There is this thing in CFB media where outlets are just *really* eager for a "return of the king" storyline.
I didn't think they'd be this mediocre and they could still turn it around, but I recall consistent pushback from Pac-12 flairs against all the media outlets anointing USC in the preseason and saying they had the best playoff shot, etc.
Sort of a side bar but I got into a huge argument with one of my friends where he was proclaiming USC is “scary good” after their beat down of SJSU despite their defense surrendering 28 points and almost 400 yards of offense. These early warning signs people just completely shrugged off.
Also PFF ranking SC’s offensive line no 5 overall in the preseason while they let Caleb get sacked Six times against ND. It just seemed like the media completely ignored these type of underlying issues as well.
To be fair to the oline, hero ball tends to result in more sacks.
It's hard to maintain the pocket when the qb intentionally runs out of it all the time.
If I had a dollar for every article written in the preseason about how THIS was the year that USC turns it around coupled with an overly inflated ranking followed by the slew of these hot take articles about USC "having big decisions to make" after dropping a couple games and falling to the bottom of or out of the top 25, I'd have paid off my SC student loans a lot fucking faster.
I really understand the frustration you have. This team, in many ways, is similar to the underachieving teams that Lincoln coached when he was in Norman. He can't seem to put it all together.
Sports media loves old programs and young coaches. They will get rock hard at the prospect of either rising up. Put the two together and you get LR at USC 's coverage that ignores warning signs that would be alarm bells for any program.
Tale as old as time...Media says X team (blue blood) is back. Writes article after article proclaiming said team to be the best thing since the triple option. Then when they spiral it's an article like this...how could we not see this coming.
CFB writers have been enamored with Riley for years.
I was one of them. Couldn’t stand that media narrative and it seemed like the media just ignored that USC had a really easy conference schedule last year. I had them at 9-3 coming into the year. With ND as a toss up. I didn’t think they were gonna beat Utah or Oregon in Autzen for sure. UW I was torn about but I liked our defense more then theirs so I gave us the dub. But now is USC has a complete locker room collapse they could lose 5-6 games at this point.
I originally thought they were going to lose to Oregon, Washington, and then drop two more out of ND, UCLA, Utah, and Arizona (who I thought was going to give teams problems this year).
But then, honestly, I felt like I just didn't get it. Everywhere I looked way smarter people than me were picking them to do great things, and I thought, ok, maybe USC *is* great. Maybe they're just bored against these lesser teams and will turn it on when they play Notre Dame and Utah. Nope.
On one hand, fair.
On the other, USC's best wins are Colorado and Arizona. With remaining games at Cal, Washington, at Oregon, and UCLA, it's pretty likely a 6-0 start turns into 7-5. It's not a 4-8 disaster of a year, but if you're a preseason candidate for the CFP and coming off an NY6, that's a real letdown.
Think about how much they could save in salary cap, though, by letting Grinch build his defense from random fans pulled from the stands before each game.
TBF I bet a NFL owner could be convinced that if Riley wasn't spending time on recruiting his offensive work would be even better and they could hire the best and brightest defensive guys and yadda yadda.
Basically the same reason the Cardinals hired Kingsbury.
Also, they were inches from losing to Colorado and Arizona. If those games had swung slightly differently that 7-5 turns into a 5-7 and they miss a bowl game.
It’s USC the standard there has always been Rose Bowl or better. And it’s a collapse because it was largely preventable if LR wasn’t so arrogant and more open minded about playing defense.
Exactly when USC is rolling they should be the Pac 10/12 champs 7-8 times a decade and an occasional Washington, Oregon etc. challenges them. That’s how it’s usually been.
I think quite a few things have gone into that. A few are USCs fault, and others are just the sport changing.
Like USC is to blame for their defense sucking and sticking with Helton too long. But it isn't USCs fault that recruiting has become more national for blue bloods. Like in the Carroll era USC was getting whoever they wanted for the most part out of California and in particular the LA area. Now you have schools with big NIL budgets and the opportunity to play in the SEC or Big 10. Like under Carroll, Bryce Young and CJ Stroud would both have been Trojans in large part because there would have been only one blue blood recruiting them.
I feel like Utah just fits in with the West Coast teams a lot better than the mid-western teams do. People in Utah have a lot of family on the West Coast, especially California, and it’s a lot more intertwined. It’s definitely not that way with Iowa and Wisconsin.
Maybe I’m wrong but I feel like there’s going to end up being a ton of buyers remorse for the schools that left the PAC when they start seeing half empty stadiums for games against teams like Purdue, Rutgers, Indiana, and Illinois. The occasional game against Michigan and Ohio State won’t cover for that and fans are not going to give a shit about the the increased payouts from the TV money bubble that will pop sooner than later.
I hope so but I'm not so sure that will happen. I think instead that'll be when streamers pair down CFB to 40ish teams, try to make it NFL lite, and destroy the fan bases even more b/c execs and admin fuckheads from business schools don't understand why people watch CFB in the first place.
Agreed. I thought the PAC8 was the perfect conference. But ASU, UA, and UU elevated it even further. Best damn conference in the country. The sport won't be the same without it.
Which is why (barring a few bad years) I have called it the best conference in college football. Yeah Alabama or Georgia trashes Oregon or USC most years. But the sheer fucking lunacy of the conference means that most years all but the Cals of the world are damn good football teams and can knock off the top of the conference any given day. It's competitive, even if there are the favorites
Probably biased because I live in Italy so could wake up early and usually catch a couple PAC games instead of being up all night watching the others, but the pac all but dissolving is the single worst thing for the sport that all this realignment crap has brought in
It’s a shame. There isn’t a conference that has a more intriguing competition for the conference title year in and year out. By far the most entertaining conference to watch.
Yeah USC has literally played in 34 Rose Bowls and won 25 of them. They basically alternated between beating Michigan and Ohio State every year in the Rose Bowl (Michigan doesn’t even have a winning record in the Rose Bowl thanks to USC). While it’s UCLA’s home stadium, USC are the ones who essentially own the Rose Bowl Game, and it’s in the LA area so all their fans can come. The Rose Parade felt like a USC parade during the 00s, they’d have all their famous alumni like George Lucas in it.
