Musings from Arledge: Forget the preseason polls, here come the USC Trojans

The college football world is in for a surprise. 

The USC Trojans don’t appear in most of the preseason top-25 polls. The Trojans are expected to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack in the Big 10, often behind teams like Nebraska and Iowa. Now, I don’t have a staff to do statistical analyses for me so somebody should probably fact check this, but I think Nebraska last scored 30 points in a game that time Tommie Frazier broke 38 Florida Gator tackle attempts on a single run. Iowa last did it in sometime during the Civil War. 

Some of this USC doubting is legitimate. USC hasn’t won a ton of games the last few years, and people who witnessed Lincoln Riley’s leadership during the Alex Grinch debacle certainly have some arrows in their quiver. Bringing Grinch back in 2023 had been the worst personnel decision of the 2020’s until earlier this year when Bill Belichick decided to make that girl he hangs out with (his granddaughter, I think?) into his manager and spokesperson. 

But some of the doubting isn’t legitimate; in fact, it seems downright disrespectful. USC beat LSU last year, but LSU is ranked high in these preseason polls and USC is nowhere to be seen. USC beat Texas A&M last year, but Texas A&M is ranked highly and USC is nowhere to be seen. And let that one sink in for a second. A&M is the biggest underachiever in college football history. This program has it all—money, facilities, fan support, incredible recruiting grounds—everything except for any history of success. As Ben Franklin said, the only sure things are death, taxes, and A&M having at least five losses. Yet the preseason polls love the Aggies and don’t like USC because of two bad seasons in Troy.

And Oklahoma! How is Oklahoma getting preseason love? OU hasn’t been relevant on the national scene since their old coach left. (What was that guy’s name again?) Venables has a worse record than Riley over the last three years, and he doesn’t have Riley’s history of success as a head coach before that. Venables was a good coordinator on Clemson teams with loaded rosters. But Riley had as many SEC wins last year as Venables did. OU will be lucky to get to seven wins this year. 

Putting OU in the top 25 and leaving out USC is disrespectful. 

I think a lot of people are in for a rude awakening.

There’s a great scene in Jaws when Chief Brody is chumming the water, not paying much attention to what he’s doing, and turns around just in time to see the massive shark lift his head out of the water a few feet away. Brody pops up, stunned, eyes frozen straight ahead, slowly walks backward into the cabin, and quietly tells Quint, without shifting his gaze once, “I think you’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Well, you know what? I think the Big 10 is gonna need a bigger boat. I don’t think these guys have any idea what’s circling around them.

Yes, they’ve noticed the recruiting class USC is putting together. You’ve probably heard the incessant whining from opposing fans about USC’s current NIL war chest. Apparently, you’re not supposed to buy players. Who knew?

What nobody is willing to say publicly is that Oregon, Ohio State, and a few other programs dramatically outspent everybody over the last three or four years, had a huge unfair advantage as a result, and built very good rosters largely by depositing booster money in high school kids’ bank accounts. 

And good rosters are the key to winning titles. Does anybody really think Dan Lanning and his staff are great coaches? Based on what? Because Georgia had a good defense in the short time Lanning was holding a clipboard for Kirby Smart on Georgia’s sideline? Of course they did. They had NFL players at every position, and Kirby Smart is a defensive genius. What does that have to do with Dan Lanning? 

I guess we should name Nick Holt a defensive genius for whipping that 2008 USC unit into shape when Pete Carroll wasn’t looking. And let’s not forget that Charlie Weis was the offensive genius that managed to win some games with Tom Brady at quarterback.

Great rosters win football games. Great coaching matters, of course. Some coaches can turn a great roster and an undefeated season into a 34-0 second quarter Rose Bowl deficit and a Cersei Lannister-level public humiliation. Other coaches might get their guys to show up for a game like that. But none of the greats—not Nick Saban, not Pete Carroll, not Urban Meyer, not John McKay, not Bear Bryant—won championships without great players.

That’s been a problem of late. For years USC was trying to recruit with Clay Helton as head coach, which was kind of like asking kids to play football at Chernobyl Junior College just days after the meltdown. USC basically had to give the kids and their families HazMat suits when they got off the plane for their official visits. 

Then USC was trying to recruit defensive players to play for Alex Grinch. What could be safer than entrusting your future NFL career to Alex Grinch? Selling that bill of goods is the equivalent of seeking a volunteer to put an apple on his head for the obviously drunk knife thrower at some traveling carnival outside of Tijuana. Step right up! Nothing to worry about, ladies and gentlemen. He’s a professional.

And to top it all off, USC was trying to recruit elite recruits in a pay-for-play world offering only Starbucks gift certificates. You see, USC lives with NCAA PTSD. For historical reasons, USC lives with the fear that the NCAA is just around the corner with a machete and a hockey mask. So when Oregon, Ohio State, A&M, and some others saw that the NCAA was emasculated and started spending like drunken sailors on the last night of leave, USC was asking elite recruits to choose an unpaid internship over Oregon’s rain, riches, and cannonballs. 

And, somehow, miraculously, Dan Lanning and staff were able to take that enormous financial advantage and use it to win some recruiting battles. It’s one of life’s great mysteries how he managed to do that; we’ll probably have to wait for Lanning’s memoirs or Carl Woodward’s tell-all to get the whole story. 

So I get it if national pundits don’t know what’s going on. And I understand if the same Big 10 reporters who thought every year that Pete Carroll’s teams were too soft to beat Iowa in the Orange Bowl or any of those other Big 10 teams in the Rose Bowl still don’t give USC very much respect. How could we expect otherwise?

But here’s what they might be missing. USC now has a great coaching staff, great administrative staff, and full coffers, and the Trojans are acquiring talent. People are starting to see this and don’t like it. People are only choosing USC because of the money, say Oregon fans doing as they mock the kettle for his blackness. USC is spending irresponsibly, according to Ohio State fans who just watched their team win the national title with a higher payroll than most Major League Baseball teams. And SEC fans are terrified. They remember how hard it was to talk about their conference’s dominance when Pete Carroll was shutting out Auburn, hanging 70 on Arkansas, and generally running through the south like a pissed-off Sherman with a beach house. 

All this complaining by opposing fans is silly and, if we’re honest, should make us feel good. When people aren’t complaining about USC football, it’s because USC football is self-sanctioning and not acting like USC football.

The whole college football world can see that USC is loading up on talent in this upcoming recruiting class. Some still cling to hope that the class will fall apart when USC loses a lot of games. Most probably understand that USC is upgrading its roster in a massive way and they’ll just have to deal with that. But in the future. Only in the future.

But just about all of them are wrong on the timing. Most of the hacks that put together preseason polls are just chumming the water, writing for clicks, not realizing the size of the shark that is swimming below them.

I get it. It’s hard to know much about every team in the Big 10 or every major program in the country. So you just look at last year’s record, see who has a returning QB or a big-name transfer QB, and assume those guys will be good. Some of them will be. And nobody gets fired for stupid preseason polls, anyway.

But this USC team will be good. This is a top-25 defense. Yep, I’ve said it. The second year in D’Anton Lynn’s system, the second year with these elite position coaches, a dramatically upgraded front line, two big-time playmakers in the back seven in Eric Gentry and Kamari Ramsey, and depth in the secondary. That’s a good unit. There are some question marks—linebacker depth (particularly in light of Gentry’s injury history), and pass rush—but everybody has some question marks. This USC defense will be good. There’s too much talent and the coaching is just too good for them to be anything but good.

Offensively, the O line and QB are still question marks. But I trust Riley to develop a much better Jayden Maiava, who is talented and is getting his first real off-season as a starter. The O line? We’ll see. I think the unit will be average or slightly above average. If so, USC’s offense will get lots of yards and lots of points. 

But let’s have some straight talk. Last year USC had a very un-Riley-like offense with frequent crippling mistakes from the quarterback position and, at least for the first half of the year, offensive tackles that didn’t block so much as, I think, engage in passive-aggressive dialogue with opposing edge rushers. (I guess you can hit the quarterback if that’s what you really want to do. I just thought you were better than that.). It’s reasonable to expect much better play at the tackle position this year.

But even with USC’s quarterbacks making it rain pick sixes and USC playing some games with only three linemen and nine total offensive players, USC still finished 23rd in total offense last year. That’s right. You didn’t realize that because the Trojans threw the game away at the very end almost every week. That sort of thing rarely happens in back-to-back years. 

USC will have a top-25 offense. USC is highly likely to have a top-25 defense. With a top-25 O and D USC will absolutely be a top-25 team.

But I’m willing to take it a step further. Fortune favors the bold! I think USC has a real shot at the playoff. They need to beat Illinois on the road. But look closely at Illinois last season and you’ll see a team that is statistically unimpressive and won a lot of close games. Seasons like that almost always lead to a letdown the following year. Illinois was basically USC but they won the close ones instead of dropping them. Statistically the teams were very close. Illinois will be an experienced team playing at home; that’s never an easy assignment. But Illinois is not a great team, and that’s a winnable game.

Win that, and USC needs to beat the teams it’s supposed to beat and win three of these five: home against Michigan, at Notre Dame, at Nebraska, home against Iowa, at Oregon. That’s not easy, but it’s definitely possible. 

So I’m making my call now. USC goes 10-2 with a win over the Irish and makes the college football playoff. 

If the Big 10 and national reporters want to keep chumming the water without paying attention to what’s swimming circles around them right now, so be it. They’ll find out soon enough.