LAS VEGAS — In one sense, the scene at Allegiant Stadium on Friday night was one USC fans might not have even dreamed of a little more than a year ago. Or to put it another way, they might have dreamed it but it seemed far removed from possibility, the stains of the Clay Helton era having discouraged not only a team but a fan base.
A year ago the Trojans were playing before large patches of empty seats in the Coliseum. On Friday night, the faithful were traveling well again. The Raiders’ home stadium was a cauldron of noise, USC fans filling nearly half, though outnumbered and often outshouted by Utah fans, while the Trojans and Utes put on a slugfest of a Pac-12 championship game. (It is, after all, not much harder a drive from Salt Lake City than it is from L.A.)
So Lincoln Riley had the Trojans right back where they belonged, right?
Well …
Not quite. Not yet.
At the end, they were watching the other team celebrating, those chances of playing for a national championship having pretty much gone up in smoke. Utah, which had provided the only blemish on USC’s regular season by a one-point margin in October, boat raced them Friday night, 47-24, after trailing 17-3 out of the gate.
Maybe Boo Corrigan was right after all, after the chairman of the College Football Playoff selection committee had said a couple of weeks ago that he and his group would like to see more from USC’s defense. The Trojans gave up 533 yards, missed narrowly on some big plays and gave up some enormous ones, including a 57-yard scoring pass from Cameron Rising to Money Parks, a 60-yard TD bomb from Rising to tight end Thomas Yassmin and a 53-yard scoring run by Ja’Quinden Jackson to punctuate things in the fourth quarter.
As for presumptive Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams? Maybe we shouldn’t be so presumptuous, although Williams was obviously laboring for much of Friday’s game after popping his hamstring on a 59-yard first-quarter run. At one point, backup Miller Moss was warming up on the sideline just in case.
“You ever had a old rubber band? Yeah, it kind of felt like that,” Williams said. “And then the rest of the game I felt it.”
But he said he fell back on a Kobe Bryant quote, that “the game is bigger than what you’re feeling. And so I was in my head and encouraging myself that the game is bigger than what I was feeling. And I also had a group of guys that was looking at me to go out there and lead them to victory.
“And it didn’t end up happening …”
The votes are due Monday. Williams threw for 363 yards and three scores, but after that long run he was not a threat with his legs and wound up getting sacked seven times. His body of work might be enough, but the door has thus been left open, maybe for TCU’s Max Duggan if he has a big day on Saturday in the Big 12 championship game.
If Rising had played more than twice against USC, maybe he’d be in the conversation, too. In their first meeting, he passed for 415 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 60 and three more scores. This time he torched USC for 310 passing yards and three touchdowns, while Utah rushers gashed USC for 223 and three touchdowns.
So maybe the Trojans will be scouring the transfer portal for more defensive help this offseason. That side of the ball was an issue all season, often obscured by the success of their plethora of offensive weapons.
This near miss shouldn’t obscure what USC did this season in digging out from the Helton era and rekindling the support of their fan base. Just being here, being in position to grab not only a conference championship but a berth in the College Football Playoff, demands perspective, even as it is another reminder that college football is absolutely unforgiving.
“You come as far as this team has come and this program has come in the last couple months, you get that close to winning a championship and possibly much more, and obviously to not get it done is … you know, it’s a tough pill to swallow,” Coach Lincoln Riley said afterward.
“Obviously, there’s a much bigger picture and outlook here of the progress that’s been made here in the last 12 months, so we’re not going to walk around like this is some funeral. We’ve made some great progress to be in this moment. We expected to win tonight. We didn’t get it done. But that changes nothing in terms of the direction and trajectory of this program.”
It has been a magical ride. Riley was hired last Nov. 28, and one of the first things he said at his introductory press conference was that the Trojans would be playing for championships, right away. It seemed far-fetched at the time, but less so as the Trojans made full use of the transfer portal and rebuilt on the fly.
The disappointment will fade. The Trojans will go to a quality bowl game. And then the second phase of what we’ve referred to as Riley’s Rapid Rebuild will commence.
USC fans had been beaten down during the Helton era, and even a famously demanding fan base probably wasn’t ready to start strutting right away. Yet here they were Friday night, with a Heisman Trophy candidate and a slew of talented players who came in through the transfer portal, molded by a coaching staff that set expectations high right away and didn’t let up. That was a major change from the Helton era.
Now the Trojans will have a bowl game ahead of them, maybe not the one they really wanted but an opportunity to respond to this loss. And the rebuild will continue. And what parts of the roster will be targeted?
“All parts of it,” he said.
“So much is going to reset right now. And so we’ll get an idea as these next few weeks go on. … Obviously we’re going to prep for a really really good game coming up next. That’s going to be the main thing, but then certainly we’ll be taking an eye towards next year’s roster.
“And again it’s not like you’ve got the whole roster at your disposal and you just pick these spots. There’s going to be a lot of changes. That’s just college football in this day and age. We understand that. And so, you know, the guys that we have in the locker room now that are with us next year, we know what our mission is, to be in that same locker room and feeling a whole hell of a lot different than we do right now. And then we’ll bring in a couple of pieces that are going to help us on that journey.”
Friday wasn’t fun. But in a sense, the journey is just beginning.