It’s official.
For the first time in the history of this column, the Trojans are finally in their new conference, the Big Ten.
USC will begin its arduous journey into a new league not against a conference opponent, but against an SEC team: the LSU Tigers. While the Tigers will have to travel across the country, the matchup is a neutral-site game at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
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There is no better way for the Trojans to get ushered into a Big Ten conference that will increase the program’s visibility than a nationally televised affair between two historic football institutions with a combined 15 national championships.
Even though USC has the edge in that category — the Trojans have 11 titles to the Tigers’ four — LSU has had much more recent success and heads into this one as the betting favorite, sitting as a 4.5-point favorite according to FanDuel Sportsbook.
But with how unpredictable college football can be — Florida State was the No. 10 team in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll, yet they fell to Georgia Tech this past Saturday — it’s not time to count out USC just yet.
The 4.5-point spread suggests that the contest could go either way, but it is still a large margin for two ranked programs at a neutral site, with the Trojans slotting in at No. 23.
New USC defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn took over a bad situation, and there wasn’t much he could do over the summer. That — along with the loss of Caleb Williams to the NFL draft — is why USC comes in as an underdog.
When looking at the comparison of these two teams holistically, though, this one should end up a lot closer than 4.5 points. The Tigers have also lost a Heisman-winning quarterback in Jayden Daniels and are bringing in a new defensive coordinator.
The main advantage the Bayou Bunch has over this Trojan squad is personnel; the Tigers have consistently recruited better over the past couple of years. While recruiting does not matter without proper development, the two defensive staffs are starting off at the same point.
Neither Lynn nor Blake Baker — the new man at the helm of the LSU defense — could have possibly changed that much between the first day of their tenures and now. In that case, both staffs will have to rely on the raw talent of their roster.
Lynn has junior defensive tackle Bear Alexander, senior linebacker Easton Mascarenas-Arnold and redshirt sophomore safety Kamari Ramsey at his disposal, while Baker has the likes of junior linebacker Harold Perkins Jr., senior safety Major Burns and senior linebacker Greg Penn III on his squad.
While all three of those Trojans earned conference honors at some level in 2023, Perkins Jr. might be the best player on the field between both squads.
The linebacker has tallied 13 sacks between his first two seasons and looks to have an even greater impact this year as an experienced veteran with a new defensive staff.
But will he have a greater impact? He regressed between his freshman year and sophomore year, only putting up 5.5 sacks in 2023 after notching 7.5 sacks in his first campaign. Combine that with a new defensive scheme, and it is difficult to gauge what Perkins Jr.’s season will look like.
Essentially, it’s hard to tell how this game will go. LSU is the favorite for a reason, but it is the unpredictability of college football that turns this game into an enigma. Anyone who bets should stay away from this game, partially because college students likely don’t have enough money to gamble in the first place, but mostly because of how crazy this game is shaping up to be.
Welcome to the new world of college football, Trojans — an unpredictable landscape where USC might have to play a national championship contender one week after another.
Thomas Johnson is a senior writing about USC’s move to a new conference and all of the implications surrounding the transition in his column, “Big Ten Bites,” which typically runs every other Monday.
