Annual Crosstown Cup highlights USC-UCLA rivalry
While the thrill of reclaiming the coveted Victory Bell hasn’t quite worn off, USC’s athletic programs now look forward to recovering another prize from their crosstown rivals: the BMW Crosstown Cup.
The Crosstown Cup may be less familiar than the Victory Bell to the casual fan, and not just because of the recent name change. When current Trojans were growing up, the year-long athletic competition between the rival programs was called the Lexus Gauntlet. When Lexus’ sponsorship ended in 2009, the competition went without a commercially-branded title until 2014, when it was handed off to another luxury car brand: the BMW dealers of Southern California.
Business partnerships aside, the Crosstown Cup’s true importance rests on results, whether on the field, in the pool or on the court. In a rivalry this tense, bragging rights are usually a sufficient prize. Still, the Cup gives each school’s athletic program something to fight for: the Cup is a tangible symbol of intangible dominance. Tera Novy, a senior thrower for the track and field team, knows just how important it is to run the city.
“Winning the Cup would mean that all the athletes’ hard work paid off,” Novy said. “It supports the notion that we are the better school in L.A.”
The USC-UCLA rivalry has always been unique: nowhere else in the nation do two programs compete as fiercely as the Trojans and the Bruins compete for the right to call a city their own. Sure, Ohio State and Michigan may be able to claim that they have the most brutal football rivalry, and Duke and North Carolina may be fierce competitors in basketball. Even so, it’s difficult to find a rivalry as important as the one shared between USC and UCLA because of geographic and championship implications.
The Buckeyes and Wolverines are separated by a state line, a great lake and 185 miles of highway. The Trojans and Bruins are separated by one freeway, “The 10,” as students of both schools call it — to the disdain of our out-of-area rivals. And, while the Blue Devils and Tar Heels stand just about as far from each other as USC stands from Westwood, the level of competition in every sport except for basketball just isn’t quite the same in that rivalry. The Bruins and Trojans hold the most and third-most NCAA championship titles across all sports, respectively, and those totals are increasing nearly every season.
“The USC-UCLA rivalry is unlike any in college athletics, with two universities of such academic prestige and athletic tradition sharing the same city,” USC Athletic Director Pat Haden said on the official Crosstown Cup website. “No matter the sport, whenever the Trojans compete against the Bruins, it is an intense battle.”
Note USC’s precedence in Haden’s description of the rivalry: even the placement of words carries weight in the battle for the City of Angels.
The crosstown rivalry dates back to the 1920s, but the official competition began during the 2001-2002 school year. It would be an understatement to say the first competition lived up to expectations: the schools’ athletic programs tied under the Lexus Gauntlet scoring system, and USC was awarded the victory in a tiebreaker because it had the edge in head-to-head matchups.
And what could they possibly do for an encore? The Trojans and Bruins tied yet again in the second year of the competition; this time, UCLA came out on top with more postseason head-to-head wins. The Gauntlet was passed back and forth across the 10 Freeway for six consecutive years, until USC went on the competition’s longest winning streak, taking the trophy for five years in a row until UCLA re-claimed it in 2013. Since then, the trophy has changed hands once per year, until it came to rest in its current home in Westwood at the end of the 2014-2015 season.
Once again, competition is tight to earn the Cup. After last week’s men’s basketball victory over the Bruins at a sold-out Galen Center, USC leads UCLA by 5 points under the official Crosstown Cup rules: each school earns 10 points for winning more head-to-head matchups against the other. In the event the schools tie, each program is awarded 5 points. Because of this scoring system, the standings are fluid and not always intuitive. For example, when UCLA beat USC to win the men’s water polo national championship back in December, there was no change in the standings; since UCLA already had the edge in head-to-head matchups, winning the national championship carried no more weight than any other victory.
Should UCLA and USC end up tied at the end of the season, there are three ways the tie can be broken. In the event of a tie, the trophy will be given to the university with the most head-to-head wins. If the result is still tied, the Cup goes to the university with the most head-to-head wins in the postseason. If neither of those criteria can determine a clear winner, the university that wins the most Pac-12 championships in sports where both universities field a team would be crowned the victor at the end of a nail-biting year.
In this type of nasty rivalry, it doesn’t take a tied final result to elicit excitement as the year in sports reaches its final leg. With only 75 of the 190 total points claimed in this year’s Crosstown Cup, there is a long road ahead before either school reaches the 100 points necessary to bring home the trophy. With the conclusion of last Thursday’s basketball game, the schools will match up 17 more times across 12 different sports before the end of the school year.
In the midst of the season, it’s tempting to think that the rivalry exists only in the here and now. It’s easy to forget that, as these games are being played, the future of each program rests, in a way, on the outcome of each crosstown matchup. Many potential recruits who are being considered for one school are also considering the school down the freeway, and what better way to help make their decision easier than trouncing the competition in a head-to-head matchup?
“Winning the Crosstown Cup allows us to show everyone that this is our city,” redshirt senior swimmer Lucy Worrall said. “Both schools are at a similar standard academically and athletically … it helps when we are recruiting athletes who are also looking at UCLA.”
Worrall and company will take on the Bruins’ women’s swimming team this Friday in Westwood for the next installment of this year’s Cup slate. While the Trojans hold a slight edge so far this season, history and reason suggest that the current five-point lead will not be enough to run away with the trophy. Winning back the Victory Bell in the fall was a good start, but Trojans and Angelenos everywhere will have to wait another three months to see if USC has truly returned to ownership over the City of Angels.