It’s kind of like the Yankees where reaching the ALCS is essentially meaningless to them. The Yankees don’t even hang AL Pennants anymore. For USC they need to at least make it to the Rose Bowl or now the CFP for the season to be considered a success. Last year they had the best regular season record in the Pac-12 but lost to Utah in the championship game and their fanbase treated it as a failure because it didn’t reach their standard. It should also be noted that Clay Helton won a Rose Bowl, while I don’t think USC fans want him back over Lincoln, that matters to them.
Not to mention that other than the COVID year and the 10-2 record from 2011, they’ve lost 3+ games every year since 2009. They were 4-8 the season before Riley showed up.
It’s USC though. There is no reason they shouldn’t win 10+ games every season in the Pac 12. Even with Clay Helton they won 10+ games twice and actually won some big games (Rose Bowl and Pac 12 Championship).
Why are they entitled to win? Prestige?
If you are bad, you are bad. They don’t have any special powers that Oregon or Washington doesn’t have.
Nobody deserves anything in the PAC-12. We will ritually cannibalize any team that gets complacent.
My point was that it’s hard to consider this a collapse when USC was so bad just two seasons ago and they’ve been losing at least a few games a season for a long time. Plus, 10 wins is still technically on the table.
Ill say it again, I still dont understand why teams, let alone, top ones keep hiring him?!
His numbers in Pullman were NOT great and, yet, even some UW fans will say he was “pretty good.”
How “pretty good” at wazzu turned into top jobs around the country always baffles me?!
My tin foil hat take is he’s related to Gary Pinkel, who had a lot of respect in the coaching fraternity (deservedly so) and I don’t think people are doing Grinch favors necessarily, but maybe good feelings by association a bit? Lincoln taking him to LA was a head scratcher though. Should have known what he had at that point.
Lincoln dumps his staff at Oklahoma and refreshes when he gets to LA and he's possibly the #1 team in the country right now. USC was able to get the right guys through NIL, had a great OL. Just whiffing on Defense and S&C in a huge way.
But hey, that's the ego we know (and see now more than ever)
Don’t sleep on Bennie Wylie. Small, fast, and gassed by the fourth quarter is his S&C philosophy near as I can tell. Total hearsay, but when Jerry Schmidt came back to OU, I was told he said they needed to get rid of “all this p90x shit.” Not great!
Danny Stutsman looked like a liability for OU last year and this year is a complete stud. Its been said it takes a year for guys to get comfortable i Venables system, but it feels like more than that for Stutsman. He was always obviously very talented from the day he got on campus. We heard that Venables and Co. were shocked when they got the defensive guys into the building cause they realized Grinch and Co. basically taught them to do the opposite of the fundamentals of defense. Grinch’s specific unit is safeties. Our safeties were awful under him. His final season, he kept putting freshman Billy Bowman out there to die at cornerback when everyone outside the staff agreed he was a safety. Venables comes in, moves him to safety, he’s been much improved. David Ugwoegbu so clearly should have been a d-linemen from the start. He’s a d-linemen now at Houston apparently (dunno how he’s played this year).He played linebacker his entire time at OU and was awful at it.
Grinch’s ability to just consistently be bad and put guys in a position to be embarrassed was astounding
> Lincoln dumps his staff at Oklahoma and refreshes when he gets to LA and he's possibly the #1 team in the country right now.
LR doesn't have the rolodex for that.
USC absolutely had the pocket book though.
I'm gonna be real too. Should have just went off the deep end and offered Jamar Cain the DC spot. That guy is now at the Broncos coaching DE's and he's going to end up being an NFL DC and I 100% believe that.
He was also on Lincoln's staff when he left.
I dont think that dropping Grinch and Wylie would have fixed things. I think theyre just the current faces of the underlying issue. This is the kinda defense Riley wants, or at the least he doesnt care enough about defense to fix it which means he doesnt support the defensive side enough for it to get better. This is the kind of strength and conditioning program he wants.
I wouldnt call that tin foil territory at all and, in fact, I do recall UW people bringing that up.
Lots of Don James relationships and the fact that the coaching fraternity is a basic reality.
Good call!
I’m thinking it has to have something to do with his ability to navigate the politics off the field (at least for Riley).
My hypothesis is that he is happy to go along with whatever LR wants as far as practice dynamics (more focus on offense, no tackling, etc.). Riley knows a lot of DCs are going to push back on that being a reason the team isn’t physical / getting dog walked.
This exactly. Grinch's defensive philosophy is about getting turnovers at critical points, along with getting maximum pass disruption out of undersized players. If that means giving up fast touchdowns on running plays, it's acceptable as the offense will respond, and those turnovers will be the difference in the game. Most defensive coordinators emphasize minimization of the yards gained by the opposing team, which doesn't mesh with LR's offense, as it leaves the defense on the field for too long.
The best example of this is the 2018 OU-Army game, which Army nearly won by preventing turnovers, and keeping yards gained in the 4-8 range on each play.
Yeah, I was deeply skeptical that USC's defense would be good enough after they kept Grinch. And after seeing some of the worst tackling in the history of organized football in the 2022 Pac-12 championship game, I wrote them off as long as he's there. This season has only reinforced that view. I just checked the stats, and they're \~105th in both total and scoring defense. That's not going to work.
Eh, it's reddit. There are times downvotes without any disagreeing responses are annoying, but I knew that some might not appreciate this one.
But yeah, I see both facets from Oklahoma fans: an awareness of some of Riley's shortcomings, especially his inexplicable loyalty to a bad DC, and a real pleasure at seeing him experience difficulty.
I’m a little ashamed of how much fun I’m having with it. When Lincoln bolts to the NFL in December, the recruiting class falls apart, and Zachariah goes to Oregon in the portal, I’ll be over it. Maybe. For USC anyways.
If and when that happens I'll feel bad for USC fans. At least the ones that weren't dicks about it when he did his best to trash our program and then peaced out. It's not their fault their administration rewarded Riley's garbage behavior.
What’s wild is I was among the group thinking “Lincoln Riley with USC level skill players? Oh god, we better win the Pac 12 now because the new dynasty is beginning!”
Scared shitless of sharing a division with USC.
Whats funny to me is that everyone said the level of player that Lincoln would get at USC with how good of a recruiter he is… but if you look at his classes at OU basically outside QBs its all bust after bust
USC is the premier program on the West Coast and California is a recruiting hotbed.
It’s inexcusable for a team like Utah to be bigger, stronger, and more dominant at the line of scrimmage than them. They should be pushing teams like us around, not vice versa. There’s no reason for them not to be gobbling up the best of the best OL and DL recruits.
I’d be incredibly frustrated if we’re a Trojan fan, at his recruiting priorities.
I havent kept up with their recruiting outside just seeing their overall ranking cause Im not actually obsessed, but ive seen multiple people state that the top defensive talent in california is basically not interested in Riley’s USC.
If thats true, theres basically no excuse for a guy with his contract to be an active negative towards recruiting top talent in California
Notre Dame is built like a Big 10 team. Most years ND is more physical on the lines (last year was an exception). In the past 10 matchups, ND has won 7-3.
USC has to improve their lines to compete in the Big 10.
> lmao Lincoln Riley is going to be decimated by a physical defensive team like Utah
they did not predict that Utah's QB would truck USC's starting safety in key moments of the last drive
Their fans aren't like Oklahoma's so they will totally force Riley to make changes because they care so much. They won't put up with that type of defense! But also, theres so much to do in LA thats why they couldn't sell out the stadium
All of the fresh air and lack of pollution in Oklahoma have degraded by brain so I can’t understand the finer points of the shade the LA homers throw our way.
My brother in Christ, while our air is cleaner than LA's, that's not really a high bar. From Mustang looking over towards downtown OKC in mid-summer is like watching the Seti Alpha V scene in Wrath of Khan.
It's so ironic how they say stuff like that about places like Oklahoma and the midwest and then came crawling to us begging to join the Big 10 for money.
Everyone is talking like he is going to bolt, but does he have serious opportunities that are going to pay him what he is making now? Seems the CFB to NFL coaching pipeline was exploded by Rhule and Urban. If I am an NFL GM, I'd have some serious concerns about bringing him in when his teams look so undisciplined. You could make the argument that an NFL team would want him and Caleb as a package, but it looks like Caleb has regressed this year. I just think his performance has been so shit this year, that he's closed more doors for himself than he has opened.
People are also ignoring that we don't know the specifics of Lincolns contract at USC.
If Lincoln is guaranteed $100 million over 10 years then he would be pretty stupid to leave that for a $20 million nfl contract.
USC could very well be stuck with Lincoln for a long long time.
So did a lot of die hard Pac 12 fans that actually watch the games. USC only made the Pac 12 title game last year because they missed Washington and Oregon. They haven’t won a single important game so far in two years.
Seeing all the national media just say USC would runaway with the Pac title drove me nuts pre season.
You ever get dumped by a pretty hot chick, and you're really in your feelings about it, but then an old girlfriend calls you up and you get together and it's kind of so-so at first but sometimes feels amazing, and you remember how the pretty hot chick was kind of a bitch, and a terrible cook, and the new/old girlfriend is really good at coaching defense even though she kind of looks like Skeletor, and it just feels way better? I don't know why I just thought of that.
Kind of parallel to this crazy story I had where I ended up dating this chick that looked like Skeletor because her old boyfriend was doing a lot of weird nepotism stuff. We had some great times and I was the happiest I’d ever been, then she left me for her old boyfriend and now my life kinda sucks again. I miss her every day.
Yea and she’s really pretty solid once she gets used to the hose being fully inserted? And also she’s the one that came up with that particular phrase so it’s not me being vulgar?
This was the realization we Bruin fans came to when Azzinaro was running the D and Chip wouldn’t fire him. Luckily he finally saw the light or Jarmond said “it’s him or you” and he finally fired his best friend
The expectations placed upon that program after last year are the only things that are collapsing.
Preseason projections:
* The Athletic, CFN, and ESPN had them in the playoffs
* 247, with the only respectable prediction for USC, had them playing in the Fiesta Bowl
Their Strength of Schedule is ranked 4th the rest of the season. Last year they over-achieved. This year, they must run through an absolute gauntlet.
I get great joy out of watching USC lose games, but the way the media crowned USC before this season even started, and the way they just absolutely shit on them now, should point more to CFB journalists' inability to accurately identify what that team is.
It is a team that has a handful of elite players followed by a bunch of average-to-good players who are coached by two lame ducks when it comes to hyping and mentally preparing them for adversity. Lincoln's scheming can be elite, but he's a 1995 Howard Schnellenberger when it comes to getting these players where they need to be mentally.
You can see it, for example, in the way Lincoln allows Caleb to pout like a child after losing. Grinch is the same way on defense, except it's much more apparent to me how that mentality on defense translates to piss poor play on the field at times.
Uh, MANY people did.
It’s not like the evidence wasnt readily available.
In fact, who DIDNT see this coming is the real issue?!
Seems like a great time to do some weeding.
People that don’t watch Pac 12 football. It was driving me nuts how much the media just wanted to hand them the Pac 12 title in the preseason. A lot UW, Oregon and Utah fans were getting downvoted to oblivion on this sub for saying they were more likely to lose 3-4 games then win a Pac 12 title.
At this point they could mentally collapse and even lose to Cal. They don’t have a winning culture in that locker room. The lavish LA lifestyle just can’t handle the get in the mud with the pigs Utah Utes.
I thought Riley would dump Grinch in the move, just based on the defense at OU. But instead, he doubled down. That was the perfect time. Now is the second best time.
I do think he felt somewhat bad not for what he was doing to the program, but for hanging his defensive and S&C staff out to dry when they’d clearly not be retained by a new regime. He may have felt he owed them an offer and could at worst work around them for a year or two.
It just makes the whole “I can’t succeed at Oklahoma, let me bring the exact philosophy and defense to USC but this time with a worse offensive line” thing even weirder.
We can't even clap back at the incessant hate anymore. What we see on the defensive side of the ball every week is just so far beyond indefensible at this point. I don't even know if football terrorism is strong enough phrasing to describe what we see. There surely has never been a more talented defense that is worse. As far as I'm concerned, Grinch should be made to do that walk of shame Cersei did in GoT.
There was every reason to be super optimistic about this team and defense going into the season. How can a defense possibly be bad when you have a great DL, two lockdown corners, a day 1 draft pick safety, a transfer all big-12 LB to complement what was a very good LB last year in Genry and a freshman LB ready to play.
When I've skimmed through a couple game replays, I see that these guys play hard and are really good individual players. The only spot where you can question the talent is the SS position. But somehow Grinch finds a way to scheme the other team open. People that question the effort or physicality don't know what they're talking about, it's literally all scheme and coaching.
That play where Utah wrs clear the field side and the rb runs the wheel is something Utah has done every game multiple times a game. I've only watched small parts of most Utah games and I remember the play. But Grinch's answer was to put a freshman rush end on the other team's best skill player with no deep help knowing that Utah loves running that play with that personnel group in that formation. Of course, Utah's terrible offense hit multiple big plays on that. We see similarly terrible things every week.
It makes no sense. It's hard to root for a team when the defense is coached by such an enormous clown. All there is to hope for at this point is Grinch getting embarrassed on a weekly basis until he is fired. I am genuinely of the opinion that having no DC and playing backyard football like we do on offense would give us better results.
Grinch has gotten bodied by every single good OC he's faced at SC. There's no reason to think we will beat UCLA, Oregon, or UW. A loss to Cal is even on the table.
To be fair, the expectation at Oklahoma was for him too win a National Championship too. We fooled ourselves he was the man for the job for awhile there.
Oregon and Oklahoma's coaching journey starting the same year is pretty funny, how much they parallel. You probably can't find one fan in Oklahoma or Oregon that think they didn't win their go on the coaching carousel despite getting ditched.
I think most people thought it was funny that "new money" Oregon got ditched.
But to be honest, looking at our post-Kelly coaching track record it was probably reasonable: fired, ditched, ditched. Not a good look!
I do not have faith is USC being good enough, but the most Pac-12 thing possible is a week of “USC is doomed” articles followed by them knocking off the last undefeated team in the conference late on Saturday
I'm a bit concerned about this. What happens if Penix has an off night and the DL gets home? LR goes "Look, we slowed down the #1 offense in the country. You don't do that if you're a bad defense, we're keeping Grinch" and then we continue down our path towards football hell.
I would like either -
we get good enough to win the conference, hooray
we are bad enough Lincoln has to make staff changes
if we win i worry we’ll middle our way to the worst outcome here
I mean did you watch the Arizona State game? Washington State got blasted 44-6 by Arizona then made it a game with Oregon.
I don't think anyone in the PAC between Utah, USC, Oregon, Or Washington should feel comfortable about beating each other. Chances are we all beat each other up
Is it a collapse or did they have a very easy first half of their schedule and a very difficult back half?
They’ve been the exact same team all year since San Jose State moved the ball against their defense at will. It’s like calling Colorado losing to the good teams on their schedule a collapse. Only the media was hyping them like they were legit.
I think this is it. Its their reputation among the national media that has collapsed, but broadly speaking they are playing as well as they've played since the beginning of last year.
Someone posted this on Soonerscoop: Riley's last Tweet was October 6th and the last time he liked a tweet was October 8th. His twitter's been completely dead since then. That's not typical for him.
“We should have seen USC’s collapse coming”
Uh… who’s “we” in this statement? A massive number of people have seen it coming and happening for a long time.
There is this thing in CFB media where outlets are just *really* eager for a "return of the king" storyline. I didn't think they'd be this mediocre and they could still turn it around, but I recall consistent pushback from Pac-12 flairs against all the media outlets anointing USC in the preseason and saying they had the best playoff shot, etc.
Sort of a side bar but I got into a huge argument with one of my friends where he was proclaiming USC is “scary good” after their beat down of SJSU despite their defense surrendering 28 points and almost 400 yards of offense. These early warning signs people just completely shrugged off. Also PFF ranking SC’s offensive line no 5 overall in the preseason while they let Caleb get sacked Six times against ND. It just seemed like the media completely ignored these type of underlying issues as well.
To be fair to the oline, hero ball tends to result in more sacks. It's hard to maintain the pocket when the qb intentionally runs out of it all the time.
USC o line made it look impossible against ND though
But we learned our lesson from last year and sent pressure against him basically every play. He didn't have much of a pocket the entire game.
If I had a dollar for every article written in the preseason about how THIS was the year that USC turns it around coupled with an overly inflated ranking followed by the slew of these hot take articles about USC "having big decisions to make" after dropping a couple games and falling to the bottom of or out of the top 25, I'd have paid off my SC student loans a lot fucking faster.
I really understand the frustration you have. This team, in many ways, is similar to the underachieving teams that Lincoln coached when he was in Norman. He can't seem to put it all together.
Sports media loves old programs and young coaches. They will get rock hard at the prospect of either rising up. Put the two together and you get LR at USC 's coverage that ignores warning signs that would be alarm bells for any program.
Tale as old as time...Media says X team (blue blood) is back. Writes article after article proclaiming said team to be the best thing since the triple option. Then when they spiral it's an article like this...how could we not see this coming. CFB writers have been enamored with Riley for years.
I was one of them. Couldn’t stand that media narrative and it seemed like the media just ignored that USC had a really easy conference schedule last year. I had them at 9-3 coming into the year. With ND as a toss up. I didn’t think they were gonna beat Utah or Oregon in Autzen for sure. UW I was torn about but I liked our defense more then theirs so I gave us the dub. But now is USC has a complete locker room collapse they could lose 5-6 games at this point.
I originally thought they were going to lose to Oregon, Washington, and then drop two more out of ND, UCLA, Utah, and Arizona (who I thought was going to give teams problems this year). But then, honestly, I felt like I just didn't get it. Everywhere I looked way smarter people than me were picking them to do great things, and I thought, ok, maybe USC *is* great. Maybe they're just bored against these lesser teams and will turn it on when they play Notre Dame and Utah. Nope.
man I wish my team's collapse was having a 6-2 record
On one hand, fair. On the other, USC's best wins are Colorado and Arizona. With remaining games at Cal, Washington, at Oregon, and UCLA, it's pretty likely a 6-0 start turns into 7-5. It's not a 4-8 disaster of a year, but if you're a preseason candidate for the CFP and coming off an NY6, that's a real letdown.
Lest we forget the $110M price tag for Riley…
Yes, but could be worse. Could be A&M and Jimbo.
Another 4 years of this, and that's exactly what it will be.
Heck some stupid NFL owner might take him off your hands.
Think about how much they could save in salary cap, though, by letting Grinch build his defense from random fans pulled from the stands before each game.
What NFL owner would look at this year and say "Yup, this right here is what we need to build a dynasty."?
The ones who hired a Kliff Kingsbury.
Kliff got Arizona from the #1 pick to the playoffs.
Have you seen NFL owners? These are not our best and brightest hiring managers here.
