I've lived in California for 13 years, and quite frankly west coast football is pathetic. Having grown up in Knoxville and experienced first-hand how college football should be, it has been really disappointing to see how fair-weather a lot of Pac-10 "fans" are. I have a good buddy who "remembered" he was a USC fan in 2002 when they started winning games again. Nobody knew he liked the Trojans until they rose to prominence. You can go up to the average USC, Cal, UCLA fan, and a lot of them don't even know their 2 deep depth chart for their own running backs.
SEC football blows away anything on the west coast.
EDIT: This quote from the original story says it all:
"USC averaged 57,744 in Carroll's first season, but the 92,000-seat Coliseum is sold out this season."