During the first few months of the 2020 pandemic, when we had no idea if there would be any college football played in the autumn of that same year, we created a series, “USC and the SEC,” in which we looked back at various intersections between the Trojans and the Southeastern Conference on the gridiron.
We recalled the 1978 USC win over Alabama, for instance:
“There was a fascinating symmetry between the 1977 and 1978 Alabama-USC games,” we noted. “In 1977, Alabama snapped a 15-game USC winning streak. In 1978, USC broke Alabama’s 13-game winning binge. In both instances, one team was ranked No. 7, the other team No. 1. In both instances, the No. 7 team beat the No. 1 team. In both instances, the road team won. In both instances, the winner of the game entered the bowl season ranked No. 3, then won its bowl game, and finished No. 2 in the final Associated Press writers’ poll.”
As USC enters the 2023 college football season, there is a noticeable SEC flavor in Los Angeles. Lincoln Riley knows he has needed higher-quality players to compete for the biggest prizes in the sport. Let’s consider the ways in which USC has “SEC-ified” itself: