It is one of the comforting, soothing rhythms of college football, even when a season is miserable: A series of fall Saturdays, whether successful or frustrating, builds to the end-of-season rivalry game, the emotional crescendo which can either salvage a year for the struggling side or complete a great season for the more successful team in the matchup.
USC and UCLA usually work their way through September, October, and the first half of November before locking horns in the clash for 52 weeks of bragging rights in Los Angeles. It’s the pre-Thanksgiving moment Angelenos look forward to every year, after the Dodgers lose in October and before the Lakers’ season shifts into high gear: The Trojans and Bruins meet in the Coliseum or the Rose Bowl. Even in years when the two football programs are struggling, USC-UCLA creates excitement, a visual feast, and an emotional centerpiece for students and alumni.
It is easy to want the contours of college football to remain the same, and to relish that slowly-building anticipation leading up to USC-UCLA in mid-to-late November. It is familiar and reassuring to know that USC-UCLA is there, in the background, the game which puts the finishing touch on a season.
There is just one problem: This is not the year — or the set of circumstances — in which to accept that college football can remain the same.
It can’t. It won’t. You don’t have to like it, but it won’t be the same.
Therefore, let me ask you this question: If you were to be presented with two scenarios — one being we don’t play any games at all, the other being that we play only three or four games, with USC-UCLA being one of them — which would you take?
I would venture to guess that most would prefer the latter scenario: At least have a USC-UCLA game if we can’t play anything close to a full schedule.
Translation: Don’t wait until late November, Pac-12, in order to play USC-UCLA and the other rivalry games in the conference. If we have any football at all, make sure to play the rivalry games this season, which points to a late September or very early October date.
The Pac-12 hasn’t yet finished crafting its adjusted conference-only game schedule, the league’s response to the pandemic and the limitations it is creating. As it hammers out the details of this adjusted schedule, let’s add two and two to get four:
The removal of nonconference games creates more schedule openings in September. UCLA, for instance, was scheduled to play San Diego State on Sept. 19. Now that date will either have a conference game or become open.
If we play college football at all this fall, an ideal setup within this less-than-ideal situation is to have the rivalry games be the second games each team plays. Give every Pac-12 team an opening game which isn’t a rivalry game, so that the kinks can be worked out then.
In the next game, play the rivalry game so that the task is completed and alumni throughout the Pac-12 will not have to go through a long offseason knowing their big rivalry game was never played. Give people this form of psychological, emotional release. They deserve it, provided we can play at least a few college football games in the coming months.