Musings from Arledge: USC's Best Games Against its 2023 Opponents

Looking this week at the 2023 schedule brought back memories of some of USC’s past games against these same opponents. The human memory is an odd thing. Looking up recaps and box scores of the games I had stored away—or thought I had stored away—it became clear that at least one of my vivid memories was of something that didn’t even happen, or at least didn’t happen the way I thought it did. I touch on that below. In other cases, I had impressions, some of them vague and some still vivid, but not the complete story. All of which is to say that you might see mistakes in some of this. Or your own imperfect memories may clash with mine, and we may both be wrong about big chunks of what really happened. I don’t know.

Even so, we’re diving in. Here are my memories of some of the greatest moments in USC football history against this year’s opponents.

San Jose State

My primary memory is more of an image and a feeling. The image is of the sun shining down on a half-empty Coliseum. The game itself really isn’t worth remembering. The Trojans won 21-10. Sultan McCullough had a nice day on the ground, but USC’s offense wasn’t exactly overwhelming (as you might have guessed from the final score). USC meant nothing in the college football world that day. Even the Bruins were far more important and substantial; they were winning at Alabama that week. The game was listless; the program was listless. I remember the game now largely because of what it represented, which is something that I could not possibly have known at the time: USC had found its guy and was about to terrorize the rest of college football. This was Pete Carroll’s first game at USC. He was still a guy that the fans didn’t want, the one who had washed out in the NFL. There were no celebrities on the sideline that day and very little excitement; ESPN certainly wasn’t talking up the importance of the game. It meant nothing at the time. Only now, knowing what was to come, is the game meaningful.

Nevada

Sorry. As Frank Drebin might say, there is nothing to see here. These teams played five times in the 1920’s and haven’t played since. The Trojans won all five, and the average score was 33-3. There’s a good chance that nobody in the world has any memory of any of those games. It’s probably better that way.

Stanford

As like every other longtime Trojan fan, I have many memories of Stanford games past. For this particular game, what I remember was just the pure, unadulterated joy. It had been a rough few years. (Little did I know things would get even tougher.) Interim head coach Ed Orgeron’s 2013 USC squad was taking on #4 Stanford at the Coliseum. And in one of the great displays of heart from a modern USC defense, the Trojans—who I recall played only 13 guys on defense that day—managed to keep a rugged Stanford offense in check. They dominated Kevin Hogan and the Cardinal passing game, and did just enough to slow down all-conference back Tyler Gaffney, who would have over 1,700 yards rushing that season. USC could never get its running game going, and USC went scoreless for almost 40 minutes from the early in the second quarter until the very end of the game. But after Su’a Cravens picked off a Stanford pass with about three minutes left, USC drove 27 yards, and Andre Heidari kicked a 47-yard field goal to win it. Trojan fans went nuts, with thousands spilling onto the Coliseum floor and the rest standing in their seats and listening to Conquest for a long time after the game had ended. Jubilant USC players carried Coach O off the field. They loved him; he loved them. It was the highlight of his short tenure at USC, and one of the great moments for USC football in that tough stretch between Pete and Lincoln. 

Arizona State

What I remember most was the pure inevitability of it all once things started rolling. USC was the defending national champion; the Trojans were riding a 25-game winning streak, and were ranked number one. Yet the first half was a disaster. One of the great offenses in college football history punted five times and turned it over twice on downs in the first half alone. Fourteenth-ranked Arizona State led 21-3 at the half, and I seem to recall Craig James giving an (as usual) arrogant eulogy to USC’s season at halftime. Then the Trojans came out in the second half and unleashed hell. It was Thunder and Lightning at their finest, as USC had more than 300 rushing yards and five rushing touchdowns in the second half. It was beautiful. USC went old school, and in a display of power that might not have been seen since John McKay and John Robinson were running student body left and right, USC just bludgeoned an Arizona State defense that had no answer. It was one of the most beautiful displays of ground dominance that you’ll ever see, and another reminder—to all those fans and commentators who always seemed to forget it—that the primary characteristic of a Pete Carroll USC football team was not the obvious flash and skill, but toughness and grit. 

