To be honest, I wasn't sure I was going to go to the game last Saturday night. I wasn't sure that I wanted to try to find tickets, fight through L.A. traffic, find parking, and then sit in a Coliseum full of delirious Trojan fans for what I expected to be a three-hour beating.
But when a friend offered two seats on the forty-yard line along with a parking pass and an invitation to their tailgate party, I couldn't say no. After all, this 101st matchup between these two teams just might end up being the last. Regardless of the outlook, I had to be there. (It should be noted that not everyone shared my nostalgia; I invited three devoted Stanford fans and then two dedicated college football fans to accompany me, but all declined. My son agreed to go as my last resort.)
I've perhaps never been as conflicted as when we walked through the USC campus on our way from the tailgate to the Coliseum. Balanced against the nausea I felt wading through a sea of shiny USC students, blissfully playing beer pong beneath signs forbidding drinking games, was a grudging admiration for their single-minded support of their team.
I live in a city that's been largely devoid of an NFL presence, so I realize that people in Chicago or Philadelphia or Green Bay might disagree with this next statement, but I don't think anything in American sports can compare to the pageantry of a college football Saturday. Every single person I saw during our quarter-mile walk, students and rueful recent graduates alike, was dressed in USC colors. This is the land of Heisman winners and halter tops, after all, and all of it was on display. Was it all a touch monochromatic? Yes. Did it feel like we had stumbled into the pages of an Abercrombie catalogue? Yes. But it was college football, the closest we Americans can come to the celebrations of global football throughout the rest of the world.
(Here I should note the darker side to this single-minded devotion. Later on as we sat in the stands of the Coliseum watching the lions maul their victims, the rituals were almost too much to take. As the USC band played on and on and on, I was reminded of a lesson in seventh grade history when my teacher explained the significance of music in building an autocratic government. This is hardly an original observation, but when the band begins playing "Fight On!" and legions of fans mindlessly and reflexively jab their right arms forward, flashing the V for victory, all with a torch burning in the background, I will never not think about the Nuremberg rallies. I'm not saying USC fans are fascists, they're just fans. I'm only wondering if any of them ever wonder about what they're doing.)
We settled into our seats about thirty minutes before kickoff, and the show was just beginning. USC is one of the finest film schools in America, and we walked past the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on our way into the Coliseum, so it was no surprise that the Trojans understand the value of a crafting a full production. A deejay was set up on the track in front of a packed and raucous student section, spinning tunes designed to inject even more hype into a crowd that was already at eleven. Former players casually walked by and were introduced to their adoring fans, the band offered a beautiful rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, and then all the lights dropped just before former Trojan and current Detroit Lion Amon-Ra St. Brown hyped up the crowd even more before the USC team raced out of the tunnel, illuminated only by the jets of fire that bordered their runway as they emerged into the arena. I say this with zero sarcasm: it was all incredibly impressive.
Of course, I had no idea what was coming. I mean, I knew exactly what was coming, but I could never have expected the degree of what was coming. It felt like we were standing in front of a firehose and we knew we were about to get wet, but once the hose turned on, being wet wasn't the problem. We were knocked off our feet, spun head over heels, and more worried about drowning than finding a place to dry off.
And so it was for this young Stanford team. It only took about seven or eight minutes of clock time into the first quarter before it was clear that this game not only wasn't winnable for the Cardinal, it was unapproachable. This was surely clear for everyone watching on television, but from our vantage point in the stands, the stark difference between these two teams -- one with a Heisman winner at quarterback and an Avenger at every skill position, the other with more players in their teens than their twenties -- was even more obvious. We could see Caleb Williams casually waiting in the pocket, perhaps jogging a bit to his left or his right just for fun, and we could watch as not just one receiver but several broke past their defenders and into vast green pastures. Williams wasn't watching to see if a receiver could get open, he was deciding which one to favor with the ball. During his Heisman season of 2022 he was often described as a magician, extending plays with his speed and athleticism before spinning a ball into a narrow window for a spectacular gain. We didn't see any of that on Saturday night because he didn't need to be a magician. Against the overmatched Cardinal defense, Williams more closely resembled a New York cab driver disdainfully tossing coins into a tollbooth basket, rarely needing to watch the full arc of his passes because he always knew the pigskin would fall gently into his receiver's arms, just as the cabbie's coins would rattle into the basket.
