Good enough--again: Southern California isn't yet as powerful as it was last season, but the Trojans emerged from High Stakes Saturday as front-runner to make it to the Orange Bowl.(College Football)

So here we are again. The cameras are flashing, the camcorders are rolling, and everyone who's anyone in this plastic city has a cell phone in hand and tickets at the 50 in the Coliseum. Look at this lady here, decked out in her Cardinal and Gold and holding up her infant for Reggie Bush to kiss while dad desperately tries to figure out this digital camera contraption.

"Is it on?" he asks. Oh, it's on, all right. Six weeks into the season, we're right back where we were last season. Just like last year, Southern California is the best team in the nation. Just like last year, the Trojans have two Heisman Trophy candidates, a soft schedule ahead and enough juice to win every time they step onto the field.

"You've got to survive, man;' says Bush, USC's tall glass of thrill. "That's the way it is every week."

For every team.

So here we are again. Oklahoma wins the Red River Shootout, and Texas coach Mack Brown is proud of his players. That's nice, Mack. Hey, Orangebloods: The Holiday Bowl is now taking ticket applications.

So here we are again. We flirted with the idea of the new ACC as the new king and the bulky Big Ten as a top-to-bottom beast. But let's stop kidding ourselves; the SEC is the best conference in the nation. Yet there's one little, bitty problem: Those athletic, fast machines keep damaging each other's national title hopes. This time, it was Tennessee--yeah, the embarrassed, teetering Vols of two weeks past--finding a way to beat Georgia for the first time since 1999 and putting a serious dent in the Bulldogs' national title hopes.

So here we are again. Pretenders--Minnesota, Texas, Ohio State--were exposed, yet there's still this undeniable feeling some one-loss team will emerge as this year's LSU. Just because the BCS was tweaked again doesn't mean such a team can't make it back to play for it all.