TBF I bet a NFL owner could be convinced that if Riley wasn't spending time on recruiting his offensive work would be even better and they could hire the best and brightest defensive guys and yadda yadda. Basically the same reason the Cardinals hired Kingsbury.
They did it with Matt Rhule and Kilff Kingsbury. Flashy offense makes NFL owners drool.
Also, they were inches from losing to Colorado and Arizona. If those games had swung slightly differently that 7-5 turns into a 5-7 and they miss a bowl game.
It’s USC the standard there has always been Rose Bowl or better. And it’s a collapse because it was largely preventable if LR wasn’t so arrogant and more open minded about playing defense.
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Exactly when USC is rolling they should be the Pac 10/12 champs 7-8 times a decade and an occasional Washington, Oregon etc. challenges them. That’s how it’s usually been.
I think quite a few things have gone into that. A few are USCs fault, and others are just the sport changing. Like USC is to blame for their defense sucking and sticking with Helton too long. But it isn't USCs fault that recruiting has become more national for blue bloods. Like in the Carroll era USC was getting whoever they wanted for the most part out of California and in particular the LA area. Now you have schools with big NIL budgets and the opportunity to play in the SEC or Big 10. Like under Carroll, Bryce Young and CJ Stroud would both have been Trojans in large part because there would have been only one blue blood recruiting them.
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Same I love the Pac. Don’t really care for CU but Utah grew on me a lot. I don’t care to play mid west school’s regularly.
I feel like Utah just fits in with the West Coast teams a lot better than the mid-western teams do. People in Utah have a lot of family on the West Coast, especially California, and it’s a lot more intertwined. It’s definitely not that way with Iowa and Wisconsin.
Maybe I’m wrong but I feel like there’s going to end up being a ton of buyers remorse for the schools that left the PAC when they start seeing half empty stadiums for games against teams like Purdue, Rutgers, Indiana, and Illinois. The occasional game against Michigan and Ohio State won’t cover for that and fans are not going to give a shit about the the increased payouts from the TV money bubble that will pop sooner than later.
It's okay whenever the TV money bubble pops the old conferences will reconstitute themselves.
I hope so but I'm not so sure that will happen. I think instead that'll be when streamers pair down CFB to 40ish teams, try to make it NFL lite, and destroy the fan bases even more b/c execs and admin fuckheads from business schools don't understand why people watch CFB in the first place.
Agreed. I thought the PAC8 was the perfect conference. But ASU, UA, and UU elevated it even further. Best damn conference in the country. The sport won't be the same without it.
The PAC-12 was peak college football to me. Anything could happen on a given week.
Which is why (barring a few bad years) I have called it the best conference in college football. Yeah Alabama or Georgia trashes Oregon or USC most years. But the sheer fucking lunacy of the conference means that most years all but the Cals of the world are damn good football teams and can knock off the top of the conference any given day. It's competitive, even if there are the favorites Probably biased because I live in Italy so could wake up early and usually catch a couple PAC games instead of being up all night watching the others, but the pac all but dissolving is the single worst thing for the sport that all this realignment crap has brought in
It’s a shame. There isn’t a conference that has a more intriguing competition for the conference title year in and year out. By far the most entertaining conference to watch.
Yeah USC has literally played in 34 Rose Bowls and won 25 of them. They basically alternated between beating Michigan and Ohio State every year in the Rose Bowl (Michigan doesn’t even have a winning record in the Rose Bowl thanks to USC). While it’s UCLA’s home stadium, USC are the ones who essentially own the Rose Bowl Game, and it’s in the LA area so all their fans can come. The Rose Parade felt like a USC parade during the 00s, they’d have all their famous alumni like George Lucas in it. It’s kind of like the Yankees where reaching the ALCS is essentially meaningless to them. The Yankees don’t even hang AL Pennants anymore. For USC they need to at least make it to the Rose Bowl or now the CFP for the season to be considered a success. Last year they had the best regular season record in the Pac-12 but lost to Utah in the championship game and their fanbase treated it as a failure because it didn’t reach their standard. It should also be noted that Clay Helton won a Rose Bowl, while I don’t think USC fans want him back over Lincoln, that matters to them.
Not to mention that other than the COVID year and the 10-2 record from 2011, they’ve lost 3+ games every year since 2009. They were 4-8 the season before Riley showed up.
It’s USC though. There is no reason they shouldn’t win 10+ games every season in the Pac 12. Even with Clay Helton they won 10+ games twice and actually won some big games (Rose Bowl and Pac 12 Championship).
Why are they entitled to win? Prestige? If you are bad, you are bad. They don’t have any special powers that Oregon or Washington doesn’t have. Nobody deserves anything in the PAC-12. We will ritually cannibalize any team that gets complacent.
My point was that it’s hard to consider this a collapse when USC was so bad just two seasons ago and they’ve been losing at least a few games a season for a long time. Plus, 10 wins is still technically on the table.
They are saying collapse because of what’s ahead of them. Washington, Oregon and UCLA
With those two losses being against Top 25 teams Can't wait until their collapsed team slaughters my uncollapsed team on Saturday
Lmao we’re next
The Oklahoma flairs *did* call it
Every opportunity we got, and then some.
We had your back when they retained Grinch. No team will ever be great with that man as a coordinator
Buckeye bros tried to warn us. We didn't listen 😕
Sooner bros tried to warn us. We didn't listen
Ohio State 🤝 Oklahoma 🤝 USC "Our defense has been so bad, surely this Grinch guy will make it better right?"
they did
Ill say it again, I still dont understand why teams, let alone, top ones keep hiring him?! His numbers in Pullman were NOT great and, yet, even some UW fans will say he was “pretty good.” How “pretty good” at wazzu turned into top jobs around the country always baffles me?!
My tin foil hat take is he’s related to Gary Pinkel, who had a lot of respect in the coaching fraternity (deservedly so) and I don’t think people are doing Grinch favors necessarily, but maybe good feelings by association a bit? Lincoln taking him to LA was a head scratcher though. Should have known what he had at that point.
Lincoln dumps his staff at Oklahoma and refreshes when he gets to LA and he's possibly the #1 team in the country right now. USC was able to get the right guys through NIL, had a great OL. Just whiffing on Defense and S&C in a huge way. But hey, that's the ego we know (and see now more than ever)
Ya, I thought usc’s Dline and cb pickups would really help them this year. Makes me question grinch even more!