The most impressive thing about Williams was that he wasn't impressive, if that makes any sense. He only needed to play two quarters, and during his brief time on the field he completed 19 of 21 passes for 281 yards and three touchdowns, most of that to wide open receivers, and he also threw in a 21-yard rushing touchdown, just for fun. When Williams didn't return for the second half, a disappointed fan behind me actually complained, "This is why it'll be hard for him to win the Heisman again. He might have too many games like this." I wanted to explain to her that he would be the unanimous winner if he had nine more "games like this," but I didn't. It's always better not to engage.
USC's domination of the young Stanford defense was expected, but I was at least marginally surprised that the Stanford offense was just as overmatched. If there's a reason the Trojans might not win the Pac-12 it's a defense that was highly vulnerable last season, so I thought Troy Taylor's new offense might find at least a little bit of success. I was wrong.
Quarterback Ashton Daniels struggled from the outset. His first pass was a nice 13-yard gain to Bryce Farrell, but his next one was a disastrous interception that the entire stadium saw coming as soon as the ball left Daniels's hand. If a game like this can have a turning point, this was it, four and half minutes into the first quarter.
The Trojans took just three plays to convert that turnover into their second touchdown, and the rest of the half played out like this:
- Stanford, three and out.
- USC, three and out. (Honest.)
- Stanford, five plays and a punt.
- USC touchdown.
- Stanford, three and out.
- USC punt return touchdown.
- Stanford, four plays and a fumble.
- USC touchdown.
- Stanford field goal!
- USC touchdown. (1 play, 75 yards)
- Stanford, five plays and a punt.
- USC touchdown.
- Stanford takes a knee.
The halftime score was 49-3, and that seemed about right. There have been some low moments in the thirty-five years that I've been watching Stanford football, but I'm comfortable in saying that I've never seen a Cardinal team operating with a talent discrepancy as wide as the one they were up against on Saturday night. There are probably only three players on the Stanford roster who could find a spot in the USC rotation if they were on the other side of the field (tight end Ben Yurosek, linebacker David Bailey, and All-American kicker Josh Karty), but things could've been much different.
Consider the talent drain that ravaged Stanford's roster during the off-season.
These eleven players were all significant contributors for Stanford not just in 2022, but for multiple seasons prior to that. They were leaders in the locker room and talented players on the field, and there is no way to quantify or make up for their departures. This would be a completely different team, for example, if those six offensive linemen were still wearing the Cardinal and White, and Jonathan McGill's leadership would've been invaluable on the other side of the ball, not to mention his production. Levani Damuni and Jacob Mangum-Farrar would've solidified the middle of the defense, and Ricky Miezan, who didn't even make the chart because the portal took him to Virginia to play lacrosse instead of football, would've fit right in alongside those two.
Every football program suffers attrition, but no program in America endured anything close to this. Troy Taylor isn't remodeling a house, he's building a new one from the ground up and living in it during construction. And right now it's raining. Hard.
As dark as things look right now and as difficult as this game was to watch on Saturday night, I still believe that Taylor and his staff are heading in the right direction. I don't believe this because I wear Cardinal colored glasses as some have accused, but because I have eyes that can see. I stayed until the bitter end, long after most of the 67,000 fans had filed out into the night, and I was pleased to see that the Stanford players never stopped fighting. That might be difficult to believe considering the margin of defeat, but everyone on the Cardinal sideline was invested. It was notable that Taylor never subbed out his offensive starters, perhaps understanding the value those reps will eventually have down the road as these players continue to learn his system. He was animated on the sidelines, focusing on his players and continuing to teach, sending a clear message about effort and expectations.
Afterwards Taylor summed up the contest bluntly. "Obviously, we're not at their level right now, but we will shoot to be there, and we will continue to work at it."
As we finally walked out of the Coliseum and back across the campus, we were shoulder to shoulder with departing young Trojans for a time, and some of the conversations were amusing. Most of the fans had had three hours to sit with the impending victory, so there wasn't much outward gloating, save for a few presumed frat boys stumbling back to their apartment.
"They just lost by forty-six points!"
"They might able to read their textbooks, but they sure can't read their playbooks!"
"Dude, my B.A.C. is higher than their GPAs!"
Again, I chose not to engage, because what could I possibly have said in response to such witty banter? Instead I walked on, worried that I might never again get to watch my Cardinal play in the Coliseum, and that I might never again get to make that same walk after a Stanford victory. (Believe me, few walks are sweeter.) As we put the game farther behind us with each step, I knew that things would get better.
