Musings from Arledge: USC get bullied again in South Bend

Surprised?

It seems everybody in the country knew what was going to happen last night. Vegas knew, even though we scoffed at the point spread. The national pundits knew, even though we took offense at their almost-unanimous predictions. The Irish fans knew, and boy were they smug. The Notre Dame players and coaches absolutely knew. They had no doubt. And I wonder if our players and coaches knew, also.

We, the USC fan base, were the only people fooled. We convinced ourselves that this USC team was different. Bigger. Tougher. More physical. We convinced ourselves that the giant, waving red flag in the rear-view mirror—that embarrassing defensive effort at Illinois—was an aberration, the result of bad chicken, not bad football. Michigan showed us the real team! And after all, Notre Dame was down a center and a run-stopping defensive tackle. Big advantage for the good guys, right? Was this the first year since Carroll’s tenure that USC might even have an advantage in the trenches? 

What fools we were. That game played out exactly the way everybody not wearing cardinal-and-gold colored glasses knew it would. Everybody knew USC had some skill talent and would make some plays. But Notre Dame would just beat up the Trojans, gut punch after gut punch until USC couldn’t take any more. Just like 2013 and 2015 and 2017 and 2019 and 2021 and 2023.  

I give Lincoln Riley some slack in light of the smoking crater of a roster that Clay Helton left behind—Clay the flower child: make hugs not first downs—and in light of USC’s unwillingness to join the NIL, pay-for-play game as quickly as the other major powers. There is no way Lincoln Riley could have a roster that would compete with Ohio State right now, although it is also fair to say that USC’s portal misses have not helped. The Trojans added two SEC defensive lineman, two offensive linemen, and an experienced corner this offseason. Most of those guys couldn’t crack the starting lineup. None have lived up to their billing. 

But there’s always been one huge problem with the talent narrative, because there is one critical component of a good football team that doesn’t depend upon top-five recruiting classes: toughness. Bill Snyder, Kyle Whittingham, Curt Cignetti, and a whole bunch of other coaches didn’t need to recruit like Georgia and Alabama to build toughness. And some coaches never develop tough football teams even if they recruit like monsters. I’m not going to name any names.

Lincoln Riley’s mentor was an excellent football coach. Mike Leach was creative, competitive, and probably the best interview in football history. But Leach and his mentor, Hal Mumme, developed the Air Raid offense because they coached at schools that could not compete physically with the top programs. If you can’t compete with their Jimmys and Joes, you must find an advantage in the X’s and O’s. 

But the best programs are built on physical football. On brutality.  Those programs know they can pick up a yard on 4th and 1 by running the &^%* football because it’s their identity. It’s who they are. They recruit and train to do just that. They don’t have to be cute and try to get the quarterback outside on 4th and 1.

And they don’t tolerate getting gashed for more than 300 yards on the ground. Lincoln Riley and his staff knew that Notre Dame had a freshman quarterback—a talented kid, but a kid—and the best pair of running backs in the country. They knew that Notre Dame would commit to a downhill running game to take away USC’s will. They knew that and they still let the Irish pummel them for three bills. 

I’m usually pretty good with words, but I don’t have the words to describe just how much I hate that. 

It’s extremely difficult to win a football game when the other team’s running backs go for 315 yards on 37 carries. If the other guys can pick up 8.5 yards per carry, you need a lot of breaks to keep the game close, and just about everything else has to go perfectly. Notre Dame did their part; they threw one of the worst interceptions you’ll ever see on 3rd and goal at the 2, and they pretty regularly decided to maintain balance—coaches love “balance”!—by throwing when they could have just run the ball down USC’s throat on every down. Every pass play called was a gift.

But as for the everything else going perfectly part, well. USC threw late and behind a crossing route at a key time, called a trick play that turned into a debacle at a key time, passed on a field goal early, and pissed away their momentum and the game by giving up a brutal kickoff return touchdown right as they had taken the lead. Was there an uncalled hold on that play? Sure. There was also a missed tackle where an unblocked defender hit Price square in the midsection and bounced off—you have to wrap up and hold on for dear life there—and there were a bunch of other guys standing around who looked like they never really expected a return since USC gets touchbacks on nearly every kickoff. Somebody else will probably get him.

Everything else going perfectly? Of course not. Lots of things didn’t go perfectly. That’s football. And life.

And in what really should not be a shocking turn of events, the team that ran for 306 yards beat the team that ran for 68. Death, taxes, and losing when you get out rushed by 238 yards—just a few of life’s certainties.