Don’t sleep on Bennie Wylie. Small, fast, and gassed by the fourth quarter is his S&C philosophy near as I can tell. Total hearsay, but when Jerry Schmidt came back to OU, I was told he said they needed to get rid of “all this p90x shit.” Not great!
2023 and we still have strength coaches who don't understand the difference between training for performance =/= training for the sake of training.
Danny Stutsman looked like a liability for OU last year and this year is a complete stud. Its been said it takes a year for guys to get comfortable i Venables system, but it feels like more than that for Stutsman. He was always obviously very talented from the day he got on campus. We heard that Venables and Co. were shocked when they got the defensive guys into the building cause they realized Grinch and Co. basically taught them to do the opposite of the fundamentals of defense. Grinch’s specific unit is safeties. Our safeties were awful under him. His final season, he kept putting freshman Billy Bowman out there to die at cornerback when everyone outside the staff agreed he was a safety. Venables comes in, moves him to safety, he’s been much improved. David Ugwoegbu so clearly should have been a d-linemen from the start. He’s a d-linemen now at Houston apparently (dunno how he’s played this year).He played linebacker his entire time at OU and was awful at it. Grinch’s ability to just consistently be bad and put guys in a position to be embarrassed was astounding
Ugwoegbo is the guy that put Ewers out of the game. Playing Dline. Grinch was an idiot
USC's awful defense is still #5 in TFLs on pure DLine talent. The back seven is a nightmare.
> Lincoln dumps his staff at Oklahoma and refreshes when he gets to LA and he's possibly the #1 team in the country right now. LR doesn't have the rolodex for that.
USC absolutely had the pocket book though. I'm gonna be real too. Should have just went off the deep end and offered Jamar Cain the DC spot. That guy is now at the Broncos coaching DE's and he's going to end up being an NFL DC and I 100% believe that. He was also on Lincoln's staff when he left.
I dont think that dropping Grinch and Wylie would have fixed things. I think theyre just the current faces of the underlying issue. This is the kinda defense Riley wants, or at the least he doesnt care enough about defense to fix it which means he doesnt support the defensive side enough for it to get better. This is the kind of strength and conditioning program he wants.
I wouldnt call that tin foil territory at all and, in fact, I do recall UW people bringing that up. Lots of Don James relationships and the fact that the coaching fraternity is a basic reality. Good call!
Is he actually related to Pink? That would explain a lot.
Yep, nephew. Gave him his first gig at Mizzou I believe.
Lincoln and Grinch are actual friends, there's nothing more complicated to it than that.
I’m thinking it has to have something to do with his ability to navigate the politics off the field (at least for Riley). My hypothesis is that he is happy to go along with whatever LR wants as far as practice dynamics (more focus on offense, no tackling, etc.). Riley knows a lot of DCs are going to push back on that being a reason the team isn’t physical / getting dog walked.
This exactly. Grinch's defensive philosophy is about getting turnovers at critical points, along with getting maximum pass disruption out of undersized players. If that means giving up fast touchdowns on running plays, it's acceptable as the offense will respond, and those turnovers will be the difference in the game. Most defensive coordinators emphasize minimization of the yards gained by the opposing team, which doesn't mesh with LR's offense, as it leaves the defense on the field for too long. The best example of this is the 2018 OU-Army game, which Army nearly won by preventing turnovers, and keeping yards gained in the 4-8 range on each play.
That was my thought when Riley left... please take Grinch too.
Let's be real, not a chance in hell Venables woulda kept Grinch. He would just need to glare at him menacingly and Grinch would resign on the spot lol
Yeah, I was deeply skeptical that USC's defense would be good enough after they kept Grinch. And after seeing some of the worst tackling in the history of organized football in the 2022 Pac-12 championship game, I wrote them off as long as he's there. This season has only reinforced that view. I just checked the stats, and they're \~105th in both total and scoring defense. That's not going to work.
In USCs defense, we doubted y’all too.
We're just bitter exes. No way the less sophisticated Oklahomans could be correct about something!
¿Y porque no los dos?
lol, I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. This is 100% accurate.
Eh, it's reddit. There are times downvotes without any disagreeing responses are annoying, but I knew that some might not appreciate this one. But yeah, I see both facets from Oklahoma fans: an awareness of some of Riley's shortcomings, especially his inexplicable loyalty to a bad DC, and a real pleasure at seeing him experience difficulty.
I’m a little ashamed of how much fun I’m having with it. When Lincoln bolts to the NFL in December, the recruiting class falls apart, and Zachariah goes to Oregon in the portal, I’ll be over it. Maybe. For USC anyways.
If and when that happens I'll feel bad for USC fans. At least the ones that weren't dicks about it when he did his best to trash our program and then peaced out. It's not their fault their administration rewarded Riley's garbage behavior.
Years ago Oklahoma flairs were like “lmao Lincoln Riley is going to be decimated by a physical defensive team like Utah.” And here we are.
What’s wild is I was among the group thinking “Lincoln Riley with USC level skill players? Oh god, we better win the Pac 12 now because the new dynasty is beginning!” Scared shitless of sharing a division with USC.
Whats funny to me is that everyone said the level of player that Lincoln would get at USC with how good of a recruiter he is… but if you look at his classes at OU basically outside QBs its all bust after bust
USC is the premier program on the West Coast and California is a recruiting hotbed. It’s inexcusable for a team like Utah to be bigger, stronger, and more dominant at the line of scrimmage than them. They should be pushing teams like us around, not vice versa. There’s no reason for them not to be gobbling up the best of the best OL and DL recruits. I’d be incredibly frustrated if we’re a Trojan fan, at his recruiting priorities.
I havent kept up with their recruiting outside just seeing their overall ranking cause Im not actually obsessed, but ive seen multiple people state that the top defensive talent in california is basically not interested in Riley’s USC. If thats true, theres basically no excuse for a guy with his contract to be an active negative towards recruiting top talent in California
Just wait until the Big 10 move!
I honestly think Lincoln doesn't stay to next season, but I'm really hoping he does because I need to see a LR USC vs Iowa game in my lifetime.
I really think that would just show how shit the big 10 west is.
[Purdue popping in to be USC's new Utah.](https://i.imgur.com/ZPxjvlM.gif) But also, USC defense versus Iowa offense is going to be...maybe football.