Colorado

There isn’t a lot to get excited about in this series. USC is 16-0 against Colorado, and few of those games have even been close. There’s not a ton to choose from. But in 2002 USC traveled to Boulder for a matchup against a ranked Colorado team. USC was 1-0 in Pete Carroll’s second season, which means Carroll himself was only 7-6 as a college head coach at the time. We didn’t yet know that he would win 84 of his next 93. But this Colorado game did seem to suggest that something special might be on the horizon. Remember, Colorado was perceived differently at that point. The Buffs were the defending Big 12 champs and had ended its Big 12 season the prior year by beating #2 Nebraska and #3 Texas. An away game at altitude against Colorado was no gimme. But the Trojans dominated for 60 minutes, winning 40-3.

Arizona

I’m going to wimp out here and not pick one. That’s weak, and I know it’s weak, being that these teams have played 46 times (USC is 38-8), you would think there is something memorable here. But I just don’t feel it. Arizona is obviously not a traditional powerhouse, but they did have a very nice run under Dick Tomey. The problem is that none of the games against Arizona stand out as worth discussion. You have a lot of wins that were never in doubt against bad teams. You have some USC losses where USC was a train wreck (like 2000, Paul Hackett’s last season). And even where you have a game that might otherwise qualify as memorable, such as the 2014 game where USC beat a top-10 Arizona team on the road, but even that nice win gets buried under a lot of other brutal memories. It came a few weeks after USC was clobbered by a mediocre Boston College team that rushed for around 4,000 yards (I’ll have the check the stats for the exact figure) and one week after a spectacular collapse at the Coliseum against ASU, where USC gave up three touchdowns in the last four minutes to lose a game they had in the bag, the last of those touchdowns coming on a Hail Mary. So that upset win over Arizona just didn’t mean much of anything in the grand scheme. And if I’m being honest, I’d kind of like to forget Steve Sarkisian’s entire short and stupid tenure. How this guy continues to fail upwards will never fail to amaze, but at least he’s fallen into a job at a program I don’t like. Good riddance.

Notre Dame

Now we’re getting somewhere. This is obviously one of the greatest rivalries in history between two of the top five programs in history. You could write an entire book on this series, if you wanted; some have. But many of those games were well before my time. In 1931, USC came from behind to beat a Notre Dame team riding a 26-game winning streak to give USC a national title and a ticker-tape parade upon returning to Los Angeles. In 1964, the famous Fertig to Sherman pass resulted in a huge upset over the top-ranked Irish. The 1974 Comeback Game is legendary, as it should be. USC came back from a 24-point deficit to score 55 straight points—almost all of them in the third quarter—in one of the great beatdowns of a Notre Dame team that anybody will ever see. So nice. And I can name another half dozen classics won by USC, as well as some of the worst heartbreaks in Trojans history.

But in my 40 years watching USC football, two games stand out.

The first, my runner-up, is the streak-breaker from 1996. Yes, USC was bad that year, and the game didn’t exactly have national-title implications. But coming from behind to finally beat ND after 13 years without a win was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had at a USC game. It was a feeling of unmitigated relief as 13 years of humiliation came pouring out on a chilly November night. Great night.

But my top choice—and you knew this was coming—is Bush Push, the 2005 classic. I’ve never been at a game with a greater buildup. Everything was on the line. The Notre Dame campus was buzzing all day, and students had banners everywhere showing Notre Dame’s greatest streak-breaking efforts in years past. They were ready, and they believed. The game itself was sloppy early, punctuated with two great runs from Reggie Bush and one great return from Notre Dame safety Tom Zbikowski, only some of which we could see because the grass was up to the players’ necks. But the fourth quarter was electric. Notre Dame people talk about waking the echoes in Notre Dame Stadium.

That night, they did. In the fourth quarter, all the ghosts had been summoned from their tombs, and they were shaking that old structure like nothing I have experienced before or since. On 3^rd and 19, it looked like all was lost. The 4^th and 9 pass to Dwayne Jarrett made it appear that all was right. Then Leinart is hit and falls short of the goal line; the ball goes flying out of bounds; the clock operator (a typical Notre Dame cheater) lets the game clock continue to run to zero; the crowd rushes the field. And surrounded by premature celebrators, who had been moved to the side, Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush decide to try the ballsiest quarterback sneak in college football history, and that legendary duo came up with one of the sport’s most legendary plays. It had everything you could want in a football game. Pure magic. 