In modern college football, you move up the ladder as an offensive coach by being creative and explosive offensively. And Lincoln Riley has parlayed his real offensive skills into two of the best jobs in college football and nine-figure career earnings. He is who he is, and who he is has given him a pretty great life. 

But who he is won’t solve what ails USC football. He needs to change for the results to change. 

It’s not an accident that the last USC coach to dominate the Notre Dame rivalry was a coach who believed in physical football. In 2001, first-year coach Pete Carroll lost to Kansas State at the Coliseum. It was a close, ugly, low-scoring game. After the game somebody handed Pete Carroll the stat sheet showing that K State had over 300 yards rushing. Carroll dropped the stat sheet on the floor, disgusted, and walked away. Giving up 300 yards on the ground was an embarrassing failure for a coach like Pete Carroll. 

I doubt Lincoln Riley reacted the same way. No, he didn’t want to give up 300 yards rushing. But was it a personal affront? I doubt it. Watch the way USC played defense and you can tell it wasn’t. I hate to think it, but I suspect what kept Lincoln Riley up last night wasn’t getting pushed around all damn night. I suspect he wishes Maiava didn’t throw late and behind the receiver on that pick. Gotta execute that Air Raid, people!

The first job of any defense is to stop the run and make the opponent one-dimensional and playing behind the sticks. I know Lincoln Riley and D’Anton Lynn have forgotten more football than I’ll ever know. But I know that rule of defensive football, and maybe with their heads all crammed with exotic and sophisticated stuff, they’ve forgotten Football 101. And if you’re playing a team that prides itself on physical play, a team that has two great running backs and a freshman quarterback, committing yourself to taking away the run seems like an absolute no-brainer.

But I guess it isn’t. 

Notre Dame’s linebackers were coming downhill, right now, and with aggression. That’s not what USC does. I’ve been critical of USC’s young linebackers, who tend to stand around watching things develop and end up catching blockers three, four, or five yards from the line of scrimmage. I think I owe them an apology. That must be what Lynn and Rob Ryan are teaching, because it happens over and over, week after week, and the coaches talk about how Desman Stephens is really picking things up. Quick learner, they say.

Cool. But maybe we should teach some new stuff. Like getting downhill, running to open grass, and filling the hole with bad intentions. And, yes, I know that makes it harder to stop the RPO game, and I know those short routes over the middle are harder to defend after play action. But you know what? I don’t care. You cannot—you cannot!—let teams gash you over and over on the ground. It’s hard to win that way, for starters. At least if you make the other team throw you might get a drop or a tipped ball. Not much goes wrong for the offense if they just push you off the ball and pick up nine yards on first down. Worse, it’s embarrassing and demoralizing to lose that way. Football is a tough game played by tough men. I would always rather lose by giving up 400 passing yards to a skilled quarterback than lose because I get pushed around and gave up 300 rushing yards. One sucks; the other is humiliating and emasculating.

The fact that Lincoln Riley and his defensive staff apparently don’t feel that way really bothers me. Indeed, the fact that Lincoln Riley is talking about stalemates at the line of scrimmage and guys missing their gaps is not reassuring. Either he’s delusional, or USC gave up successful run plays almost every down because USC missed their gaps almost every single run play. I’m not sure which to root for. 

Notre Dame committed to stopping the run. They put guys in the box, played aggressively on the outside, and told their defensive backs to cover USC’s wideouts as best they could because they were not going to get beat on the ground. And they did this knowing that their defensive backs would struggle at times. And they did. They gave up some big plays. They grabbed jerseys over and over out of desperation. But by making USC one-dimensional, they eventually made just enough plays to win.

USC should have done the same, damn thing. It’s infuriating that they didn’t, that they won’t.

It’s not bad chicken, people, it’s bad culture. Air Raid culture. Cute X’s and O’s culture. Soft culture. Helton culture. And now Riley culture.

Don’t talk to me about the officials. Yes, there were plenty of bad calls. But you don’t get to complain about officiating when you get bullied for 60 minutes. You just don’t. Play tough football the way I suspect our guys want to play, the way USC football teams were famous for playing, and then if the game comes down to a bad call, we’ll talk about it. 

And, yes, the playcalling left a lot to be desired. But I’m not really interested in talking about that, either. Everybody’s playcalling looks better when their team can run the ball. When you get your butts kicked in the trenches, your options shrink, you start to get desperate with more “creative” playcalling, and the likelihood of disastrous mistakes goes way, way up. That’s football.