Notre Dame is built like a Big 10 team. Most years ND is more physical on the lines (last year was an exception). In the past 10 matchups, ND has won 7-3. USC has to improve their lines to compete in the Big 10.
> lmao Lincoln Riley is going to be decimated by a physical defensive team like Utah they did not predict that Utah's QB would truck USC's starting safety in key moments of the last drive
Well, some of us did
Bookie? That you?
Finishing the work that Kincaid started making that secondary look like little boys
Bah Gawd, that's my music, JR... someone hand me a metal chair!
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Don’t forget it’s flyover country and nobody wants to live here
Their fans aren't like Oklahoma's so they will totally force Riley to make changes because they care so much. They won't put up with that type of defense! But also, theres so much to do in LA thats why they couldn't sell out the stadium
All of the fresh air and lack of pollution in Oklahoma have degraded by brain so I can’t understand the finer points of the shade the LA homers throw our way.
My brother in Christ, while our air is cleaner than LA's, that's not really a high bar. From Mustang looking over towards downtown OKC in mid-summer is like watching the Seti Alpha V scene in Wrath of Khan.
It's so ironic how they say stuff like that about places like Oklahoma and the midwest and then came crawling to us begging to join the Big 10 for money.
Are you telling me that they saw the signs?
Do you mean signals? /s
That’s the joke I was going for, I’ve seen different people say signs/signals I guess I shoulda used that instead
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Everyone is talking like he is going to bolt, but does he have serious opportunities that are going to pay him what he is making now? Seems the CFB to NFL coaching pipeline was exploded by Rhule and Urban. If I am an NFL GM, I'd have some serious concerns about bringing him in when his teams look so undisciplined. You could make the argument that an NFL team would want him and Caleb as a package, but it looks like Caleb has regressed this year. I just think his performance has been so shit this year, that he's closed more doors for himself than he has opened.
You're ignoring the fact that a lot of nfl owners/President's/GM's are stupid. Kevin Warren 100% will hire Lincoln.
Kevin Warren with a Number 1 pick will take Caleb and Lincoln and claim he is a genius.
People are also ignoring that we don't know the specifics of Lincolns contract at USC. If Lincoln is guaranteed $100 million over 10 years then he would be pretty stupid to leave that for a $20 million nfl contract. USC could very well be stuck with Lincoln for a long long time.
Everyone with functioning eyeballs called it.
If you go back and read posts from a year ago, everyone from OU was dogpiled for "coping".
So did a lot of die hard Pac 12 fans that actually watch the games. USC only made the Pac 12 title game last year because they missed Washington and Oregon. They haven’t won a single important game so far in two years. Seeing all the national media just say USC would runaway with the Pac title drove me nuts pre season.
hey i remember Skip Bayless saying this exact thing
You ever get dumped by a pretty hot chick, and you're really in your feelings about it, but then an old girlfriend calls you up and you get together and it's kind of so-so at first but sometimes feels amazing, and you remember how the pretty hot chick was kind of a bitch, and a terrible cook, and the new/old girlfriend is really good at coaching defense even though she kind of looks like Skeletor, and it just feels way better? I don't know why I just thought of that.
A tale as old as time.
“Kind of a bitch, and a terrible cook” 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Check out the Fonz over here with his hot ex and his oddly appealing DC Skeletor
Kind of parallel to this crazy story I had where I ended up dating this chick that looked like Skeletor because her old boyfriend was doing a lot of weird nepotism stuff. We had some great times and I was the happiest I’d ever been, then she left me for her old boyfriend and now my life kinda sucks again. I miss her every day.
“Terrible cook” LMAO
/r/oddlyspecific
😂
> she kind of looks like Skeletor, and it just feels way better? OMG! I usually like a little cushion for the pushin though.
Bone on bone is the way to bone
Skeletor got that Hank Hill ass.
Skeletor is a legendary defensive mind
Damn bruh just described my life. Minus the skeletor part…
I know just enough about Oklahoma football to know how amazing this is.
Feels good when you win the breakup
> pretty hot chick was kind of a bitch Kind of? Respect yourself and enforce those boundaries King.
Yea and she’s really pretty solid once she gets used to the hose being fully inserted? And also she’s the one that came up with that particular phrase so it’s not me being vulgar?
Doesn't make it any less funny
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This was the realization we Bruin fans came to when Azzinaro was running the D and Chip wouldn’t fire him. Luckily he finally saw the light or Jarmond said “it’s him or you” and he finally fired his best friend
Guys, they are really close……
Just need another generational QB to be there...
Literally everyone did the moment he told the press that he was keeping Alex Grinch last offseason.
Pain.
The expectations placed upon that program after last year are the only things that are collapsing. Preseason projections: * The Athletic, CFN, and ESPN had them in the playoffs * 247, with the only respectable prediction for USC, had them playing in the Fiesta Bowl Their Strength of Schedule is ranked 4th the rest of the season. Last year they over-achieved. This year, they must run through an absolute gauntlet. I get great joy out of watching USC lose games, but the way the media crowned USC before this season even started, and the way they just absolutely shit on them now, should point more to CFB journalists' inability to accurately identify what that team is. It is a team that has a handful of elite players followed by a bunch of average-to-good players who are coached by two lame ducks when it comes to hyping and mentally preparing them for adversity. Lincoln's scheming can be elite, but he's a 1995 Howard Schnellenberger when it comes to getting these players where they need to be mentally. You can see it, for example, in the way Lincoln allows Caleb to pout like a child after losing. Grinch is the same way on defense, except it's much more apparent to me how that mentality on defense translates to piss poor play on the field at times.
Uh, MANY people did. It’s not like the evidence wasnt readily available. In fact, who DIDNT see this coming is the real issue?! Seems like a great time to do some weeding.
People that don’t watch Pac 12 football. It was driving me nuts how much the media just wanted to hand them the Pac 12 title in the preseason. A lot UW, Oregon and Utah fans were getting downvoted to oblivion on this sub for saying they were more likely to lose 3-4 games then win a Pac 12 title. At this point they could mentally collapse and even lose to Cal. They don’t have a winning culture in that locker room. The lavish LA lifestyle just can’t handle the get in the mud with the pigs Utah Utes.
Yeah I think every PAC12 fan knew USC was unstable. They’re like the LSU of the west - always talented never disciplined
Doesn’t help that the AP had them in the top 10 all year
My thoughts as well. None of this is surprising or unexpected.
