Why I Root For USC and Ohio State

The best sport in America today is college football, and last Saturday's nailbiters only confirmed my finding. Among all college teams, I root for USC and Ohio State, both of which won their games in exciting fashion this past weekend. Watching USC steal a victory away from Notre Dame made me feel especially giddy all weekend.

I root for USC and Ohio State because they are the arch nemeses of UCLA and Michigan respectively, two schools that epitomize liberal hypocracy through their active support of affirmative action policies. Recently, Michigan has taken a lead role in legitimizing the use of racial preferences in admission at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In Grutter v. Bollinger (involving the University of Michigan's law school) and Gratz v. Bollinger (undergraduate), the Supreme Court recently upheld Michigan's use of race as a primary factor in admissions, while disallowing overt racial quotas (wink, wink).

As for UCLA, it's personal. In 1989, I was rejected by UCLA's MBA program in spite of my top-flight Wall Street job experience (Salomon Brothers) and perfect scores on both the GMAT and GRE. I later found out that UCLA (Anderson School of Business) had accepted two classmates of mine from Cornell for that class, both of whom I knew well since they also majored in Industrial Engineering as I did. Although they had lower GPAs and test scores than me, the key difference is that they happened to be white. And so they got the nod into the MBA program, lest UCLA accept yet another Asian student with high grades and test scores.

These past few years, I've had the last laugh as USC has drilled UCLA six years in a row, and Ohio State has taken 3 or 4 from Michigan under Coach Jim Tressel. Somehow, I don't think it's a coincidence that both USC and Ohio State have red in their school colors, while UCLA and Michigan are "blue" schools. For USC, it also helps that the team features a star running back named Reggie Bush, in addition to having two Asian starters on their team, twin brothers Brandon and Ryan Ting.

In the months to come, I'll be keeping a close watch on "my' teams, with the afternoons of Novermber 19 (Ohio State v. Michigan) and December 3 (USC v. UCLA) reserved for viewing the annual humiliation of the scUM (Michigan nickname used by OSU fans) and the 'Ruins (UCLA nickname used by USC fans).

Fight On! Fight to the end for O-hi-o!