Ask any USC fan to list some of the great traditions about the USC football team and you will inevitably get to the fact that they do not put names on the back of their football jerseys. In fact, USC is now the only college — Notre Dame has broken the tradition and put names on jerseys, even if the school doesn’t do it as a matter of course — to have never put a name on the back of the jersey. The story goes at USC that the name on the front is more important than the name on the back, but that could all change for USC with a new NCAA rule allowing player latitude on social justice causes.
Similar to a professional athletes, NCAA athletes of all sports now have the chance to put a name or cause or commemoration on the back of their jersey. While there has been some complaining on social media (duh), the larger portion of society has no issue with the rule. Honestly, who cares if students want to put a different name on the back of their jersey. Have they not earned that with their sweat and blood equity? Haven’t they given enough to the schools and supporters of those schools that they could shut up and support their athletes as they make important stands? It really does boggle the mind that anyone has any issue with this.
But where this gets interesting for USC is if only one or two athletes decide to break that tradition or feel, much like Kaepernick did, that taking a noted stand is sometimes the best way to inspire change. What if those few athletes wanted to do this, but the rest of the team was against it? The PR on that situation would look awful for USC if there were any notion of trying to prevent that from happening, but with all that’s gone down in Southern California and USC the past couple of years, would anyone be shocked if that story came out? You can see the headlines now if you try hard enough. But it seems more likely USC would back their play at this point.
But given the fact that USC have never had a name on the back of the jersey, it’s going to cause waves — the good kind and the bad — because it’s a break in tradition, if it were to happen. This is something that will be notable when or if it happens. As of right now, especially since the rule literally just went into effect, there’s no way to know what will happen if an athlete at USC wanted a name on the back of their jersey. You’d like to think the motto “Trojan Family” would still apply, but these are contentious times and not everyone will be onboard. For now, a lot of schools are going to be adjusting to this fact and will be releasing statements on this rule. We’ll see if USC is in the affirmative or the negative soon enough.