LOS ANGELES — If you are a college football coach, you play in arguably the toughest conference in the country – the Big Ten and SEC are 1-2 in whichever order you’d have them, let’s leave it at that – and you not only have designs on making the College Football Playoff but need to make a run at the CFP for job security, this is how you schedule.
Read more USC football pounces on San José State in season opener
Cupcakes? Try extra-sugary cream puffs, eclairs and apple fritters.
And as No. 14 USC, the only ranked team to play a Week 0 game this weekend, ground San José State into submission for the first three quarters of Saturday’s 42-26 opening game victory, I wonder how many of the devoted souls who showed up at the Coliseum had their blood sugar numbers spiking by halftime.
Granted, there weren’t many who filled seats at the start of the day, and there were fewer at the end. Scheduling down may help give you a shot at the postseason prize – emphasis on help – but it doesn’t generate much interest in the most diverse sports market on the planet.
Tickets distributed for Thursday night’s Rams-Chargers preseason exhibition, where most of the guys who played on both sides weren’t likely to be on a regular season roster: 63,752.
Tickets distributed for USC-San José State, which actually counted: 51,144, with maybe 25,000 people in the 77,500-seat Coliseum moments before the game started. Was it the heat and humidity, the noon start time (for TV, of course), or a reluctance to commit to Trojan football at the end of August?
Or was it the opponent?
San José State is coming off a 3-9 season, 2-6 in the Mountain West Conference. Fresno State, this coming Friday night’s opponent, was 9-4 overall in 2025, 5-3 in the MWC and won a bowl game last year, and has since moved to the reconstituted Pac-12. Louisiana’s Ragin’ Cajuns, who the Trojans face here in two weeks, were 6-7 overall in 2025, 5-3 in the Sun Belt and lost to Delaware in something called the 68 Ventures Bowl.
That’s one level. USC’s is quite another. And the paying customers recognize it.
Most of the first half here Saturday consisted of USC establishing the run and grinding the visitors into submission, although a six-play, 80-yard, 1:14 drive near the end of the first half gave the Trojans a 28-0 lead and reminded the Spartans who was who, and how quickly the home team could impose its will.
By halftime, USC had already gained 111 yards rushing (to San José’s 39), outgained the Spartans 312 to 102 and scored on four of their five possessions. On the fifth, they reached the Spartans’ 1-yard line but couldn’t punch it in on fourth down.
Six different running backs touched the ball, while 10 receivers caught passes. Through three quarters, USC outgained San José 404-217 and led 35-3.
As for the comparative closeness of the final score, after San José scored 23 fourth quarter points and two touchdowns in the final 5:11? That, Riley said, was the result of the guys deep in the depth chart learning some hard lessons.
“Fourth quarter, not up to our standards,” Riley said. “Bunch of guys got opportunities. And we had several that did not play the way that we anticipated, and there’ll be a lot to learn and grow from because we’re going to need the depth of this roster. We challenged that in the fourth quarter, and they obviously didn’t respond the way we wanted.”
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(Translation: Those guys are going to get yelled at this week on the practice field, likely a lot.)
Then again, the demanding elements of USC’s fan base might scoff at those words, after squirming uncomfortably during that fourth quarter – quite possibly from their couches and recliners at home, if they weren’t actually throwing pillows at their TV screens. You tend to remember the last thing you saw, right?
“I think there’s definitely room to improve on there, but I think it was a generally a decent start for us,” said center and captain Tobias Raymond, when I asked about the concept of such early-season gimmes also serving as developmental games. “There’s good things, there’s bad things and there’s things that we could do better. So in terms of (the) first game, I think it’s always one of those games where you kind of just find out how your mentality is going (to be) through a game.”
But it all comes back to this: The heat is on Riley. Those billboards around the region that proclaim “The Time Is: Now” are a not-so-subtle message as the coach begins his fifth season at USC.
His first team in 2022 entered the Pac-12 championship game 11-1 largely because of Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams, and missed out because Williams’ hamstring injury in that game and the subsequent loss to Utah led to exclusion from what was then a four-team field.
Riley’s Trojans haven’t been close since. And the Trojans’ generous donor base well could be running short on patience, especially in an era of NIL deals, team payrolls, and a gleaming new on-campus football center.
But remember what we said about the toughest football conference in America? The Big Ten boasts the last three national champions – Michigan in 2023, Ohio State in ’24 and Indiana in ’25 – and seven teams in the Associated Press preseason top 25: No. 1 Ohio State, No. 2 Oregon, No. 6 Indiana, the No. 14 Trojans, No. 16 Michigan, No. 17 Washington and No. 22 Iowa.
Ohio State, Oregon, Washington (all at home) and Indiana (at Bloomington) are on USC’s 2026 schedule, along with road trips to Penn State and Wisconsin and a potentially dangerous final game against UCLA at the Rose Bowl Nov. 28.
This is why the Notre Dame series is on hiatus, and why when it resumes in 2030 it will be an early-season game.
And I’ll admit it. If I were in Riley’s shoes, I’d fill the early schedule with as many pastries as I could – no, I didn’t write “patsies” – and then I’d leave it to the marketing people to figure out how to sell the tickets.
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So would you, probably.