a reporter for reporting a player injury.

These are all run-ins with the truth and rules that happened THIS YEAR. Let’s not even get into Coach Kiffin’s history with the truth and rules while at Tennessee. Just sticking with this season, I think you can make a pretty convincing case that Coach Kiffin is not above trying to turn the present situation to his advantage, or at least using it to get inside the heads of the Fighting Irish.

But what’s it mean? Who is Matt Wittek? Well, here’s his recruiting video:

This season, the redshirt freshman has seen action in 9 games, throwing 9 passes with 8 completitions. He’s thrown for 1 touchdown and has a quarterback rating of 214.23. He has yet to throw an interception. On the ground, he has -13 yards rushing.

The only thing that matters for the Irish should be beating USC, regardless of who is under center. There’s no denying, though, that losing Matt Barkley, preseason Everything Trophy favorite, is a massive loss to their offense, if he’s indeed out. While you can debate just how focused a four-loss Trojan squad would be against the Irish, that went out the window when we put on the Number One ranking. Now the Irish wear the bull’s eye.

Don’t think Lane won’t use every trick in the book to take us down.

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