I want to talk about only one thing. Softness. Getting bullied. Getting punched in the face all game for what feels like the 300th year in a row by the Irish. And having the same thing happen against Illinois(!) a few weeks ago. And having it happen against all of the other teams that have given USC a wedgie in front of tens of thousands of spectators and a television audience over the last 16 years. 

I’m sick of watching it. Riley is paid to fix it, whether he knows that or not. Whether he likes that or not. And if he can’t fix it, he should go call cute plays somewhere else.

I’m not calling for his dismissal. It’s not financially feasible, and the disruption would be bad for the program. I’m asking him to be an elite football coach—one worthy of his eight-figure annual salary—instead of being a cute Air Raid technician who’s good with quarterbacks. I’m asking him to be a head coach, one worthy of the cardinal and gold.

Last night was my 29th USC-Notre Dame game in person. The record is 14-14-1 in those contests. There was a time, thanks to Pete Carroll, that the record was heavily slanted in USC’s favor. But when Pete left and the offensive guys took over—the three clever ones and the dim, huggy one—things took an unfortunate turn. It’s hard to be clever when you’re getting punched in the mouth. And after seeing victories in my first five trips to South Bend—imagine that!—I’ve now sat through seven straight losses, all of which looked pretty similar. In every single one of them, Notre Dame was just tougher than USC.

USC-Notre Dame is a great rivalry, and not because the teams hate each other. There are lots of rivalries where the teams and fan bases hate each other: Kansas-Missouri, Oregon-Oregon State, even William Jewell-Baker was heated back in the day. The reason USC-Notre Dame is one of the great rivalries is because of the mutual excellence of the programs. Nobody outside of Oregon ever cared about the Civil War; why would they? Bad teams, bad games, bad weather. But the whole nation watched USC-Notre Dame, because so often major bowl games, Heisman Trophies, and national championships were at stake. It was big man on big man. Elite versus elite. 

This game didn’t become great with USC playing like Cal. I wouldn’t care about Cal-Notre Dame. Nobody would. 

This 29th USC-Notre Dame game could be my last. We don’t know what’s going to happen to the rivalry. I’ve been critical of that. It’s a huge part of USC’s tradition and one of the great traditions in college football. It’s not something to give up lightly. 

But if USC is going to keep playing like Cal, maybe USC should drop the series. If Lincoln Riley is going to put on USC’s logo and coach guys wearing USC’s famous uniforms, he needs to put a USC product on the field. That doesn’t mean USC will be great every year. You’ll have some rebuilding years, some years where injuries ravage the roster, years where the quarterback play isn’t as good as it usually is. That’s football. But never should USC be okay with getting pushed around. Never should USC be okay with getting slapped on the back of the head and pushed in a locker. And if it happens in year two and year three, you better expect it not to happen in year four. And if it’s still happening in year four, what exactly are we building here?

There’s an ancient story about one of Alexander the Great’s soldiers being brought before him after the young man had fled the battlefield.  The King asked the soldier his name. “Alexander,” he replied. To which the great conqueror thundered, “Change your conduct or change your name!” Being that USC can’t change its name, it needs to change its conduct. If you’re not calling yourself Cal, quit freakin’ acting like it.

Lincoln Riley doesn’t know me, I’m sure he doesn’t read my stuff, and I doubt if he could possibly care less what I think. It probably doesn’t matter to him that I’m sick of spending a fortune to travel to the middle of Nowhere, Indiana to sit in a monsoon until I develop Trench Foot like some poor bastard in a muddy trench in Flanders, so I can take verbal abuse from Irish idiots, then put up with that horrific late-night ride back to Chicago, which is—after a USC loss—the closest modern equivalent to the Donner party’s journey, all so I can watch USC get bullied like Cal. Riley probably doesn’t care that I’m sick of it, but I’m really, really sick of it. I suspect many of you are, too.

And I think the guy who got the nine-figure contract to oversee the USC football program should be committed—not just committed; should do absolutely everything he can—to make sure that the guys wearing that uniform today play in a way that would bring pride to guys like Ronnie Lott, Junior Seau, Troy Polamalu, Charles White, Mike Williams, Richard Wood, and Sam Bam Cunningham. Those guys and a whole lot of others gave the USC name meaning for college football fans. They made the uniforms and the horse and the girls in the sweaters famous. They made the USC-Notre Dame game one of the greatest rivalries and traditions in all of sport. They did it by punching the other guy in the face harder than he punched them. 

What we watched from USC last night is does not live up to that standard. In fact, it was embarrassing. USC has been getting bullied for far too long. Enough.