Utah

The Utes are obviously a recent rival, and while USC leads the overall series 12-9, it doesn’t feel that way because of the Clay years—may they be purged from our memories!—and last year’s two, brutally disappointing losses. Still, there are two candidates for the best of the series. The first is the 2019 game, where USC and its third-string quarterback, Matt Fink, torched the Utah secondary as Kyle Whittingham stubbornly insisted on playing man coverage the entire game against a loaded USC receiving corps. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. But the winner is the 2015 game, where Utah came in ranked #3 and USC was in the second game of yet another interim head coaching tenure. Linebacker Cameron Smith was the hero with three interceptions, including a pick-six, and the Trojans absolutely dominated the highly-ranked Utes. The downside, of course, is that this is one of the key games that got Clay Helton hired as the permanent head man, leading to years of pain and agony. But, for now, let’s forget about all of that and just remember the glory of that day in the Coliseum. 

Cal

USC and Cal have played over 100 times with USC winning almost 70 percent of them. With so many games, you might think it would be hard to pick the greatest. Nope. This is easy. In 2004, Leinart, Bush, LenDale, and a great defense were seeking revenge against a Cal program that had provided USC’s only blemish on a national title season the previous year. It would not be easy. Cal was led by Aaron Rodgers and Marshawn Lynch—if you don’t remember those names, I can assure you they were pretty good at football—and a surprisingly stiff defense. The quarterbacks were both stars, and Rodgers lived up to the billing. He was perfect most of the day, completing a record 23-straight passes to open the game, and USC’s offense was dismal most of the day, barely cracking 200 yards.

But the Trojans defense kept the game close and, in the final minutes, won the game in heroic fashion. Trailing 23-17, Rodgers led Cal to the USC 9-yard line with 1:47 remaining, setting up one of the greatest, most significant goal-line stands in USC history. USC won the national title this year, as you know. But if Cal scores on that possession, it is Cal that wins the Pac-10, and Oklahoma and Auburn probably play in the title game, with Cal bitching about their exclusion as they play in the Rose Bowl. And it certainly looked grim on first and goal facing Rodgers, who was 29 of 31 passing at that point. USC calls a timeout. Later we learn that Pete Carroll took his defense aside, smiling, and asked them, “Isn’t this fun?” No, actually, it wasn’t, Pete. It was terrifying. But it became fun pretty quickly.

Rodgers threw an incomplete pass on first and goal, got sacked on second down, and followed the sack with two more incompletions. The final minutes of that game featured one of the best atmospheres ever seen at the Coliseum.  And I always remember Carroll’s statement to his team as the epitome of what Pete was all about. Ever the competitor, Carroll found himself in the middle of one of the greatest moments of competition he and his team would ever experience, and he was loving it. I loved it too—afterwards. USC was on its way to an undefeated national title and a felony assault on Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. 

Washington

I have three vivid memories, and now I’m not sure I can trust them. I remember a Husky cheerleader sitting outside the Coliseum crying after the game as she waited for the bus to pick up her squad. I remember throwing confetti in the air when USC scored to take the lead, and the lady in front of me looking back with some amount of dissatisfaction with my hand-made debris covering her hair. And I remember Washington taking the opening possession and easily driving down the field to take a 7-0 lead. But one thing: the latter memory is inaccurate.

USC scored first and led 6-0 on two field goals before Washington got its only score with just under two minutes left in the first half. I have an excuse; I wasn’t quite 11 years old. But now I don’t know what to trust. I do know this: USC had only one loss at the time (a beatdown to LSU at the Coliseum—my very first USC game), and beating top-ranked Washington in my second visit to the Coliseum clinched a Rose Bowl berth for USC. USC would win that Rose Bowl over Keith Byars and Ohio State. The Trojans would also get crushed by UCLA and lose a sloppy, muddy game to Notre Dame at the Coliseum, partially sullying what was a very successful season. But that Washington game gave me a taste of the majesty of USC football when things are right, and is one of the biggest reasons I fell in love with USC football as a child.

