USC and Oregon, over the past 30 years, have enjoyed a lot of success, but rarely at the same time. Oregon won the Pac-10 championship in 1994, USC in 1995. Oregon was a top-three team in the 2001 season, and USC was a top-four team in 2002. The two schools would have met in the 2011 Pac-12 Championship Game — the first in the event’s history — but USC got unfairly whacked by the NCAA, so the matchup never unfolded. USC and Oregon almost met in a Pac-12 title game last year, but Oregon’s late collapse against Oregon State prevented that from happening.
USC had a dynastic run under Pete Carroll, Oregon a run of elite success under Chip Kelly. Yet, those two paths never crossed. USC ran out of steam in 2009 just as Kelly began to rev up the engines in Eugene.
You can see, very clearly, that the past 30 years of USC-Oregon football represent a story of missed connections. There isn’t a run of epic Trojan-Duck matchups, even though these two programs have been primary centers of power in the Pac-12 at various points in the 21st century.
We talked about the highs and lows of USC and Oregon since 1993 in this conversation with Ducks Wire writer and analyst Don Smalley:
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