The USC athletic department held a USC media day for local reporters on Wednesday. Lincoln Riley addressed the media, and various coaches and players spoke to the assembled group of people who regularly follow USC football. There was plenty of coachspeak and boilerplate commentary on the state of the Trojans, but there is always something of value to be found at these events, sometimes in ways that words don’t directly convey. Seeing the excitement of the coaches and players reveals something about the state of the team and how cohesive it is. Reading the body language of coaches and players in the room conveys a sense of how confident and prepared everyone is — or isn’t — for the road ahead.
At USC football this year, the offseason has felt longer than it has in a long time, for the simple reason that USC has rarely had a season as frustrating as the one it just endured in 2023. Yes, USC has had a lot of frustrating seasons under Clay Helton and, before him, Steve Sarkisian and Lane Kiffin. However, we haven’t recently had a season at USC in which expectations were super-high, coming off a really good year, only for the program to suffer. Let’s explain that comment.
In 2018, USC was horrible, but there was a sense the program would be bad because Sam Darnold left for the NFL. USC was not expected to be great in 2018, so there wasn’t a sense that high expectations were unfulfilled.
In 2017, USC did well, winning a Pac-12 title one year after winning the Rose Bowl in the 2016 season.
In 2022, USC won 11 games and set the table for huge expectations in 2023, but USC fell short. We haven’t had that kind of pattern (and outcome) at USC since 2012, when the 2011 season — in which the team overachieved under Kiffin — created huge expectations for 2012 which then went unmet. So, it has been over a full decade since we’ve had a crushingly disappointing season at USC. That’s why this 2024 offseason was so long. Well, it’s over.
We attended USC media day and will be bringing you a lot of stories from that event in the coming days.
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