Tag: usc trojans football

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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USC versus UCLA in Week 1: smart move by the Pac-12

This is wise.

The Pac-12 Conference listened to Trojans Wire! Mirabile dictu, as older Men of Troy might have said in their native Latin.

We urged the Pac-12 — back on July 12, when none of us knew what the 2020 conference schedule looked like — to put USC-UCLA and other rivalry games early in the season rather than late. It made all the sense in the world:

Why not make sure that the biggest game of the season is played? Why not make sure that in the early portion of a season — when uncertainty about COVID-19 is especially high — teams within the same state get to play each other, which makes it easier for governors and other local officials to not have to worry about cross-state travel? This makes total sense, and the Pac-12 took these points of advice to heart with its newly-released 2020 football schedule.

Yes, it’s real: USC and UCLA will play in Week 1 of the adjusted schedule on Sept. 26.

Now, Angelenos won’t have to worry (as much) about whether the Battle for Los Angeles gets played in late November. Yes, if an outbreak occurs, this game could be postponed, but that’s part of the point as well: The league is giving the rivalry games a better chance of being played, because the act of putting them at the front of the schedule provides more chances to be made up at a later date. If the game was left to its normal late-November slot, there would be fewer chances to make it up in the event of a postponement.

This is the forward-thinking approach we don’t often see from the Pac-12. The league has displayed amateur-hour levels of incompetence and ignorance in crafting its football schedules over the years. At least in this one specific instance — putting rivalry games at the start of the schedule and not the end — the Pac-12 got it right.

Sometimes, life actually offers a pleasant surprise. How’s that for a 2020 plot twist?

New NCAA rule could mean USC jerseys with names on them

This could get interesting.

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.

What if a Power Five program runs into a governor-ordered shutdown?

Good question.

Earlier this week, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham sent a letter to leadership at both schools strongly advising them to suspend any contact sports, including football, for the upcoming fall season. The news was first reported by the Albuquerque Review Journal and could be an interesting peg to fall out in the upcoming 2020 college football season. Right now it’s New Mexico asking their schools to not play football, what if tomorrow it’s Arizona or California?

When schools began their move to conference-only scheduling, the idea was to keep it simple. It would allow schools to have an easier time doing tracking and tracing if a player were to come down with COVID-19 or at least that’s the theory. But conference-only isn’t going to solve every problem and if the above question were to become a reality, conference-only testing would not save California from having to shut down large athletic events.

New Mexico is a small domino, but it’s a domino nonetheless. The Coronavirus is only getting worse and states are starting to see dramatic rises in confirmed cases, but also death tolls. Playing the season is going to be a challenge and if states have to do a random shutdown in the middle of the season for safety events, it’s going to make it very awkward for the teams that were supposed to play them suddenly having to sit around and not play because USC, UCLA, San Diego St., San Jose St., Stanford, Cal, and others can’t play by order of Governor Gavin Newsome.

This season is anything but a sure thing. We’re finding out first hand just how tough this is going to be and the NCAA hasn’t even come close to announcing a comprehensive testing plan and recovery plan for infected athletes. They’re telling students to report and having them sign waivers, but they’re not doing anything to protect them and provide them with a stable environment, largely free of the Coronavirus. If this is the NCAA’s plan, it’s going to a very, very, very short season.

How does a college football postseason work in a pandemic?

Good question

In an attempt to explain why I’m not currently sold on the models being used to project the safe return of college football, I wrote an article talking about the sport being largely unsafe under the current plans. That article didn’t even focus on a particular aspect of play.

Right now, several states around the nation are turning into coronavirus hotspots. Whether it’s the lack of mask mandates or states only opting to use temporary social distancing measures and temporary mask mandates, the idea that a forward-thinking state’s football team could be forced into play against a backward-thinking state’s prized bellcow program doesn’t sit right with me.

How can you keep at least two groups of 110 or more people completely safe when one team may not legally have to care about masks or social distancing?

This is the larger, overarching problem currently facing the College Football Playoff and its committee of leaders in 2020. Adding to these problems is the fact that different conferences are either using conference-only scheduling or they’re using conference-plus-one (one nonconference game) to round out their school schedules.

Let’s play with a hypothetical using this scenario.

Let’s say Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State go undefeated, but then you have Georgia, which lost to Alabama by 10, and Pac-12 champion Oregon, which lost to a decent USC team by a field goal. Which team is in the playoff? With different scheduling structures among the Power Five conferences, how can you even determine this fairly? At a certain point, when you’re only playing conference games, can it be anything but conference bias?

What becomes the fair and just thing to do? No postseason? Maybe you do a one-year-only version with six teams: the champs from all Power Five schools and let the committee determine the Group of Five champion? Just play a larger playoff to balance out the smaller season?

That’s just the sorting and selection process. None of this, and I mean absolutely nothing in here, puts forth any plan on how to act if Alabama faced USC in a playoff game in New Orleans (the Sugar Bowl semifinal) when the two states have two different politicians (and political cultures) running things, and they have to travel to a third state (Louisiana)? Does USC walk around with N95s and face shields? Do Alabama players have to wear a mask? Or do the different bowls get to set the rules on who has to wear specific pieces of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)?

This is just off the top of my head. Many more details exist which haven’t been mentioned.

I’m not even trying to sit down, take my Master’s degree in Public Policy, and hack out a plan that might actually work for these guys. It’s not my job. But it WILL be somebody’s job and they’re going to have a HELL of a feat to pull off. It won’t be easy, but I will be pulling for them. I will be following their plan and critiquing or praising parts of it as we go.

Look, I’m smart enough to know that we’re all learning on the fly… but as long as we’re actively trying to learn to keep people safe, that’s the main thing.

