This is a throwback year for USC football, not in terms of the style of offense the Trojans use, but certainly in terms of the stakes involved in their November battle with archrival UCLA.
From the mid-1960s through the early 1980s, USC-UCLA was often a high-stakes game. Both schools had great teams in the mid-to-late 1960s. The 1967 game between the two schools remains the most important USC-UCLA game of all time. The games between John Robinson and Terry Donahue in the late 1970s and early 1980s were regularly important. The late 1980s had some very big Trojan-Bruin games as well.
This upcoming game on Nov. 19 won’t be as big as 1967 — that’s really hard to top — but it brings back the magic of a hugely significant Trojan-Bruin battle. Let’s detail all the ways in which this game matters: