The USC Trojans don’t look good right now, given the report from Saturday Down South that the school wanted to back out of its Week 1 2024 college football game against the LSU Tigers in Las Vegas. It never looks good when a school wants to get out of a big-game contract. You know the “Lincoln Riley is scared!” articles are going to be written across the country. USC fans will just have to accept that. Yet, while the optics aren’t great, we can all acknowledge the thought process the Trojans had. It’s not a terrible one.
USC is moving into the Big Ten. The Trojans play Notre Dame every year. A schedule with nine Big Ten games plus Notre Dame plus LSU is pretty brutal. The desire to not want to play LSU this year is understandable, even though the Trojans are going to get hammered in national and SEC markets as a result of this revelation.
SEC teams manage their schedules well and don’t get punished for playing cupcake games. USC wanted to similarly level its own playing field, but the logistics were simply too overwhelming.
The Trojans will just have to beat LSU and silence the criticisms coming their way.
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