After a long eight months, we’re back

Until Thursday, the USC football team hadn’t played a game for exactly 250 days.

Long time, isn’t it? Dec. 26, 2009 to Sept. 2, 2010.

Really quite a bit of time. So much happened between those two games, too.

Don’t believe me?

Let’s get to it. I think you’ll find the course of the events resembles a wooden roller coaster.

So, the Trojans won that game in December against Boston College in the Emerald Bowl. Of course, even playing in that game was fairly out of character for USC, which had won seven consecutive Pac-10 championships and thus qualified for seven consecutive Rose Bowls.

Fast forward two weeks to get the first shock of the offseason, quarterback Aaron Corp, who, just five short months earlier, was slated to be the Trojans’ starting signal-caller. On Jan. 8, Corp announced plans to transfer to the University of Richmond, where he would go on to win the starting job.

Little did Corp know that if he had only waited until June, he would’ve been able to freely transfer to any out-of-conference school in the nation without being forced to sit out a year.

But we’ll get to that.

Anyway, Corp transferred on a Friday. By Sunday, rumors were floating — no, swirling — that then-coach Pete Carroll would resign to coach the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks.

On Monday, the first day of the spring semester, those rumors were confirmed. Carroll held a final press conference in the Heritage Hall auditorium, where he defended his “business” decision.

By Wednesday, former Athletic Director Mike Garrett — we’ll get to him soon — had named a replacement, former USC assistant Lane Kiffin.

Kiffin, of course, brought with him a significant following —both bad and good — frenzied by his whirlwind departure from Knoxville, Tenn. Death threats to Kiffin and his wife occurred. In one memorable moment, a Tennessee transplant observing his opening press conference outside Heritage Hall expressed a lack of understanding to how Kiffin could so openly betray Volunteer fans.

Kiffin had three weeks to re-recruit the Trojans’ 2010 class, and he did so with gusto — securing the commitments of Seantrel Henderson, Nickell Robey and Markeith Ambles, among others.

All-everything freshmen Kyle Prater and Dillon Baxter even enrolled early.

The next month, a number of current and former USC staffers met with NCAA investigators in Tempe, Ariz., for an official hearing relating to the Reggie Bush case and a supposed lack of institutional control.

Present that weekend were Carroll and then-running backs coach Todd McNair, who brought along his legal counsel. We wondered why at the time.

Also at that time, I wrote in this very column: “The worst-case scenario … is some combination of sanctions that force the football team to vacate the wins from past years, lose scholarships and a ban from postseason play for the next few seasons.”

Whoops.

Anyway, the NCAA was expected to report back with their findings sometime in mid-April. The Trojans proceeded with spring practice, which came and went without too much hullabaloo — although hotshot then-freshman quarterback Matt Barkley did hurt his hand (gasp!) on teammate Jurrell Casey’s helmet during the spring scrimmage at the Coliseum. Senior defensive tackle Christian Tupou, the backbone of the Trojan defense, also went down in that game and was lost for the season with a knee injury.

That was May 1.

On June 10, the NCAA report was finally released — slapping USC with a two-year bowl ban, a loss of 30 scholarships that takes effect next year and a vacation of past wins.

The Trojans were placed on four years’ probation — and all USC juniors and seniors were allowed to transfer to Football Bowl Subdivision schools without sitting out a year. Many of them would do so over the next two months.

As far as a response, Kiffin announced immediate plans to appeal, Garrett told a reporter he wasn’t worried about his job but the reporter should be worried about his own, and USC fans grieved.

At one point, Thursday’s game wasn’t even supposed to happen. The NCAA threatened to take away the Trojans’ 13th game because of stated penalties limiting teams on probation to only 12 games a season.

But it stayed.

Then, on a lazy Tuesday in mid-July, news broke that new university president C.L. Max Nikias would replace Garrett with former Trojan quarterback Pat Haden.

Haden brought with him a scot-free reputation for success in many ventures of life — giving USC a positive spin heading into fall camp, set to begin on Aug. 4. Before that, however, two other things had to happen.

Kiffin made news again with the hiring of Tennessee Titans running backs coach — and USC alum — Kennedy Pola, allegedly going behind Titans’ coach Jeff Fisher’s back to do so.

Tennessee actually filed a lawsuit, which brings us to the second thing that happened: Pac-10 Media Day, where Kiffin wore shades at the podium on the Rose Bowl field and limited the shock value of his remarks — until late in the lunch session with reporters, when he dropped the nugget that he thought the Titans sued simply because of the state in which they were located.

That gave sports talk hosts material for a couple days.

Things that made news during camp: Senior fullback Stanley Havili was suspended for a day for his role in an altercation with junior cornerback T.J. Bryant, freshman defensive back Patrick Hall was suspended indefinitely for unspecified reasons and Kiffin made practices tackle-free to limit injuries.

An eventful eight months for sure — all leading up to Thursday.

Voilá.

“Looking Past the X’s and O’s” runs every other Friday. To comment on this article, visit dailytrojan.com or e-mail Pedro at [email protected].