Jayden Maiava and USC go on scoring spree in season-opening blowout of Missouri State
USC TE Lake McRee scores on a 64-yd reception during the 2nd Q of the Trojans’ 73-13 beatdown of MO ST at the Coliseum on Saturday. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)
Jayden Maiava passes for 295 yards despite only playing in the first half as USC scores 42 first-half points on the way to a 73-13 victory.
USC’s defense shines in the victory and QB Husan Longstreet played the entire second half.
It was Missouri State’s first game as a Football Bowl Subdivision program.
Ryan Kartje (LA Times) — Five years ago, when USC first scheduled this 2025 season opener, the plan had been to go big, to test itself with a marquee, nonconference opponent that not only bolstered the Trojans’ strength of schedule but also captured the attention of college football. So, at the time, USC agreed to a home-and-home meeting with Mississippi, when Lane Kiffin, the Trojans’ former coach, would make his much-anticipated return to the Coliseum.
That matchup, of course, never came to fruition. The entire landscape of college football was upended in the meantime. Lincoln Riley became the coach. USC left the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. And the meeting with Mississippi was canceled, the rationale from USC’s leaders being there was no sensible reason, in the age of the expanding College Football Playoff, to test your team with top-tier nonconference competition.
Which is how Missouri State, in its first-ever matchup as a Football Bowl Subdivision program, wound at the Coliseum on Saturday, watching helplessly as USC stopped just short of stealing the Bears’ lunch money in a 73-13 season-opening beatdown.
It was the most points USC had scored in a football game since 1930, when it put up 74 points on California.
If the intent was merely to get off to a smooth, harmless start, then USC certainly succeeded in that regard.
Quarterback Jayden Maiava was mostly seamless, completing 15 of 18 passes for 295 yards and two touchdowns before taking a seat at halftime. The offense averaged 7.6 yards per carry, busted three plays of 60-plus yards and never punted.
USC’s defense, which had been the talk of the offseason, didn’t disappoint either. The Trojans tallied five sacks after having just 21 total a year ago. They held Missouri State to 224 yards and even put up a pick-six, courtesy of new safety Bishop Fitzgerald. A third-quarter interception, snagged on a tipped pass by reserve defensive end Garrett Pomerantz, nearly handed them another.
But as measuring sticks go, Saturday felt more along the lines of a well-orchestrated scrimmage. So much so that five-star freshman Husan Longstreet (4) played the entire second half, completing all nine of his passes and rushing for two touchdowns.
The only suspense, if you can call it that, came in the opening minutes, when Missouri State drove down the field, busted a 23-yard run through the teeth of the Trojans’ defense and hit a 44-yard field goal.
The Bears took an early 3-0 lead as if to announce they wouldn’t stand by and simply be trampled.
Then, a few minutes later, the trampling began.
It took USC some time to really find its rhythm. For their first two drives, the Trojans averaged only 8.6 yards per play, a step down from its final total of 11.3 yards per play.
The dam burst by the time USC touched the ball a third time. Maiava found tight end Lake McRee over the middle on the first play of the drive. The field in front of McRae immediately opened up, and the tight end sprinted his way to a 64-yard touchdown.
It was less than 90 seconds later that Fitzgerald put the game out of reach for good, with still three quarters left to go. He picked off a pass and took it 39 yards to paydirt.
Missouri State did manage to reach the end zone once, after a miscommunication in USC’s secondary left a receiver wide open in the corner.
But from there, the Trojans outscored the Bears 45-3. They scored on a 75-yard rush, from King Miller (30), and a 73-yard screen, to Eli Sanders. Maiava and Longstreet combined for three touchdowns on the ground.
As the Coliseum stands continued to clear, the fourth quarter became more a question of mercy than anything.
USC fell short of its all-time scoring record. But if a smooth start was what it was looking for, it had no issue bullying its way to a win in Week 1.
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Fresno State ran for 37 yards in 29 carries against Kansas.They ran for 351 yards in 44 carries against Georgia Southern. We should be able to run all day long against GS.
Whoever hired Bill Belichick should be fired immediately. Without Tom Brady he’s a mediocre coach. His record without Brady is 70-93. I found that out by just doing a little research on ESPN. You mean the AD at NC couldn’t have done the same thing?…..not to mention that he is 73 years old.
I never thought Belichick would cut it in college. And I still don’t. As you point out, he was a creature of Tom Brady’s amazing leadership, talent and devotion to QBing winning teams.
It was amazing to watch the Tar Heel fans parade out of their stadium as their team flopped all over the place. What a big pill to swallow.
Jon Wilner of the Bay Area News Group has come out with Power Rankings for the Pac12 2.0, assessing the 8 teams in the rebuilt Pac12 as if they were competing in conference this season. 7th and 8th, Wazu and Oregon St. Apparently Wazu ran the ball 22 times and gained 3 yds in beating FCS Idaho 13-10. Talk about becoming irrelevant.
