LOS ANGELES — It’s an axiom accepted as fact throughout college football: No matter what else might happen in a season, if you beat your archrival, that makes everything feel a little bit better.
But does it, really?
Yes, USC retains the Victory Bell, painted cardinal and gold, after a second half rally for a 29-10 victory over UCLA Saturday night. Thus, any sense of panic in the stands when the Bruins led 10-7 for most of the third quarter was wiped away, thanks to Jayden Maiava’s touchdown passes to Makai Lemon at the end of the third quarter and to Lake McCree early in the fourth.
Still … how many of the announced 69,614 who filed out of the Coliseum – very few wearing Bruins blue, incidentally – were still thinking of the Trojans’ missed opportunity the previous week in Oregon?
When Lincoln Riley got here four seasons ago, bringing Heisman Trophy quarterback Caleb Williams with him, the assumption was that USC would again be playing for national championships, and soon.
The tally so far: They just missed the four-team playoff field in 2022, with Williams’ injured hamstring dooming them in the Pac-12 championship game against Utah. The last two years, they didn’t come close. They teased their fan base this season, getting to as high as No.15 in the College Football Playoff rankings before the Oregon game, but were exposed by the Ducks last week in Eugene.
Don’t feel so bad, USC fans. The Ducks exposed Washington as well on Saturday in Seattle, and they could be looking at a high seed when the 12-team field is announced a week from Tuesday. They’ve adjusted to the Big Ten in a way the Trojans haven’t quite achieved yet.
So what to make of a victory over a Bruin team that will be in the market for a new coach now that their 3-9 season (3-6 in conference) is over?
It is, according to Riley, a step in the right direction. That’s fair. When you build something, you have to do it in steps. And USC was 7-0 in the Coliseum this year, including Big Ten victories over Michigan and Iowa, in a 9-3 season.
“This team helped pave the way,” Riley said. “You know, I thought last year’s team paved the way for this year’s team to take some big steps. We did that. This year’s team certainly paved the way for the future here, which couldn’t be more exciting.”
And they do have the top recruiting class in the country, according to the recruiting site 24/7. Then again, who knows what will happen in the portal, and how many on this roster will still be around for spring practice.
But forgive any Trojan fans, especially those of long standing, for wondering if these steps are too slow and too small. Maybe – probably – it’s unrealistic to expect USC to dominate the landscape the way it did in claiming 11 previous national championships (and yes, we’re counting 2004 here, since they won it on the field and the things they were penalized for then are legal today).
But those are the expectations in Los Angeles, and at USC. Those were the standards Riley talked about when he first got here. And by now, four years in, he understands that this is a different kind of sports town, and college football town, but the attention and the glare are no less intense.
“I understand that Los Angeles is a place that, you know, people aren’t going to show up just because, right?” he said. “You have to win. You know, you have to give them something. And when you do, there’s no sports town better.
“And tonight and multiple times throughout this season was an example of that.”
The atmosphere in the Coliseum Saturday night was electric, and it’s interesting because, while there were isolated pockets of blue, this was most definitely a USC home crowd, far more than most of the times these teams meet.
Some of that, of course, could be an indication of how disaffected UCLA fans have become with their own program, in a season in which coach Deshaun Foster was fired after an 0-4 start, and a three-game midseason winning streak was bookended with five straight losses to end it. And all of that came amidst dwindling home crowds and the talk that the Bruins might abandon the Rose Bowl – and a lease that runs through the 2043 season – for SoFi Stadium.
There is something stirring at USC, even as the athletic program and campus are still getting used to being in an 18-team coast-to-coast conference. (Then again, theirs and UCLA’s move to the Big Ten were the first steps toward dissolution of the Pac-12, so any sympathy should probably be limited.)
Riley was asked how this team could continue whatever positive momentum might exist.
“Last year’s team pushed the issue in a lot of ways,” he said. “And like we kind of said, I think it was actually quite a bit better team than probably what it got credit for nationally. And we improved so many ways last year, even though the record didn’t really show that at the end of the year … the people that really watched us and studied us saw that. And I thought this team was like, ‘All right, you got to take that and now it’s got to go translate some, right?’
“Like, we got to go win some of these tough games. We got to win in the fourth quarter. We got to go shut guys down defensively. We got to go be able, if we have different guys down offensively, to win different ways and have different people rise up if we have injuries. Like that’s when just really good teams do that are kind of consistently there every year. And I just think this team did that.
“Things are good here right now,” he continued. “We’ll look back when things are really, really, really good here, and this will be one of the ones that everybody will point to. I promise you. That’s gonna happen.”
He’s on record, Trojan fans. It’s up to you whether you buy it or not.
jalexander@scng.com