Trojans headed in the right direction


The USC football team has not met expectations this season. That much is abundantly clear.

No matter how impressive of a product the Trojans have put onto the field at times, they have been nowhere near consistent enough to compete for a Pac-12 title, let alone a spot in the NCAA playoff. Whether coaching, execution, lack of depth or a combination of those factors is to blame, the team’s results through eight games simply do not match its talent level, or the strength of its opponents. Even worse, without wins over UCLA and Notre Dame in the coming weeks, 2014 will probably be seen as a complete disappointment in the eyes of the Trojan faithful.

Great. I’m glad we got that out of the way, because I’m sick of hearing about it.

As much as this season has been, in the words of one of my housemates, “pretty lame,” I simply can’t agree with the far-too-large group of USC fans who are legitimately dissatisfied with the state of the program.

I’ve been a a college football fan my entire life, and I’ve experienced plenty of frustration — thank you mid-2000s Cal Bears. I understand the emotion behind the calls to “fire Sark” or “fire Haden” or my personal favorite, “fire somebody.” Of course fans want to hold someone accountable for failure. That’s only natural. But there’s something else behind this outward frustration.

Firing a coach is the easiest possible solution to any team’s problems. It sends the message that something is broken, and once it gets fixed everything will be right once again. Yeah, its a little rough for fans, but it also gives them hope; the last guy had it wrong, but this new guy will bring us back to glory.

You know what’s actually difficult for fans to handle in the face of a struggling team? Not firing a coach. That sends an entirely different message: maybe we just aren’t performing well, maybe the teams we’re playing are actually pretty damn good, and maybe — in the case of USC — rebuilding a fallen dynasty might take longer than we’d like.

Facing these facts are far more painful than the bittersweet misery of the late-Lane Kiffin era, when you always had in the back of your mind that Kiffin was the one man holding his team back. So when a freak Hail Mary costs the Trojans one game, we call for defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox’s head. When junior wide receiver Nelson Agholor steps out of bounds on a key fourth-and-2 against Utah, we want to fire that Kiffin-clone Sarkisian immediately. It’s the easy solution, but we know its not the right one.

Weirdly enough, keeping the “fire Sark” talk alive protects us from a fact that we don’t want to face: that the USC football program is headed in the right direction.

Sure, the results aren’t showing that every game. And yes, new head coach Steve Sarkisian and his staff have not been perfect. But as my fellow columnist Luke Holthouse outlined with very intelligent football talk yesterday, that hasn’t been the problem.

Because of lingering NCAA sanctions, the Trojans brought 48 scholarship players to Salt Lake City on Saturday. Newsflash, that’s not nearly enough to compete at a high level for a full 60 minutes. It’s not our coaching staff’s fault, it’s not our players fault, it’s not our athletic director’s fault. It just is what it is: an obstacle to winning football games.

The Trojans also play in the Pac-12, which has gotten exponentially tougher since USC dominated nine also-rans  in the middle of the last decade. Eight Pac-12 teams have spent at least a week in the AP Top 25 this season, with the Trojans playing five of them at some point this season. The south division alone has been a bloodbath thus far, with nearly every team’s NCAA playoff hopes in smoldering ruins and the potential for a massive tiebreaker at the top when all is said and done. Once again, not the coaching staff’s fault, not the players fault, not our athletic director’s fault. Just another obstacles that all serious contenders have to overcome.

So what does all this mean? It doesn’t mean we have the wrong athletic director. It doesn’t mean we have the wrong coach or the wrong defensive coordinator. It simply means the Trojans need to keep improving if they want to return to the college football elite. And that could take a while.

If you want any concrete proof that the program is headed in the right direction, try to remember the last time USC lined up to play Washington State. We lost 10-7, in the Coliseum, without giving up an offensive touchdown. Now that was the coach’s fault.

 

Will Hanley is a junior majoring in political science and communication. He is also the sports editor of the Daily Trojan. His column, “Sports Willustrated,” runs Thursdays.  

 

1 reply
  1. brianc6234
    brianc6234 says:

    I didn’t like Sarkisian being hired to begin with. Haden should have let Orgeron be the head coach this year and see what he could do. That would have been the smart decision. USC still had a year let on their sanctions. What really hurt USC this year though was firing a really good DC and hiring a mediocre one. That has really hurt USC this year. Their defense did a lot better last year than they did the previous couple years. Why change something that was getting better?

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