Musings from Arledge: Water pipes, impound lots and a must-win win for Lincoln Riley and the USC Trojans

The Build-Up

It’s nine hours before game time. Last night, our WeAreSC meet and greet was sabotaged by a plumbing disaster at the venue just hours before. Still, a handful of people showed up for the event, and we had a nice discussion. I was asked if the plumbing fiasco was a bad omen, maybe a sign that the college football gods weren’t going to be smiling on USC the next day. It may be. Or it may be a sign of a bad water pipe. Hard to tell right now. But the college football gods are paying attention to this one, I suspect. This is a big game.

There are a lot of things to dislike about the current state of college football. Great traditions have fallen by the wayside; unrestricted free agency strains the connection between fan base and player; the Rose Bowl doesn’t mean anything any more; Oregon. 

But on a day like today, I can appreciate that all the changes have also given us something special: USC and Michigan in the Coliseum. More games between the blue bloods is good, and this is one of the ultimate helmet games. It would be a big game regardless of the records.

But this one feels bigger. We shouldn’t exaggerate the impact of one game. LSU felt like a turning point last year; it wasn’t. But after the Illinois debacle—and stop arguing with me; getting pushed around all day by the Illinois offensive line is a debacle—USC really needs to show they’re a physical football team and not what they’ve been almost every season since 2008.

Fans and pundits will always call USC soft. It’s a cultural thing. Californians are supposed to be soft, and there’s some merit to that. You have to be tough to live in Chicago in the winter. Heading outside in January in shorts and a T-shirt to feel the sunshine on your face? Not so much. If you live in places without sunshine and girls in bikinis and restaurants that serve some non-fried foods, it feels good to talk bad about the west coast people. Sometimes this talk is nonsense. Fans and pundits from the south and Midwest talked about how Pete Carroll’s teams would get pushed around, too. Even after winning a national title or two we’d still hear that drivel. Right up until the point when the talk stopped. 

Having a swollen mouth makes it harder to talk. And Pete’s teams would absolutely play with speed and flash. But they’d also punch you right in your stupid face, without mercy and without apology. Oklahoma fans know. So do Auburn fans. And Arkansas. And Notre Dame. And all the Big Ten teams that Pete routinely crushed in the Rose Bowl. They were the soft ones. 

But the chatter now is different. Because it’s true. USC has been soft. Lincoln Riley made a commitment to building an elite defensive staff and getting much bigger in the trenches. They were good moves. We applauded them. 

But you are what you do. And USC walked on the field two weeks ago under a bright spotlight and did what all of the fans and pundits from other parts of the country always expect them to do. They got beat up defensively. 

There are excuses, some of which may even be valid. But none of that matters, as Lincoln Riley knows, which is why he didn’t talk about any of those excuses. At some point, USC has to end the narrative by ending the play that feeds it. 

There is no such thing as a great, finesse football program. Finesse teams can win games. They can sometimes beat great teams. But you cannot win consistently as a finesse team. Because if you play enough games, you’re going to play some games that come down to stopping somebody on 4th and goal or whether your offense to run the ball and run out the clock with four minutes left and a four-point lead. Other programs know that USC can score points. They just don’t think USC can impose its will when the game requires it.

At some point USC needs to show that it can. Today is a great opportunity. And if they can’t do it against a good but not great Michigan team in the Coliseum, does anybody really think they can do it in South Bend or Eugene later in the year? This is likely the game that determines whether USC shows that its culture is changing and really is a program on the rise, or it’s the game that ensures another 7-5 season and a mad scramble to hold onto the recruiting class as the playoff teams come knocking on recruits’ doors in early December talking about how USC is soft and a career dead end. 

I wish I felt more confident that this team will answer the bell in the trenches. 

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A brief interlude

Money is the great equalizer. Uncle Phil’s checkbook in Eugene has allowed Oregon to paper over a whole lot of serious problems: a lack of tradition, too much distance from quality recruiting grounds, illiteracy, embarrassing uniforms, the stench of lots of people who never shower. Money buys things. It buys facilities. It buys publicity. It buys coaches and players. 

Money has been in college football for a long time. SEC players have long been friends with the local car dealers and, yes, I’ve heard what LenDale has to say about his time at USC. But it’s different now. Now that pay-for-play is essentially legal (if done through the school’s collective), the traditional programs have lost much of their traditional advantage. In the old days, USC could dominate Southern California recruiting. Kids stayed close to home most of the time, because why play at Oregon or Wazzu when you won’t win and wouldn’t be playing with the best?

Now families get money to fly to games, and the lure of a paycheck makes it much easier for a second-tier program to sell themselves to elite recruits. Talent will become more spread out. The days of Carroll, Saban, or Meyer stacking the roster with blue-chip recruits three, four, or five deep are over. Kids won’t wait for three years to play when they can play today and get a new Mercedes somewhere else. The top schools will still have a talent advantage, but the gap is shrinking. Parity is coming, whether we like it or not.

