USC Trojans Have Swagger Back, and It Appears It May Be Here to Stay
Gone was the sense of entitlement.
Gone was the swagger that came from matching what those around the program said to what the program did every Saturday.
Gone was the aura that emanated from the Song Girls, the marching band and Traveler galloping across the field.
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After a two-year bowl ban, 17 losses since the start of 2010 and a coaching reign that saw fans chanting for a firing, a glimpse of what USC was and may be again was evident Saturday in a 13-10 victory at Stanford. The win gave the Trojans a major boost in their quest to re-establish themselves as not only a Pac-12 power but a playoff contender for the national championship.
"It's been a long four years," USC athletic director Pat Haden admitted to the Los Angeles Times' Bill Plaschke. "We've been through a lot. We're finally coming out of it."
On Sunday, the polls reflected increased respect for the Trojans as they jumped (from No. 14) to No. 9 in the AP poll and to No. 10 in the coaches poll.
USC is back.
But it was more than kicker Andre Heidari's game-winning 53-yard field goal with 2:30 remaining in the game or running back Javorius Allen's career-high 154 yards that rekindled memories of the Student Body Left, Student Body Right days, when Heisman Trophy candidates and All-American running backs seemed part of the program's DNA.
It was also the sight of USC coach Steve Sarkisian going ballistic with the officials, and Haden (a former All-American QB and Rhodes Scholar) coming out of the press box to argue with them on the sidelines after receiving a text message from the USC sideline.
It was good football and good theatre.
It was the attitude that said, "We are USC."
Yes, they are. And while this season is only in its preliminary stages, it isn't a stretch to suggest that when the campaign wraps up in January with its first-ever College Football Playoff, USC will be part of the show.
Beating Stanford—which became a Pac-12 force in the power vacuum created when USC tumbled because of the severe sanctions levied against it by the NCAA—for the second consecutive year has set the table for USC to return among the game's elite.
Oregon isn't on the regular-season schedule, and a potential conference title game meeting would be at the neutral site of Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California. That leaves two major threats in the Pac-12 South: Arizona State, which must travel to L.A., and UCLA, which has looked less than overpowering in two wins over Virginia and Memphis.
Sarkisian, who arrived in December from Washington and was once a longtime assistant under former coach Pete Carroll, hinted as much after the game Saturday.
"No telling what might happen now," he told reporters. "We might just see these guys again in a few months [in the Pac-12 title game in December]."
There was a time not all that long ago when such confident chatter was a staple of USC conversation.
After the program had grown dormant in the years after John McKay, and John Robinson had directed the school to five national championships between 1962-78, Pete Carroll arrived and, in short order, turned the Trojans forward.
After stumbling out of the gate in 2001 with a 2-5 start, USC went 67-7 over the next 74 games. It won 34 straight during one stretch and captured back-to-back AP national championships in '03 and '04. The Trojans finished in the top four of the final AP rankings seven times, and they lost a total of nine games from '02-08.
USC games became must-see events. Average attendance jumped from fewer than 60,000 per game to more than 85,000. Celebrities such as Will Ferrell mingled with former Heisman winners and All-Americans on the sidelines at home games.
It was a stretch of success that came with a huge cost, however.
The NCAA hit the program with a two-year bowl ban and the loss of 30 scholarships after an investigation found that former tailback Reggie Bush had received improper benefits from marketing agents. Fourteen victories were crossed out of the record book, an '05 national title vacated.
Carroll, while not directly implicated, was the man in charge at the time. Six months before the penalties were handed to the school, Carroll left to return to the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks.
It has been a tough trip since, characterized by missteps, mistakes and, at times, chaos. It seemed to peak last season when Haden fired coach Lane Kiffin midseason. That left the team in the hands of assistant Ed Orgeron, who soon quit (upon Sarkisian's hiring), leaving the program in the hands of assistant Clay Helton for the team's visit to the Las Vegas Bowl.
Counting Sarkisian, the Trojans cycled through four coaches in four months. Remarkably, they still won 10 games.
Once a longtime assistant under Carroll, Sarkisian has been forced to expect the unexpected in his short tenure running the show at USC.
Before the season started, he faced internal strife when he suspended team captain Josh Shaw for fabricating a story about saving his nephew from drowning in a swimming pool. Sarkisian had to deal with charges from running back Anthony Brown that Brown was quitting because he felt Sarkisian was a racist (an accusation Sarkisian called "ridiculous" and Brown deleted from his Instagram account).
Despite the problems of the last few weeks, Sarkisian has brought stability to the football offices after the last few years of turmoil under Kiffin. And then there is the talent level. Rivals has ranked USC's 2015 recruiting class as the best in the conference (and No. 10 nationally), which has bolstered a roster with talent returning at all of the offensive skill positions and seven starters back on defense.
With a 2-0 start, it would appear USC is indeed "coming out of it," as Haden suggested. The program has always had the first-line talent to compete with anyone, including crosstown rival UCLA, which has also re-emerged as a Pac-12 and national force under the guidance of coach Jim Mora.
The Trojans are sitting in prime position, with a schedule that seems manageable, starting with a prime-time road game Saturday night at Boston College on and back-to-back home contests against Oregon State and Arizona State.
After that, the biggest obstacles appear to be a road game at Arizona on Oct. 11, the annual meeting with UCLA (in the Rose Bowl) on Nov. 22 and a regular-season finale with Notre Dame a week later. Then could come the rematch with Stanford that Sarkisian hinted at or a date with No. 3 Oregon in the Pac-12 title game.
With the early self-destruct button hit by the Big Ten in terms of its national championship hopes, USC might need to reserve some space on the sidelines for a Will Ferrell sequel soon.
Mark Blaudschun covers college football as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. He has more than three decades of experience covering sports at a variety of newspapers in New Jersey, The Dallas Morning News and The Boston Globe.
Follow him on Twitter @blauds.
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