That was one horribly-coached football game on Saturday night in the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Lincoln Riley and Alex Grinch turned in a very poor performance. USC was soft and disorganized and fundamentally unprepared. Arizona had a different problem. The Wildcats were ready to play, and they took the fight to USC for most of the night, but they came undone with untimely penalties and some very bad situational decisions from coach Jedd Fisch.
Game management was a very big problem for a number of coaches on Saturday in college football. Mario Cristobal of Miami did not take a knee, and his Hurricanes fumbled away a win over Georgia Tech. Riley and Fisch both flailed and floundered in the USC-Arizona game, but ultimately, Arizona’s situational coaching was a little bit worse.
Let’s go through the many missteps of the two coaches, with Arizona giving USC that last push over the finish line on a night which was hugely entertaining for neutral fans but extremely annoying for USC and Arizona fans: