Tag: usc trojans football

If USC plays in spring, Kyle Ford could reclaim his season

One of the big “what-ifs” connected to a possible spring season for USC

No one should be expecting spring football, given the logistical complications involved. It’s an enormous challenge, in light of the simple reality that asking young men to play two football seasons in one year — without giving athletes significant added protections and benefits at the very least — invites all sorts of problems. Add the fact that college sports is desperately trying to save the 2021 college basketball season and the NCAA Tournament and Final Four which will come along with it. Saving the NCAA Tournament is a huge priority for the NCAA. Wedging in spring football under uncertain conditions could take a back seat to basketball, with schools facing the need to make sure football can be played in the fall of 2021.

We have to be realistic about spring football, even though many of us hope football can still be salvaged.

Yet, if we are to look ahead and consider a world with spring football — and what it would look like — one USC football player’s outlook could become a lot brighter.

Trojans Wire staff writer Andy Patton brought you the news in June that receiver Kyle Ford had suffered a torn ACL. This was going to cost him most, if not all, of his 2020 fall season. Ford was probably going to be part of a four-wide receiver set on passing downs. He was initially envisioned as an important depth piece behind Amon-Ra St. Brown, Tyler Vaughns, and Drake London in the USC receiver corps. 

Of all the valuable pieces on the 2020 USC roster, Ford emerges as a candidate for resurrection and revival if USC plays a spring 2021 schedule. We shouldn’t expect spring football — it is something to hope for without attaching our emotions to it in these complicated times — but if, somehow, the Pac-12 is able to pull it off and provide a plan which is able to work, Kyle Ford could reclaim a 2020 season in the early months of 2021.

It would be something — not just having football in the spring, but having Kyle Ford on the field for USC.

It’s not likely, but that doesn’t mean the possibility should be completely ignored or buried.

Sandy Barbour comments should get USC’s attention

Former Cal and current Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour comments on what the fall might look like in the Pac-12 and Big Ten.

If you are a USC or Pac-12 football fan wondering what will happen with your team’s athletes this fall — in the absence of actual games on Saturdays — that particular question is being wrestled with by administrators in both the Pac-12 and Big Ten Conferences.

The fact that the Pac-12 and Big Ten have both shut down fall football (with the Big Ten receiving considerable pushback, as we noted on Sunday) means that the two Power Five conferences have to consider what to do with their athletes in the next several months. This is part of a longer and more complicated conversation about separating or integrating athletes with the other members of the general student population on college campuses. This conversation includes the question of whether to allow any students onto campuses at all for the 2020 fall semester, given the concerns about the coronavirus. Administrators are basically working with a Rubik’s Cube, trying to shift all these different components into an alignment which balances every possible consideration.

Schools want to get some students on campus and into a dorm room so that they can collect room and board expenses. They want to be able to offer a full campus experience to justify tuition rates as they currently exist. They want to go as far as they can while still preserving public health and safety, and while operating within the guidelines put forth by their state’s governor and other local health officials. This is an extremely complicated calculus, as one can readily appreciate.

In the Big Ten and Pac-12, the landscape is different from the SEC, Big 12, and ACC, given the decision to shut down fall football. What’s next in the Big Ten and Pac-12?

A particular person spoke about this on Monday. Her statement is less important than the fact that she spoke up in the first place:

The folks in Berkeley might have the best appreciation of the importance of this development.

Sandy Barbour, you might recall, was the athletic director at the University of California before she moved to Penn State. She therefore holds down a Big Ten AD position while having previously worked in the same capacity in the Pac-12 (dating back to the conference’s days as the Pac-10). She therefore represents a crossover figure who can speak not just to the Big Ten’s current reality, but also the Pac-12’s set of circumstances.

Maybe the Big Ten and Pac-12 will propose appreciably different plans or roadmaps for their respective schools’ football players this fall. Yet, one cannot ignore how the Big Ten has charted a course the Pac-12 has seen fit to largely follow. No, the Pac-12 hasn’t operated on autopilot — it has made its own medical consultations and has to live with governors and health officials separate from those in Big Ten states. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the coronavirus politics of the Pac-12 are reasonably close to the Big Ten, set apart from the SEC-Big 12-ACC triumvirate.

Sandy Barbour might not be the final authority on any potential joint plan the Big Ten and Pac-12 might devise — if such a plan emerges at all — but among the various leaders in collegiate athletics whose words should be taken seriously on the Big Ten’s and Pac-12’s plans for the fall, Barbour would rate higher rather than lower on the list.

This should get USC’s attention, and one would presume it will.

Former USC coach Dick Coury had his national close-up on NFL Films

When you were on NFL Films in the early 1980s, that was a big deal.

Trojans Wire staff writer Andy Patton brought you the news over the weekend that Dick Coury, John McKay’s defensive coordinator on the 1967 USC football national championship team, died at age 90. 

Andy’s news report chronicles the many stops Coury made in his coaching career, so we’re not going to rehash the many coaching stops he made. The focus of this particular piece is on the moment of his career when he was introduced to a larger national audience.

Ask a football fan over 50 years old who Dick Coury is. Try this with your dad or grandfather if he is an ardent football watcher, pro and college.

If your dad or grandpa is a USC fan, okay, they’ll remember him for what he did on the 1967 national championship team, and also for his tenure as Mater Dei’s head coach before moving to USC. If your dad or grandfather isn’t from Los Angeles, the majority answer is almost certainly going to be that Coury was an assistant to Dick Vermeil on the 1980 NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles, who made the franchise’s first Super Bowl appearance in SB XV against the Oakland Raiders.

If you don’t remember Coury through his Mater Dei or USC identities, chances are you and the older men in your family remember Coury through one moment: Super Bowl XV, and more precisely, the NFL Films half-hour documentary on the game, which it produces after every Super Bowl.

If you are a younger football fan (let’s say under 30 years old), you need to realize that in January of 1981, ESPN was juuuuuuuust starting out as a sports cable network. It had not begun to gain critical mass in the American sports fan’s consciousness. This was still a time when American sports fans listened to baseball on the radio at night and read the newspaper for box scores in the morning or early-afternoon editions of the paper. WFAN in New York — the first all-sports radio station in the United States — was still six years away from coming into existence. Cable television was just getting off the ground. American television news was still the three major networks and little else, with CNN — like ESPN — being in its infancy.

At this time, NFL Films was still riding high as the juggernaut publicity and promotional wing of the NFL. NFL Films was an essential ingredient in the growth of professional football as a commercial and cultural force in America. The work of the Sabols — father Ed and son Steve — created remarkable football cinematography. Sam Spence provided the iconic musical scores. John Facenda — “The Voice of God” — delivered his signature goosebump-producing narration. If you were on NFL Films, you achieved a certain degree of national recognition. People noticed.

If you received the NFL Films treatment at the Super Bowl, that recognition became exponentially larger.

So it was for Dick Coury at Super Bowl XV in 1981.

Even though Coury was just a wide receiver coach for Dick Vermeil on the 1980 Eagles, he figured prominently in the SB XV documentary produced by NFL Films. He appears at several points in this film, and he is even given the honor of a caption, which NFL Films did not regularly do for its Super Bowl films. He appears at 3:50, 6:10, and 19:40 in the video below, with the caption occurring at 3:50:

Within Los Angeles, Dick Coury is known as a Mater Dei legend who then helped USC win a national title.

Everywhere else in the United States — certainly outside the state of California — Dick Coury is known by your father or grandfather as “the Eagles assistant coach NFL Films showed in Super Bowl XV.”

Rest in peace, Dick Coury. Your place in the NFL Films documentary on Super Bowl XV will give you an eternal place in football history and the sports culture of the United States.

The biggest test of Clay Helton’s coaching chops in 2021

This is not as complicated as you think.

What is the biggest test facing USC head football coach Clay Helton in 2021? The question is an obvious one, an important one, and a weighty one. The question invites all sorts of answers, many different windows into how Clay Helton will conduct his business and change — or reaffirm — his identity in front of the USC fan base.

Whether in the spring or fall, Helton will coach USC in 2021. Assuming we are fortunate enough to have college football games next year (the Pac-12 has already given up on that prospect in 2020), what really is the most central challenge facing Helton?

Again, so many possible answers exist, and many of them will be perfectly good ones. Which answer is better than others? It’s actually not as complicated as many people think. A key moment in Helton’s coaching tenure provides the answer.

The most important moment in Helton’s stay at USC — at least in terms of saving his job and making it possible for him to remain employed for more than half a decade at Heritage Hall — was his fateful decision to start Sam Darnold against Utah early in the 2016 season. Yes, the decision revealed how much of a mistake Helton had made by tabbing Max Browne as the Week 1 starter against Alabama a few weeks earlier, but Helton had to acknowledge his mistake instead of stubbornly refusing to do so. Had he stuck with Browne, the 2016 season would have gone nowhere. Helton likely would have been fired; moreover, he would have deserved to be.

By starting Darnold — and by doing so before the season had fully unraveled — Helton barely avoided disaster. Darnold was able to create a 9-3 record, which was good enough to make the Rose Bowl when Pac-12 champion Washington went to the College Football Playoff and the Peach Bowl national semifinal game against Alabama. Darnold was spectacular in a comeback win over Penn State.

Helton had trusted Darnold, a younger player, to perform. He took a chance on an unknown. He bet big. He went bold. His confidence, but also his willingness to make a change and admit a mistake, were both rewarded. That’s the reason Helton had a productive pair of seasons in 2016 and 2017 at USC. That’s why he is still around now.

This is the essential answer to the big question posed above. When we get to 2021 and Helton looks at his roster, will he be willing to play younger players over older ones? Will he display the ability to relentlessly change his player rotations and not cede most snaps to incumbents?

This point will be especially salient if there is no spring football, and the next Pac-12 game for USC occurs in September of 2021. The Trojans — along with every other Pac-12 program — will have played no football for nearly 20 months. In that period of time, incoming recruits will have had time to study Graham Harrell’s offense and Todd Orlando’s defense. Film study will be able to be done in copious quantities. Players will be able to do a lot of textbook learning while also working out and developing their strength.

USC’s 2020 recruiting was mediocre, but its 2021 recruiting was strong. Helton will confront familiar decisions about playing experienced players or younger players with more upside. That isn’t anything new for him or any other college football coach, but what WILL be different is that after 20 months without football, younger players who didn’t get to play in 2020 will have had another year in which to physically develop. None of USC’s players will have endured any physical punishment (not, at least, in live-game action) for nearly two whole years, so they will be very fresh entering a fall 2021 season.

Helton’s ability to use players correctly is his biggest challenge.

See? That wasn’t as mysterious or as complicated as you might have thought.

State of California offers guidelines to USC for football activity

Very important news on a Friday afternoon.

How are we going to get college football training camp started? How are we going to have an on-ramp to college football in the state of California, which contains four of the Pac-12’s teams (one-third of the league membership)?

Answers to these burning questions were provided — not complete answers, but certainly substantial improvements — by the State of California on Friday afternoon. Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News obtained COVID-19-related health and safety guidelines provided by the state which affect USC and UCLA in Los Angeles County, plus Stanford in Santa Clara County and California in the City of Berkeley.

These guidelines are part of a 34-page health and safety plan for secondary and higher education in the state. The 34-page document contains a more specific 10-page plan for collegiate athletics, starting on page 24.

You can view the document here.

A short excerpt of the state guidelines obtained by Wilner:

“All decisions about following this guidance should be made in collaboration with local public health officials and other authorities.

“Implementation of this guidance should be tailored for each setting, including adequate consideration of programs operating at each institution and the needs of student-athletes and workers.

“Administrators should engage relevant stakeholders— including student-athletes, their families, staff and labor partners in the school community—to formulate and implement plans.”

One obvious point to make about these guidelines is that while the county and city officials will need to approve them in order for USC, UCLA, Stanford, and Cal to begin training camp in mid-August and then play games starting in late September, there might not have to be 100-percent uniformity among the four schools or with the state guidelines. Some degree of local discretion might enter the picture; how much is the big question, something you are surely wondering about.

That tension between state government and county or city government — an obvious structural complication in California and every other American state or territory in this pandemic — will need to be resolved in a productive way over the next several weeks.

Stay tuned for more news and analysis as events warrant.

2020 USC Trojans Football Schedule: Downloadable Wallpaper

Never miss a game this season with our College Wire downloadable 2020 USC Trojans football schedule. Use as wallpaper for your lock screen. 

As we all know, the new football schedule was released recently.

Never miss a game this season with our College Wire downloadable 2020 USC Trojans football schedule. Use as wallpaper for your lock screen on your smartphone.

Download 2020 Trojans football schedule here

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USC is ranked No. 17 in preseason Amway Coaches Poll

The Trojans, on sheer talent, crack the preseason top 20.

If we are lucky enough to have a college football season this fall, the USC Trojans will know that the nation’s FBS coaches hold them in high regard.

USC, despite a tenuous and uncertain coaching situation plus numerous positional question marks flowing from a combination of injuries and uneven recruiting, is probably a year away from having a legitimate chance to contend for the biggest prizes in college football. Yet, for all of the Trojans’ flaws, and despite the skepticism of the fan base that Clay Helton can put the pieces together in 2020, USC still checked in at No. 17 in the preseason edition of the Amway Coaches Poll, released on Thursday by USA TODAY.

The usual suspects — Clemson, Ohio State and Alabama — occupied the top three in the polls, with Georgia coming in at No. 4. Three of the top five teams are from the SEC (LSU is No. 5), so with Ohio State and Clemson representing two other conferences, the No. 6 Oklahoma Sooners would seem to be (yet again) the No. 4 playoff team, just as they were last year. Oregon is the highest-rated Pac-12 team at No. 9.

USC landed just below Michigan. Jim Harbaugh’s group is rated No. 15 in the preseason coaches poll. That might be more of a commentary on Michigan’s inability to rise to a higher level of quality under Harbaugh, or it could be seen as an indication that the floor remains high in Ann Arbor, despite an unrelenting parade of losses to Ohio State.

Enough about Michigan, though. The fact that USC could be a preseason top-20 team despite everything which cuts against it (chiefly the head coach) is an indication of how much raw talent exists among the starters on the roster. Depth is a question mark, but coaches certainly believe in USC’s talent. That’s why the Trojans are where they are.

Now, the question becomes: Will we have a season in which USC can measure itself against this ranking?

College athlete activism is going to change the game

Looking forward to the future.

A coalition of Pac-12 players released a list of demands through the Players’ Tribune on Sunday. These demands range from a cut of the profit to guaranteed six-year scholarships and more. The demands aren’t actually too far removed from what pros get, especially game revenue. The players remain anonymous for now, but that is going to change if they intend to realize the threats they’ve made to sit out the year and not play. It just has to happen.

Whether this letter creates any change remains to be seen, but the concept of athlete activism is worth exploring. With the name, image, and likeness rights becoming national and being legislated in nearly every state and at a congressional level, there is verifiable proof that activism among athletes can have an immediate and profound effect. While this particular brand of activism might not work for the We Are United athletes, eventually something is going to work and it’s going to have an incredible effect on the collegiate game.

Things moved gradually for the name, image, and likeness legislation, but there now seems to be a pronounced effort to ram through as much collegiate legislation as possible. This is due partly to the policy window effect and partly because we have become acutely aware of just how unneeded the NCAA is, and that every other student appears to have rights these student athletes do not have.

Prior to the NLI legislation, normal students under scholarship could run a business with their name, image, or likeness and not lose their scholarship at all. If a player did that, the NCAA would come down on him with the hammer of Thor. It just never made sense. They claimed they were protecting the athletes, but really they were just robbing them blind. These were grown adults who didn’t own their own name. Even Olympic amateurs could promote products using their own name, image, or likeness. The amateur status was just a ruse to prevent athletes from making cash.

Now that protection the NCAA had in Congress and at the societal level is gone. People have a largely unfavorable view of the NCAA and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Someone is going to come along and find a way to reach out to the best collegiate athletes, who will then use their newfound power for good. It’s going to happen. History tells us it’s going to happen because college is a period when young voices are realizing just how much power and influence they can have. No group of students has more power than blue chip football players. Their voice just needs to be organized and developed.

USC has a chance to support activist athletes

Something to consider

Prior to his arrival in Pullman as the new head coach for Washington State, Nick Rolovich was thought of as a relatively “woke” coach with a deep understanding of how to connect with players. In less than seven months and without even coaching a season, Rolovich has — at first glance — shown just how fake that persona was.

There could be more to this story we don’t yet know about, but we can still say that Rolovich looked really bad this past weekend. How did Rolovich accomplish this without ever coaching a down in Pullman? He opened his mouth when he shouldn’t have:

While Washington State tries to wrestle with this situation, it can’t ignore that its new coach took a stand… and it wasn’t on the side of his new players in a pandemic, set against the backdrop of racial turmoil in this country.

Adding to the complexity of the situation is a list of demands sent from various Pac-12 players posted on the Players Tribune this past Sunday morning. These demands range from a cut of the profits generated by collegiate athletics to guaranteed six-year scholarships and beyond. The demands aren’t too far removed from what professional players receive, especially the revenue share of games. The article didn’t include specific names, but as Sunday continued, players were identified as being associated with the #WeAreUnited movement:

There wasn’t a player on the USC Trojans’ roster, but as more Pac-12 athletes step forward, USC will be in the position to do exactly what Nick Rolovich did not do: Publicly support its athletes. While it seems unlikely that USC would do this, stranger things have and happened. Also, if we’re being honest, this is the year 2020; “strange” is absolutely on the table for anything and everything. Also, what would it really cost USC to support a player doing this?

The player is going to lose eligibility if he has already burned a redshirt. (In other words, if the season is played and that player participates in at least four games.) The players who know this are willing to sacrifice that eligibility for the chance to improve other players’ lives long after they’re done playing. It’s a calculated risk and one that, if we’re being honest, hurts the player more than it hurts the team. It does hurt the team to a degree, but it also has to hurt the player or the protest wouldn’t have any impact. The team can replace that player with another four or five-star athlete. The athlete can’t move to a different school and get those years back. They’re gone.

So, knowing that it hurts the player more than the team, the Trojans have the chance to stand behind a player and support his activism in trying to make the Pac-12 a better league for everyone. What folks don’t seem to understand with these demands is that a rising tide lifts all boats. What does that mean in relation to these demands? Let’s take a brief look.

Let’s say these demands are met to some degree in an effort to solve the problem. The Pac-12 might look different to some recruits outside the league’s footprint. It wouldn’t be a magic bullet, but it could change some decisions for some players. Why would a football player want to go to Alabama and win a national title when he could go to the Pac-12 and make a decent chunk of change while also competing for a national title?

That might be an exaggerated view of the situation, but the main emphasis is that the Pac-12 might get a fresh look from some athletes who currently go to other Power Five conferences. As such, even minor schools in the Pac-12 would see an improvement in recruiting and their on-field play as a result of this. The overflow of players would have to go somewhere and the smaller schools would still be paying their athletes.

The better the players, the better the product. The games might be in greater demand. Pac-12 coaches could have more success to bring to their athletic directors when they talk about performance reviews. They could get tidy raises.

This isn’t going to happen quickly. It certainly won’t happen all at once. Such a rosy scenario shouldn’t be expected… but the larger point of emphasis is that if the Pac-12 athletes leverage their situation at a time when college football is clearly acting as though football players are very important to the economic well-being of schools, the results could be surprisingly good, better than one might currently realize.

USC showing some support to athletes who are part of the We Are United movement could send a significant message at little to no cost to the school. What’s the old expression? “It doesn’t cost much to be kind.”

Even the smallest gesture of goodwill could show high-school athletes that the USC leadership and administrative ranks are cognizant of the needs of modern-day athletes. It’s a low-risk scenario. They show support to the players without taking a shot at the Pac-12 or the NCAA.

It would also show those who have supported USC over the years that USC supports them, too. That has to count for something. In fact, it should count for a lot.

We will soon see how USC’s place in the evolving world of the Pac-12 will change.

USC has 1 player on PFF’s big board, but it is not who you think

Pro Football Focus ranked their top 50 draft prospects in the 2021 NFL draft, and USC Trojans receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown cracked the list.

With college football inching closer to a return, a variety of media outlets are taking a look at which prospects they like for the upcoming 2021 NFL draft.

The folks at Pro Football Focus officially released their first big board of the year, highlighting their top 50 players heading into the 2020 season.

While many other media outlets highlight defensive tackle Jay Tufele as a first or second round target, Pro Football Focus went with another USC target instead, wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, who came in at No. 23 on the list.

“St. Brown is smooth in pretty much everything he does,” wrote author Michael Renner. “He’s a crafty route-runner who’s also sneaky good after the catch. He broke 18 tackles last season.”

St. Brown had 77 receptions for 1,042 yards and six touchdowns last season. With Michael Pittman, Jr. no longer in the picture, he figures to have a huge role in 2020 – which could easily land him among the top draft picks in the 2021 NFL draft.

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