USC: Why the Football Team Is Important to the Rest of the Athletic Department

At USC, there is more than just football.

And for some, that is a blasphemous statement, but check out the recent infographic that USCTrojans.com just created.

Let’s start with the basics.

The Trojans had 11 teams finish in the top seven nationally this year.

Out of those, three of them—women’s golf, women’s water polo and men’s volleyball—were national runners-up.

Two of them won national championships. Both men’s tennis and men’s water polo brought in their fourth national title in a row. That’s right, two teams “four-peated” in the same year.

Not bad.

From those teams came three national coaches of the year: Jovan Vavic (water polo), Peter Smith (men’s tennis) and Bill Ferguson (men’s volleyball).

And those coaches created 56 First Team All-Americans and four national players of the year. Tony Ciarelli (men’s volleyball), Steve Johnson (men’s tennis), Joel Dennerly (men’s water polo) and Alex Jupiter (women’s volleyball) all were voted the best in their sport.

Last but not least, these players brought the Trojans’ title count to 117 overall, which ranks third in the nation. The men hold 81 of those, which is the most of any school nationally.

So what do all those regulated statistics and figures mean?

Well for one, it means that USC is investing in its entire athletic department as a whole. For every team’s sake, you want a strong department that invests as best as it can in all their athletes.

Here’s another perspective for you.

Usually, there are only two sports that actually net any sort of profit for an athletic department: men’s basketball and football.

Though football is one of the more expensive sports, it also extremely lucrative. It pays for not just itself, but for most of the athletic department.

The football team isn’t just playing for themselves, they are playing to help fund an entire department. If they do well, they set up the rest of their friends and classmates to do the same.

Yes, there is much more than just football at USC.

But that is because, first and foremost, there is football.