Now the Big Ten is about to institute another parity-creating measure with this outside investor deal. The conference says the cash infusion will allow its lower-level programs to compete with the SEC. It won’t, at least if you’re saying that Northwestern will be on par with Alabama. Only Penn State. But it will allow a lot of programs to target select recruits and steal them from the big boys. It will allow programs that have some natural advantages but have little commitment and lack the finances to compete — cough, cough, UCLA — to make a run at much better recruiting classes. It will help the Bruins and Northwestern, Rutgers and Purdue. And it will help them at USC’s expense. This is why Ohio State and Michigan came out against the plan in the early stages. USC should oppose it and try to stop it. I doubt they will.

USC has never fought for its interests the way it needed to. USC has to travel long distances to away games now because the old Pac-10 blew up a deal that would have brought Texas and Oklahoma to the conference and made the conference an elite destination for players and TV deals for years to come. They blew it up, I’m told, because they didn’t want Texas to be able to do its Longhorns Network. They wanted to do a conference-wide TV plan that would benefit everybody equally. In practical terms, they sold their future to subsidize Larry Scott’s stupid scheme that led to the conference’s disintegration. But at least everybody shared equally. And that’s what matters to the have nots. We can’t have Oklahoma, Texas, and USC —the programs that people in other parts of the country might actually want to watch on television — making more than the programs that nobody cares about and don’t bring viewers. 

Now I think USC is repeating its mistake. It’s going to give up its natural advantages to help the have nots better compete with Troy. Any deal that allows the lower-level programs to compete better with the SEC also allows the lower-level programs to more effectively compete with USC, Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State. And the Big Ten have-nots are far more focused on the latter than they are the former.

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What the *^$?

It’s 3:25, only an hour and five minutes before the scheduled kickoff. I’m 6.7 miles south of the Coliseum trying to find my friend’s car. This was not the plan.

We had already been to campus. We spent a few hours at Marc Kulkin’s tailgate where the lovely Helen of Troy took on the task of voluntary sales associate and helped me unload some WeAreSC T-shirts—there are still good deal to be had!—and I consumed a great deal of food that I did not bring and did not pay for. It was freeloading at its finest. A little after 3:00 we walk back to my buddy’s car so I can drop off the remaining shirts and get into the Coliseum early enough to savor the atmosphere and stew in my pregame stress. 

The car is gone!

I dismissed my first thought—theft—because Oregon wasn’t even in town, which means grand theft auto didn’t make any sense. And then we saw her: Lovely Rita Meter Maid fast at work moving cars to less-desirable locations. She confirmed that, yes, she had been instrumental in the disappearance of my friend’s car. She gave us an address where we could retrieve it. She was quite chipper for somebody of her profession. She smiled. She provided the best customer service you can imagine from a public-sector employee whose job is the theft of expensive personal property. I almost liked her.

We quickly acquired an Uber and begin our drive south only to discover, to our horror, that Rita had misled us. The car was not here. The guy behind the counter at least knew where we could find it; it was 37 minutes away and just a couple of miles west of the Coliseum. Some other poor bastard was in the same lobby with the same problem. He, too, had been misled by the Lovely Rita, but he was taking the detour much better than I was. He was just hanging out having a chat with the Duck Dynasty-looking dude behind the counter. Wait! Who has his car towed, is sent to the wrong place, and just plops down for a good-natured chat with the guy behind the bar? Gotta love this weather, huh? Has the world gone mad?

I briefly considered whether I should just abandon my buddy and just get to the game. His car, his problem. Yes, he’s been my best friend since high school and, yes, I was part of the two-person committee that decided to park in the (sadly, prohibited) parking spot. But I could always find another lifelong best friend, one who didn’t put at risk my attendance at big games. Some things are too important.

But would Forrest have left Bubba and the rest of his platoon? Would Lando betray Han? Would Doc Holliday send the Earp Brothers to shoot up the Cowboys without his gun in the fray? No, yes, and “that is a hell of a thing for you to say to me” are the answers to those questions. No, I was committed. I was in this fight, and I would see it through to the end. 

Back to the same Uber. Fortunately, he was still in the neighborhood. Traffic is bad. All those people showing up late to the Coliseum. It’s 4:03 as we arrive at the correct impound lot. We managed to talk to the attendant on the phone on the way. She confirmed the car was there and that she would have the paperwork ready. She did. She was also surprisingly friendly. How can it be that everybody involved in the legal auto theft industry is this chipper? Have they all been run through the Chick-fil-a or Disney training programs? Why are they happier than the higher-paid professionals in my industry? Is ruining my afternoon really that much fun?

We have the car now. The paperwork was as nonsensical as you would imagine—multiple hard copies, duplicates, all requiring separate signatures. But we persevere as champions must. It’s 4:06 and we’re on our way.

I text Erik McKinney. What time is the actual kickoff? He tells me the countdown clock shows a 4:36 kick. We have a shot! Was it over when the Germans bombed…?

It’s a 19-minute drive according to the car GPS. We need green lights and a parking space. We get the former (mostly) and other than one slow pedestrian that cost us about 17 seconds (and almost paid for it with her life), we were out of the car at 4:26 and in sight of the Grey Lady. We start jogging. You know, for a bit, then we get tired and pretend we’re stopping because we don’t want to be rude and jostle the crowd around us. That’s not the reason. We walk fast. 

The security line is long. My tardy is excused, but I doubt these other people have notes from a towing company. They also seem largely untroubled that they might miss the kickoff. They’re not even scowling or rushing through the process like a good American would. Sigh. Los Angeles.

We get to our seats and miss only five plays. (I will recuse myself from any discussion of the first five plays of the game, as WeAreSC columnist ethics dictate.) Okay, breathe. It could have been much worse.

Post-Game

Yes, things could have been worse. And, of course, things are actually going to get much, much better. 

You are what you do. USC rebuilt its defensive line, hired an elite defensive staff, and talked up the depth and strength of its offensive line. And while the O line had performed well against the relatively weak competition on the slate thus far, it’s hard to get that Illinois performance from the defense out of my mind. Just as it’s hard to forget that in recent years any time USC appears to be regaining its traditional form, they fall on their faces. Nobody trusts us because we haven’t been trustworthy.

Not today. That was a gutty, tough, resilient performance. A statement performance. A Trojan-like performance. 

This is not the best Michigan team I’ve ever seen. But it’s Michigan: they have athletes, an excellent running game, and a solid front seven. This is the kind of team that is supposed to push around the finesse Trojans, and over the last few years, that’s almost always the way it plays out.

Instead USC dominated both lines of scrimmage. USC’s beat-up offensive line protected Maiava spectacularly and gashed Michigan in the run game as the game went on. They doubled up Michigan’s rushing total. They rolled up almost 200 rushing yards after halftime. They beat up on Michigan like Biff used to beat up on George McFly.

Gentlemen, listen up. I’m looking for a freshman walk-on who can run out there in front of all these people and a national television audience and kick Michigan right in the stones? Do I have any volunteers? Okay, what’s your name, son? King? Okay, King, let’s see what you’ve got.

Gentlemen, listen up. Our running back room is decimated by injuries. Is there an injured guy on this sideline who hasn’t been preparing to play and didn’t expect to play who can suit up real quick and drive one last dagger into Michigan’s back? Okay, Jackson, the spotlight is yours.

USC pushed around Michigan. That sentence has relatively little literary merit, but it’s one of my favorite sentences ever composed for WeAreSC. USC punched the Wolverines in the face. And then did it again. And again. They treated them the way Pete Carroll, John McKay, and a young John Robinson would have. If that doesn’t warm your Trojan soul, you just don’t have one.

The secondary was good. Yep, you read that right. With the exception, really, of one inexcusable play—up 17 in the fourth quarter there’s only one thing you cannot do—the secondary harassed Michigan’s receivers, got off the field on third down, and helped Bishop the Ballhawk pick up picks four and five.

Makai was Makai again. Ja’Kobi made plays. The tight ends made plays. (Two hands on the ball!) 

And Jayden Maiava continues to exceed any reasonable expectations. Yeah, I know. I like to think of it this way. Good Jayden, the one we’ve seen almost all year, was 25-31 for 265 yards and two scores. Bad Jayden made a brief cameo and was 0-1 with a spectacularly bad, almost mystifying pick. Our top scientists could study that decision for years and never come up with a good explanation. But being that Maiava’s Mr. Hyde almost never makes an appearance these days, let’s just praise the guy and his mentor, Lincoln Riley, who is still the best quarterback developer in the nation and was wise enough to see what he had in Jayden Maiava.

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But what does it all mean?

USC has some major challenges on the horizon. Turning around and making a road trip to South Bend against a very good Notre Dame team is an enormous obstacle. The road trip to Eugene is hairy to say the least. Even home games against Iowa and UCLA (!) aren’t gimmes, and Lincoln, Nebraska will be loud and ready for USC. There is a ton of work to do, and we don’t know how this season will turn out.

But we know this: USC’s defense got humiliated two weeks ago, and all of the (potentially legitimate) excuses for that performance—food poisoning, an early start, long travel, etc.—don’t disguise the fact that elite programs have to overcome all of that stuff and show up if they want to be champions.

I questioned USC’s will after that performance. I was skeptical that they would meet Michigan’s physicality. And I was right. They didn’t match it. They exceeded it in every way. That was a must-win game for the program and for Lincoln Riley. And USC went out and took it, not with a high-octane, flashy offense that just barely managed to outscore the Wolverines. They took it by smashing Michigan in the face, by dominating Michigan at its own game. USC’s players and coaching staff have every reason to be proud of themselves. For one night at least, it certainly looked like this program really is back on the rise. Recruits can see it. We can see it.

Now nurse those bumps and bruises and get ready. Because there is nothing bigger for USC than taking on the Irish in South Bend. I can’t freakin’ wait.