





Frank Solich led Ohio to the MAC Championship game in 2011. (Getty Images) More

Frank Solich has a rule. He vowed he would never break it. No matter what, he told himself, he would never take a head coaching job at a school that didn't have a conveniently located airport.

He broke the rule. And not just a little bit, either. Ohio University, where Solich took the head coaching job seven years ago, is more than an hour from the nearest airport. How remote is it? So remote that West Virginia is closer than the Columbus airport. So remote that you have to drive through a national forest to get from Athens to your flight.

"We don't have a major airport nearby," Solich says. "We don't have a large population. We're kind of isolated. Those things are concerning."

Not concerning enough, apparently. Ohio U. is now the hottest football team in the Buckeye State. Sorry Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland (and Oxford, Akron, Bowling Green and Toledo). The Bobcats had at least as many wins last year (10) as any other Division I team in the state. That hasn't happened since 1968. And it's likely to happen again, as Ohio is the only unbeaten MAC team, having already beaten Penn State on the road. The Bobcats are favored to win the rest of their games, and although you shouldn't expect them to get consideration for a BCS bowl, you should expect them to be a topic in the wearying December debates about who "deserves" what bowl.

"We can be kind of like a Boise State," says senior quarterback Tyler Tettleton. "We're still not at a top level but we can be recognized across the country."









The Journey: USC vs. Stanford

When thinking of Pac-12 rivalries, it's usually USC vs. UCLA or Stanford vs. Cal. However, when USC takes the field Saturday, the Trojans will be facing its oldest rival: Stanford.



Oldest? Yes. Most competitive? Hardly. But recent years, that old, lopsided rivalry dominated by USC has taken on a new level of intensity as Stanford has journeyed from doormat to conference power.



USC leads the series 59-28-3, a tide that couldn't be turned in the Cardinal way by the likes of Bill Walsh (1-4 vs. USC), John Ralston (2-7) or even Pop Warner (2-5-10), who lost his last five to the Trojans by a combined score of 90-12.



But on Oct. 6, 2007, the tide finally turned. That's when 41-point underdog Stanford, led by coach Jim Harbaugh, stunned Pete Carroll's USC squad 24-23. Two years later, No. 25 Stanford blew out the Trojans in the infamous "What's your deal?" game. It was the worst home loss for USC since 1966.



Stanford would win again in 2010 and '11, making it four of five in favor of the Cardinal, a run Stanford hasn't seen since the 1930s.

[Watch John Elway and Doug Flutie's Journey to Comfort]

That has to eat at USC, especially Heisman frontrunner Matt Barkley, who is 0-3 against the Cardinal.



USC, ranked second in the latest poll, will be favored on Saturday against the 21st-ranked Cardinal. But recent results show that may not matter, not anymore.





The key word is "recognized," because both Tettleton and Solich are on the verge of getting recognition that's well overdue. Solich, you'll recall, was Tom Osborne's hand-picked successor at Nebraska. He took the Cornhuskers to the national title game in 2001 after 19 years as an assistant, but was fired two years later with his "appalling" record of 58-19. (Solich had more wins over the same six-season time frame than Osborne did in his first half-dozen years.) Bo Pelini will have to go 18-2 to match Solich's record. He hasn't even taken the Huskers to a BCS bowl.



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