Has college football thought all of this through? There isn’t much convincing evidence it has. Hopefully it soon will.

USC-Alabama: Roll Tide Wire Q and A with Josh Webb of Trojans Wire

More on USC-Bama

This story originally appeared at Roll Tide Wire, where editor Clint Lamb asked our staff writer, Josh Webb, for a USC perspective on the canceled game between the Trojans and Alabama.

Last week, Josh had asked Clint for an Alabama-centric view of the cancellation.

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Q and A: Josh Webb of Trojans Wire on USC-Alabama cancellation

By Clint Lamb

Editor, Roll Tide Wire

The Pac-12 has already announced that it would be moving to a conference-only schedule as response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which means that Alabama will not be playing USC to open the 2020 season.

It was an unfortunate development considering the excitement surrounding two blue blood college football programs, who are both expected to be top 20 teams, going at it to kick things off, but life goes on.

With that said, Josh Webb with Trojans Wire, one of our college wire partner sites, gave us a little of his time to talk about the cancellation of that USC-Alabama game.

1. How is the cancellation of the Alabama game being received with USC fans?

To be honest, fans are somewhat relieved. Aside from the fact that these games should’ve never been played at AT&T Stadium, the way the Coronavirus is trending means that the Trojans might likely have been a little unprepared as they fought to get ready before the game. In other words, the prep time might not have been what USC would’ve liked heading into a game against the Crimson Tide. Then you factor in the last time they played and how that all went down, and it wasn’t really the worst cancellation from this side of the globe.

2. Did Trojan fans have more confidence this time around knowing the quarterback play would be improved?

Uh, no. If we’re being honest, I’m not sure how improved that play was going to be. While Kedon Slovis is much better than Max Browne, who peaked in high school, it’s hard to tell how good the quarterback play would be after trying to fend off the Alabama Crimson Tide defensive line all day. The offensive line is still a work in progress, as are the running backs. It’s a tough thing to play Alabama at any time, but having to play them the first game of the season doesn’t seem to favor the Trojans either.

3. How will the loss of this game affect the Trojans financially, if at all?

Probably won’t affect their bottom line too much. USC is an incredibly well-funded school, way more funded than Alabama across the board. The Endowment at USC is $5.7B compared to Alabama $1.5B and athletic boosters are just as generous as Bama’s boosters, who definitely more than help to make up some of the endowment difference. In this case, USC is the richer school and it likely hurts “Bama more than it hurts USC. But this is honestly a scenario where neither school are going to take much of a hit.

4. How badly do you think conference-only scheduling will have an impact on the way we process the postseason?

I gotta be honest, I have no idea how the postseason is going to work. We have some conferences using conference-only scheduling. There has been talk of conference plus one with the SEC and ACC, meaning they will play one team outside their conference. College football already has a problem with trying to avoid the perception of bias during the postseason award of games.I don’t see how they avoid it when leagues are conference-only scheduling or using the plus one model. I think it’s going to be a really hard conversation that we really should be having before trying to play a season, but nobody seems to be having it. Everyone is using the “let’s see what happens” approach and there’s no way to know how that’s going to work. It’s too ad hoc.

5. How do you think it would’ve been received by USC fans had Bryce Young been somehow named the starter?

Maybe three people would’ve cared. Bryce Young is a talent, but USC is more than happy with Kedon Slovis, who trained under Kurt Warner for his high school ball. Kurt Warner couldn’t say enough things about Kedon, and he’s been right. The kid was better than J.T. Daniels and it did not even take a competition to prove it. Once Daniels went down with his injury, it just became obvious that Slovis was the better quarterback and there was no way Daniels could get the job back. If they weren’t gonna worry about losing J.T. Daniels, they aren’t going to care about Young for Alabama. It’s very “next man up” at USC, especially when that next dude up is a legit baller, as they tend to be at both of these schools.

REPORT: Alabama is considering replacing USC with BYU in Week 1

Important news

The news hit the wires on Saturday that Alabama is strongly considering Brigham Young as a replacement opponent for USC in Week 1.

The importance of this story is not that USC is specifically being replaced. The importance of the story — similar to what we told you about TCU reportedly discussing replacements for the California Golden Bears in Week 1 — is that SEC and Big 12 schools are not yet at a point where they are accepting a reduced schedule for 2020.

This doesn’t mean SEC and Big 12 schools will play 12 games. The coronavirus drives this bus, not college football or any of its conferences or schools. Yet, the obvious importance attached to Alabama’s desire to find a Week 1 opponent is that while the Big Ten and Pac-12 have already accepted a reduced schedule (the Pac-12 hasn’t yet announced its specific scheduling plan, but a conference-only schedule puts a cap at 11 games, less than the full 12-game slate), the SEC and Big 12 show clear signs of wanting to play as many games as possible. If Alabama and TCU are both trying to fill a Week 1 nonconference gap in their respective schedules, that points to a desire to play 12 games.

How long is this dance going to continue? How long will this uncertainty about the 2020 schedule persist? Those are good questions.

Thankfully, the answer is that this coming week is the last week in which we will live with these particular voids and vacuums.

Remember: If six weeks is the widely accepted timetable for college football teams to get ready for the start of the regular season, any team trying to play a game on Sept. 5 must start that six-week preparation period this coming Saturday, July 25.

The Big Ten and Pac-12, by reducing their seasons in length, don’t have to meet this commitment. They can therefore unveil their schedules after July 25.

The Big 12 and SEC, along with the ACC, haven’t said anything yet.

They will need to say something by the end of this week.

The next four or five days might be boring in college football, but the political and logistical pressure on schools and conferences will definitely increase next week. Things are going to get very interesting (though not necessarily in a good way or for happy and positive reasons).