It sure was nice to watch a handful of games last night in what turned out to be a nice little Thursday primer for the rest of the action to follow on Saturday and into Monday’s match up between Boise State and Virginia Tech.

Let’s take a look back at the action from last night.

In Columbia, the Gamecocks of South Carolina hosted Southern Mississippi on ESPN in what was a rather boring match up compared to the night’s other contests.

I found it interesting that ESPN kept mentioning how good South Carolina plays in their openers, having not lost one since 1998 or something like that. I wonder how many good teams they’ve played to start the season during that time span. I’m guessing zero.

South Carolina came away with a convincing 41-13 victory on paper, but it was much more of a game than the score indicates. Southern Mississippi racked up some yards, gaining a very respectable 404 total, but they just couldn’t put any points on the board.

I was thinking to myself in the early goings how South Carolina always has a strong defense but can never seem to put it all together on the other side of the ball.

After watching this game, it looks like Garcia is improved as a quarterback and the Gamecocks might do some damage on offense, while getting gashed at times on defense by a Conference USA team probably doesn’t bode well for Steve Spurrier’s team.

The other thing I took away from the game was how ESPN was force feeding us how good freshman South Carolina running back Marcus Lattimore is. They even went as far as putting his name in the headline as one of the game’s stars.

He ended the night with 54 yards on 14 carries and 2 receptions.

Sure he scored two touchdowns, but come on. It’s great that he’s starting as a freshman and I have no doubt that he’ll be great sometime soon, but he was running the ball for 3 yard gains and the broadcast team was fawning over him.

In other action, Ohio State made quick work of Marshall beating the Thundering Herd 45-7. I wasn’t able to watch this game as I do not have the Big Ten Network, but I am sure the ratings were through the roof for this thriller…or not.

Why is Ohio State playing a Thursday night game against a crappy team to start the season anyway? Is it to put this game in a spotlight on the BTN? Or was the motivation to give the team an extra three days to prepare for their tough week two match up?

I was expecting Terrelle Pryor to rip off some long runs, but it looks like the coaching staff has him tied to a rope in the pocket again just like last year.

“You’re going to improve on your passing no matter what Terrelle!”

Pryor finished 17 for 25 with 247 yards and three touchdowns. Let’s see what he does against Miami next week.

Speaking of Miami, the Hurricanes defeated Florida A&M 45-0 inside a Sun Life Stadium that was roughly 22,000 short of a sellout.

These are the type of games I was talking about yesterday which Notre Dame never gets the opportunity to play in order to pad their defensive stats. Miami pitched the shutout, gave up only 110 yards and limited the Rattlers to 1.3 yards per rush.

This game shouldn’t even count, we learned nothing.

In the game of the night, Utah squeaked out a tough overtime victory against Pittsburgh in a battle of two future Irish opponents.

I came away very impressed with Utah as they shutdown Pitt running back Dion Lewis after the first quarter and played with speed and tenacity all night long. They limited the Panthers to a measly 266 total yards.

On offense, Utah has a great balance of running ability and they can make you pay through the air as well. Jordan Wynn looked shaky to start the game but otherwise torched the Pitt secondary, minus a completely boneheaded interception in the end zone during the first half.

Now we’re left wondering if Pitt isn’t as good as we thought or if Utah is just that much better. Even though this game went into overtime, the Utes outplayed Pitt for most of the time and it had a two touchdown victory feel to it. Had Utah not made some costly turnovers they would have cruised to the win.

New Pitt quarterback Tino Sunseri struggled all night before finally coming alive in the fourth quarter. They’ll need him to step up his game because they can’t afford to have teams stack the box and limit Dion Lewis all night long like Utah did.

If Sunseri keeps putting up 150 yard performances through the air and continually never throwing the ball more than 10 yards down field, Pitt will not win more than 7 or 8 games and Jon Baldwin will regret not having turned pro months ago.

We’ll see if he improves.

Another question is if Pitt’s defense is really all that good. They have a few great players but their depth is not that great and their secondary is pretty weak. One thing we did learn is that they do not match up well against spread teams who can limit the pressure from Pitt’s stud defensive ends as the Utes were able to.

That’s a good sign for Notre Dame.

In the last game of the night we had the USC Trojans making the trip to Hawaii to step on the field for the first time in the post-Pete Carroll era and with the sanctions weighing on the program.

USC came away with a 49-36 victory and I just love how this is being made out to be some sort of big victory for the Trojans.

Led by Matt Barkley the USC offense looked sharp and could not be stopped by the Hawaii defense. But so what? Remember when Jimmy Clausen put together the “perfect game” against Hawaii in the Notre Dame bowl game two years ago?

Pretty much every team has a good game offensively against the Warriors.

I know USC is battling through a lot of things this year, including a new coaching staff, but this was not an impressive win.

The Trojans were out gained by 70 yards!

Yes that genius Monte Kiffin and his young players surrendered a whopping 588 yards to Hawaii, including 459 and three touchdowns through the air. And if it wasn’t for a touchdown returned on a punt by USC this was a 6 point game.

How can anyone involved with USC be happy about this?

Of course Lane Kiffin wasn’t very happy after, but the players sure seemed to be.

It’s very comical to watch Kiffin try to play this tough guy “I’m never smiling” role, when you know he wants to let loose so bad. I expect USC to still win nine or 10 games, but it will be a long season for Kiffin with a new AD breathing down his neck and watching his every move.

And what the hell was with all those two-point conversion attempts? Of course Kiffin had to sneak something in there to get people not to like him and his team.

I know this was just one game, but I think we might have to come to the realization that USC’s defense just isn’t the same that it was two, three or four years ago.

I know the talent level is still ridiculously high, but you have to admit that USC really hit the jackpot during the Carroll years with some all-time greats on defense, and offense too. It seems like the Trojans have come down to earth now and simply cannot re-load every year and stay dominant on defense.

And a lot of the players are pretty young and being thrust into starting roles and significant minutes whereas in the past they were being groomed in spot duty and intense practices against some of the best defenders in the country.

Just look at it this way: name USC’s best defender.

Not that easy is it?

That’s not to say that USC doesn’t have some great talent (especially in the front seven) but it’s not like in the past where they would have one or two unquestioned All-Americans and future 1^st round draft picks always in their prime and always dominating opponents.

With that young and experienced secondary, USC could be in trouble this year. Luckily for them, they have the whole season to work things out before we travel to Los Angeles to play them.

Here’s hoping to Notre Dame’s defense playing a lot better tomorrow than the Trojans did last night.