For fans, high hopes could spell heartbreak

On Wednesday night, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Rich Hill was oh-so-nearly perfect. On most other nights, actually, he would have been. The 37-year-old lefty mowed down Pittsburgh Pirate after Pittsburgh Pirate — the first 24 hitters to face Hill failed to reach base.

Then, in the dying embers of the game, it all unraveled. A Logan Forsythe error in the bottom of the ninth ended Hill’s pursuit of perfection, and a home run from Josh Harrison an inning later ended the no-hitter, sending the Dodgers away with a 1-0 loss. Hill had to have been bewildered: He pitched more than a complete game, he hadn’t allowed a single baserunner before the extra innings began and he had the backing of one of the most formidable offenses in baseball. And somehow, he went home with an “L” by his name in the box score after pitching the best game of his career.

It’s strange, but Hill’s heartbreaking loss on Wednesday made me paranoid for the coming football season. The din of anticipation surrounding the USC squad has reached deafening levels, and many, myself included, have convinced themselves that an undefeated, championship-winning season is on the horizon, with a Heisman Trophy for redshirt sophomore quarterback Sam Darnold as a cherry on top.

The Trojans indisputably have the ability to rise to those crazy expectations. That’s why you find pictures of this team plastered all over every sports magazine in America. But the risk of chasing perfection in sports is that it only takes one mistake — a booted ball, one bad pitch out of 99 — to clobber your dreams of history into oblivion.

College football arguably embodies the chase for perfection more than any other sport in the world thanks to its short schedule and gargantuan pool of teams. The team that raises the national championship trophy in January has seldom lost more than one game all year (the most recent two-loss champion was LSU in 2007, which was known as the Year of the Upset). The best programs distinguish themselves through undefeated seasons.

No. 4 USC faces a tough road to a title, with no bye and a challenging out-of-conference schedule: The Trojans faced Arkansas State and Idaho back-to-back to open the year in 2015, the last time they were ranked in the AP preseason top 10. No such luck this season. They play a Western Michigan team coming off its best season in program history, a grudge match against No. 23 Texas and, of course, Notre Dame in South Bend.

Then the team has scores to settle in the Pac-12: snapping a two-year losing streak to Stanford, avenging the loss against Utah in Darnold’s first career start and keeping the Victory Bell painted cardinal.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Trojans clear every single one of those hurdles — like I said, the wealth of talent on this team is beyond doubt. But the pressure will only grow each step of the way, and though that may not make errors or bad luck more likely, a championship chase will magnify them.

And although USC achieved a lot in 2016, the squad has never been in pole position before. The beauty of last season’s Trojans was that they were perpetual underdogs after their 1-3 start. They relished the chase, and they shocked the nation with a Rose Bowl victory. But how will they handle being chased? To draw another baseball parallel, the 2016 Trojans were like Boston Red Sox pitcher Doug Fister on Tuesday night: He gave up a home run to the first hitter he faced, and then proceeded to throw a one-hit complete game. It was an incredible feat to be sure, but the weight of history got thrown off Fister’s back the minute his third pitch of the night got deposited into the right-field seats.

The Trojans won’t enjoy that luxury this fall. Every touchdown, win and weekly AP poll will be scrutinized and framed in a championship-or-bust mentality. After all, USC rose from the dead to win the Granddaddy of Them All last year — a national title is the only upward mobility left. In other words: Nothing short of perfection will do.

Recent history doesn’t flatter preseason-favorite USC teams. I don’t need to remind you: Plenty have re-hashed the disappointments of 2015 and 2012, the last two years the Trojans entered the fall ranked in the top 10. Though the duo of Darnold and head coach Clay Helton seems encouraging right now, people were also excited about Kiffin and Barkley and Sarkisian and Kessler.

Nevertheless, I may be a jaded sports fan, but I’m not a pessimist. Every championship run comes with incredible expectations and a near-zero margin of error, but one team wins every year. It’s silly to assume that USC will come up short before the team has played a single down this season. More importantly, Darnold, Helton and the rest of the Trojans — both players and coaches — aren’t the unproven, overhyped squads of years past. They may not have faced this level of pressure before, but they are battle-tested.

And if we learned anything in January, it was that these Trojans are at their best — and make history — when the pressure is at its highest.

Oliver Jung is a senior studying print and digital journalism. He is also the sports editor for the Daily Trojan. His column, Jung Money, runs on Fridays.