Oregon

USC has spent the better part of its football history beating the tar out of the hapless Ducks. I’m not bragging; most decent teams on the west coast spent many years beating the tar out of the hapless Ducks. It was commonplace, just part of life as it was and had always been, like the tides or the rising of the sun. But by 2002, things were different. USC was just starting to overcome the tragedy that was Paul Hackett’s tenure, and the future trajectory of the program was still unclear. Oregon had gone 11-1 the prior season and finished that year ranked #2. They came into the USC game with only one loss.  They were arrogant. They had put large billboards advertising Duck football in downtown Los Angeles.

They were playing in front of a raucous crowd. And they led the two-loss, 15^th-ranked Trojans 19-14 at the half. Then the floodgates opened. USC scored 30 straight second-half points, and Carson Palmer threw for 448 yards and five touchdowns before Oregon scored a couple of garbage scores late. USC went on to destroy UCLA, Notre Dame, and Iowa, Palmer would win the Heisman, USC would finish #4 in the AP poll, and Pete Carroll’s dynasty had begun. Oregon would finish the season in fine Oregon fashion, losing six of their last seven, including three consecutive blowouts (to rivals Washington and Oregon State and to Wake Forest in the toilet bowl). Good times.

But maybe my most vivid memory of the game came after the game, when Jason Fife, nephew and intellectual heir to Barney, couldn’t stop running his mouth. He talked about how they should have scored 50 against USC and how they didn’t get their rhythm until late in the game, not realizing that everybody gets in a rhythm against a prevent defense in garbage time. My hate for Oregon has only grown since then, but that day I already had a pretty clear understanding of what Oregon football is all about. I partially thank Jason Fife for that. And I thank him whole-heartedly for his 20-45, two-interception passing performance.  Fight on, Fife!

UCLA

As with Notre Dame, where do you even begin? So many classic games. So much ecstasy. (The feeling, not the drug.) So much heartbreak. I wasn’t around in 1967, so I can’t talk about OJ and Beban (though I’ve watched the game since). The 2002 game where USC dominated UCLA and UCLA fans left their seats for pizza is a favorite. The 2001 game where USC’s defense beat UCLA into submission in a 27-0 statement game was fantastic. Who can forget the 1988 Measles Game, where a sick Rodney Peete kept USC’s national-title hopes alive by beating his rival Troy Aikman again? Or the 1990 game where Todd Marinovich found Johnnie Morton in the end zone to beat the Bruins 45-42? Last year’s blockbuster was amazing and featured the most unlikely of heroes. So many great games.

But my favorite has always been 1987. UCLA had only one loss—on the road to a great Nebraska team—was ranked fifth, and was heavily favored. That loaded Bruins roster showed what Terry Donahue was capable of as a recruiter, with a team that featured Troy Aikman, Gaston Green, Flipper Anderson, Darryl Henley (the noblest Bruin of them all), Carnell Lake, Eric Turner, and Ken Norton Jr. That was a very good football team. USC had talent, but Larry Smith’s first Trojan squad had already lost to Michigan State, Oregon, and Notre Dame. So much was on the line: the Victory Bell, the Rose Bowl, LA bragging rights. And USC’s defense was fantastic. They dominated Aikman, holding him to 11 of 26 with three interceptions. But it was two plays by the offense that stand out.

The first was Rodney Peete’s heroic play at the end of the first half. Trailing 10-0, Peete was intercepted by Eric Turner who appeared to have a clean shot at a pick-six and what likely would have been an insurmountable 17-0 halftime lead. But Rodney Peete caught Turner at the USC 14-yard line with time expiring, keeping the Trojans within two scores at the half. The second critical play was one of the most famous plays in the rivalry’s history. In the middle of the fourth quarter from UCLA’s 34-yard line, Peete finds Erik Affholter deep in the right corner of the end zone for a juggling catch to give USC a 17-13 lead and the game. UCLA fans still complain. Let them; they’re trained from birth to do it. Just remember that USC still would have won that game even if Affholter had been ruled out of bounds, but winning that way with that iconic juggling catch just made it that much sweeter.

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