Maybe they should change the name of that USC offensive formation to "student body wrong.''

The place known as Tailback U is now "We Caught U.'' The NCAA has nothing against players accepting pitchouts but as proved once more it's greatly opposed to handouts, illegal ones, that is.

It's one thing to get knocked out of the Rose Bowl game by Oregon State, it's another to get knocked out of every bowl game by the Committee of Infractions.

The people who administer big time college sports spent four years to determine the people who administer USC sports lacked "institutional control,'' which means nobody of importance was concerned Reggie Bush's parents were able to live in a house beyond their means.

How the NCAA responded, as announced Thursday, was to take away one win from the football season of 2004 when the Trojans went 13-0 and gained the BCS championship; take away all the wins from 2005 when USC lost only to Texas in the BCS title game; ban USC from post-season play for two years; put USC on probation for five years and take away 30 scholarships over three seasons.

A couple of years back, when he was named UCLA coach, Rick Neuheisel, in an overwrought newspaper ad, was quoted saying, "The football monopoly in L.A. is officially over.'' Maybe he knew what was about to happen, off the field.

Long ago, an author, John Tunis, said, "Losing is the great American sin.'' Not cheating. Not breaking the rules. Losing. Anything goes, if you can win.

USC certainly did win. And win and win.

In a town where the NFL has been unable to place a franchise, the Trojans have been L.A.'s surrogate pro team, bringing in crowds of more than 90,000 to the Coliseum, bringing entertainment stars such as Will Ferrell (admittedly, a USC grad) and Snoop Dogg to the sidelines, and bringing along virtually every bandwagon jumper.

USC fans are fervent and powerful. Once USC found success under coach Pete Carroll, Saturdays were wild.

One might doubt a region as large and sophisticated as southern California would - except for UCLA honks - go crazy for a school like Southern California.

But in the fall, L.A. becomes Lincoln, Nebraska, with million-dollar homes, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with clogged roads. No Rams. No Raiders, so the Freeway Alumni, to borrow from the Subway Alumni of Notre Dame, are wearing their USC paraphernalia and filling the stadium.

Now, hearts will be filled with gloom. If you're not alluding to the real alumni of every other school from what we knew as the former (pre-Colorado, pre-Texas, pre-everything) Pac-10.

Fans in Washington, Oregon, California and Arizona despised USC. When last fall Stanford battered the Trojans, even the folk from Cal-Berkeley. Stanford's rivals, were ecstatic.

So, there is not a great deal of regret about what the NCAA did to USC. Rather there is schadenfreude, the German word translated as finding joy in the pain of others. Sort of, "It's about time you found out what it's like to be kicked in the teeth.''

That the kids now playing football at USC, Matt Barkley, the sophomore quarterback comes to mind, will suffer the consequences while some of those responsible for the consequences - Bush, basketball player O.J. Mayo, former basketball coach Tim Floyd - have fled the scene is one of the failings of college sport.

Carroll left in December to become coach of the Seattle Seahawks but even now insists he wasn't escaping the inevitable. In fact, asserting the NCAA had "an agenda,'' Pete said he was shocked by the severity of the penalties.

We shift back to the classic film, Casablanca, with Bogart and Bergman, in which Claude Rains, as Inspector Renault gasps, "I am shocked, shocked to find gambling is going on in here.''

USC, in effect, gambled and lost. "The case,'' said the NCAA report, "is a window onto a landscape of elite college athletes and certain individuals close to them who in the course of their relationships disregarded NCAA rules and regulations.''

One of those elite athletes, if we are to interpret the tea leaves, was a woman tennis player who, according to the report, made 123 unauthorized phone calls to her family, a value of $7,000.

Over in Beverly Hills or down in Newport Beach that latter item surely will elicit head-shaking. To get in trouble over accommodations for Reggie Bush, who won a Heisman and led the team to a season without any losses, is understandable. To ruin the program because of an anonymous tennis player is a disgrace.

At UCLA, Stanford and Cal and other locations in the conference, they don't know whether to laugh or cheer.