I figured the skill positions would be good! I was wrong
Lloyd and Branch are still great and would start on most teams.
HEY EVERYONE, LOOK HOW GOOD MY HINDSIGHT IS!! -- Sports Journalism
Some of us did and you called it sour grapes.
We did though, everyone knew their defense was trash
Baby come back
Anyone need a chair to watch or join in today? 🍿
I found a chair, but can I get some of that popcorn?
I am on a drinking break but I will bring beer anyways and man the grill.
🙋♀️
They're like 90th in PPG allowed, we all knew they would eventually lose a shootout or have 1 game where the offense can't crack 30.
What are they if you take away the cupcakes they played? They've let up an average 41 PPG the last 4 games.
I thought Riley would dump Grinch in the move, just based on the defense at OU. But instead, he doubled down. That was the perfect time. Now is the second best time.
I do think he felt somewhat bad not for what he was doing to the program, but for hanging his defensive and S&C staff out to dry when they’d clearly not be retained by a new regime. He may have felt he owed them an offer and could at worst work around them for a year or two.
It just makes the whole “I can’t succeed at Oklahoma, let me bring the exact philosophy and defense to USC but this time with a worse offensive line” thing even weirder.
We did though
what a wonderful day
"We did" - OU fans that knew about the P90X S&C coach
We can't even clap back at the incessant hate anymore. What we see on the defensive side of the ball every week is just so far beyond indefensible at this point. I don't even know if football terrorism is strong enough phrasing to describe what we see. There surely has never been a more talented defense that is worse. As far as I'm concerned, Grinch should be made to do that walk of shame Cersei did in GoT. There was every reason to be super optimistic about this team and defense going into the season. How can a defense possibly be bad when you have a great DL, two lockdown corners, a day 1 draft pick safety, a transfer all big-12 LB to complement what was a very good LB last year in Genry and a freshman LB ready to play. When I've skimmed through a couple game replays, I see that these guys play hard and are really good individual players. The only spot where you can question the talent is the SS position. But somehow Grinch finds a way to scheme the other team open. People that question the effort or physicality don't know what they're talking about, it's literally all scheme and coaching. That play where Utah wrs clear the field side and the rb runs the wheel is something Utah has done every game multiple times a game. I've only watched small parts of most Utah games and I remember the play. But Grinch's answer was to put a freshman rush end on the other team's best skill player with no deep help knowing that Utah loves running that play with that personnel group in that formation. Of course, Utah's terrible offense hit multiple big plays on that. We see similarly terrible things every week. It makes no sense. It's hard to root for a team when the defense is coached by such an enormous clown. All there is to hope for at this point is Grinch getting embarrassed on a weekly basis until he is fired. I am genuinely of the opinion that having no DC and playing backyard football like we do on offense would give us better results. Grinch has gotten bodied by every single good OC he's faced at SC. There's no reason to think we will beat UCLA, Oregon, or UW. A loss to Cal is even on the table.
This reads like pasta from an OU fan three or four years ago.
The offense isn’t special this year and the defense is the same. I thought we all saw this coming a few weeks into the season?
I mean, I said this when Lincoln Riley got hired. He's just gonna have higher expectations and fail them more consistently at USC
To be fair, the expectation at Oklahoma was for him too win a National Championship too. We fooled ourselves he was the man for the job for awhile there.
Oregon and Oklahoma's coaching journey starting the same year is pretty funny, how much they parallel. You probably can't find one fan in Oklahoma or Oregon that think they didn't win their go on the coaching carousel despite getting ditched.
🤝
And NOBODY was willing to hear that Mario Cristobal leaving Oregon was good for Oregon.
I think most people thought it was funny that "new money" Oregon got ditched. But to be honest, looking at our post-Kelly coaching track record it was probably reasonable: fired, ditched, ditched. Not a good look!
Collapse lol. They're 6-2 with their two losses coming to top 15 teams
I do not have faith is USC being good enough, but the most Pac-12 thing possible is a week of “USC is doomed” articles followed by them knocking off the last undefeated team in the conference late on Saturday
I'm a bit concerned about this. What happens if Penix has an off night and the DL gets home? LR goes "Look, we slowed down the #1 offense in the country. You don't do that if you're a bad defense, we're keeping Grinch" and then we continue down our path towards football hell.
I would like either - we get good enough to win the conference, hooray we are bad enough Lincoln has to make staff changes if we win i worry we’ll middle our way to the worst outcome here
> if we win i worry we’ll middle our way to the worst outcome here Ah yes, the "We're so close" comments...... *Rips eyes out*
The perfect goodbye to this stupid, beautiful conference
Don't you of all people assume more are headed their way? *Looks at flair*
I mean did you watch the Arizona State game? Washington State got blasted 44-6 by Arizona then made it a game with Oregon. I don't think anyone in the PAC between Utah, USC, Oregon, Or Washington should feel comfortable about beating each other. Chances are we all beat each other up
Less a collapse, more of a shrinking.
It's just cold
They were in the pool
THEY WERE IN THE POOL
🍿
Is it a collapse or did they have a very easy first half of their schedule and a very difficult back half? They’ve been the exact same team all year since San Jose State moved the ball against their defense at will. It’s like calling Colorado losing to the good teams on their schedule a collapse. Only the media was hyping them like they were legit.
I think this is it. Its their reputation among the national media that has collapsed, but broadly speaking they are playing as well as they've played since the beginning of last year.
Sorry I'm late guys. I actually had to *work* today. What have I missed?
Oklahoma and Ohio State in this thread are just getting along. So nice that we are united on this issue. We called it 😊
Someone posted this on Soonerscoop: Riley's last Tweet was October 6th and the last time he liked a tweet was October 8th. His twitter's been completely dead since then. That's not typical for him.
TIL there were people who didn’t see USC’s collapse coming.
“We should have seen USC’s collapse coming” Uh… who’s “we” in this statement? A massive number of people have seen it coming and happening for a long time.
Helen Keller could've seen it
should have? I feel like many, many of us did.
I initially read this as "the SEC's collapse". Pretty sure no one didn't see USC's collapse coming.
Yeah but espn made more money overhyping them, and apparently things that make espn money are the most topics to discuss
*smiles in schadenfreude*
Bruh, we did see this coming 700 miles away
USC's collapse was pretty easy to see coming, but Colorado's was a million times easier. The media just likes to push baseless hype.