Hot off the Mercury News’ college sports blog, the College Hotline . . .

Unless Cal dominates USC from start to finish, which is just this side of impossible, the Bears would be wise to follow the advice of Oregon Coach Mike Bellotti.

"It’s all about staying in the game and giving yourself a chance," said Bellotti, who has faced both tea

USC Coach Pete Carroll usually says the BCS will untangle itself by the end of the season and all you can do is win and watch it work.

This season, he says the BCS system stinks.

That presumably is because the Trojans, in seventh place in the BCS standings, don’t appear to have a likely route to t

Consider these three schools competing for this year’s Pacific 10 Conference football title:

* Oregon State (5-3 overall, 4-1 in conference play) opened the season with a league loss at Stanford, shook that off and headed for Penn State, got pounded there, 45-14, and lost a third game in Salt Lake City on O

A week ago, on the day Washington announced coach Tyrone Willingham’s firing, university president Mark Emmert said the Huskies’ lowly football program was at the "lowest ebb" in the school’s storied history.
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His reference was probably a week early.

Burdened with a lame-duck c

LOS ANGELES — If you thought this program still had some pride left, if you thought these players who have given so little this season, might, just might, give it up just this one Saturday afternoon in tribute to the coach who recruited them, you were sadly mistaken.

Washington wasn’t flat aga