How does beating up a second-rate team help Lincoln Riley make USC a contender again? Dylan Hernandez (LA Times, Hernandez is a 2002 UCLA grad for what it’s worth) — Is Riley a fraud or is he actually building something other than a $200-million practice facility? Was scheduling cannon fodder such as Missouri State a necessary step to reach the College Football Playoff or a cynical effort to conceal USC’s mediocrity? Nobody knows. The soft early-season schedule will place USC in a limbo of sorts, as it will be incapable of generating any excitement for its team. Riley’s program has… Read more »
Even though most other programs are scheduling easy wins in preseason, USC only went as far as scheduling non-power 4 league teams and maybe a bottom dwelling power 4- league team. But it was respectable. What is going on now is copying shameless SEC team scheduling with one thing only in mind: to pad the season record and qualify for a better bowl game. USC came close in losing its mantle being the only program never to schedule a Division II team. But it came very close a few years back scheduling A Cal-State division II program that drew outrage… Read more »
Bill Plaschke ripped UCLA and DeBong a new one in the LAT. I think Hernandez’s piece was meant to balance out the coverage. Plaschke — DeShaun Foster drags the Bruins into another embarrassment Year 2 of the DeShaun Foster era began at UCLA late Saturday night with tarped seats, yawning fans and a frightening question. What if this guy really can’t coach? Having endured Foster’s numerous growing pains in a 5-7 debut season, the Bruin faithful were hopeful this second go-around would reveal him as the inspirational leader whom athletic director Martin Jarmond promised when he surprisingly picked him to replace Chip Kelly. Still… Read more »
Dylan is so full of sh*t! Bowden is promising? Really? He is making fun of our schedule, which is laughable. So we suppose to play Ole Miss and the Irish in the non conference. His beloved bruins would never to that.This is just another hack journalist(like Joel Klatt) who can’t be objective about schools he doesn’t like. Asking him to evaluate USC would be asking someone on the view to grade Trump
I don’t know if it helps USC right now, but it has never hurt teams in the SEC with all their scheduling of Mercers, etc. I think if the goat coach (Saban) could do it year in and year out why can’t Riley.
Should USC lower itself the way SEC teams have padded their records? Should USC ignore its history not only as a true blue blood program but giving its fans its alumni and respect to itself? This isn’t the middle of Alabama where you are the only game in town that can schedule a junior college team and play before a packed house. LA won’t put up with that as it has shown every sports program in town. Half or even less seats will be filled if Riley continues to pick away at Trojan tradition. Honestly I could see one game… Read more »
USC should never have scheduled MO ST, basically an FCS team pretending to be FBS.
It’s all a little unseemly and charade-like, which is why both just released polls still kept USC outside the top 25 and in the also-ran dog house.
We’ve lost so much clout lately amongst the media, fans and coaches (yes, all three), that the Trojans will not be given the benefit of the doubt until they start beating good teams again in big games and getting into the playoffs.
I think Notre Dame has simply inflicted too much pain on me as a USC fan (thinking about that losing streak to impish but deadly Lou Holtz right about now) to EVER root for them. They’re a good team this year and will be favored to beat us as usual in South Bend. I’m not exactly counting on a Trojan victory, having been to South Bend four times and never seen us win there. But I love to see the Irish lose anytime, anywhere, and can count among my true CFB highlights the occasional crushing defeats they have suffered over… Read more »
I remember when Mike Williams made an amazing one-handed catch in the early PC era. Those kind of catches were so rare 20 years ago. Now you can see top ten plays on the World-wide Leader in Sports and more than half of them are one handed catches.
After watching Fresno run rampant over GSU, I am sure we are going to see a second 73+ point game, and USC won’t have to pass to do it. Maybe have receivers work this week on downfield blocking.
Gomer’s players always fight like warriors, they always are only 27 plays from winning a game they lost by 40, and whatever the results, he can look at the film and get everything fixed.
I hope we hang 1/2 a hundred on that fraud
Fresno ran for 351 yards for 7.8 yard per carry average. 176 yds passing with 6.5 yard per pass average. 527 total yards on offense and they turned it over to GSU 3 times. Warners son is a pretty good qb for Fresno. GSU seemed really slow compared to Fresno, imagine what they will look like this week. I think the Cat will be happy to get back to Georgia.
Well…..I’am catholic but so far that does not seem to be helping my betting picks.
As for the Canes vs ND……great game…..may the better team win.
Be interested to see if Cristobal coaches a good game….at Oregon he seemed a bit off for game coaching.
ND…..I don’t root for but……Freeman …..he has done a great job. Not sure anyone can make ND a NC but if anybody can it may be him. He would be on a short list for USC.
ND’s O-line has started to open holes up front. It’s now 7-7 with five mins to go to half. Raining now.
ND’s redshirt frosh QB CJ Carr (Lloyd’s grandson) looks pretty cool to me. He just winged in a bullet throw for a wide open TD after a mad scramble backwards. Shades of what Caleb Williams used to do when he won USC’s 8th Heisman.
Tide fans brace for unhappy times Andrew Holleran (The Spun) — The Crimson Tide opened the 2025 college football season ranked No. 8 in the country. ALA took on unranked FSU and fell to the Seminoles, 31-17, in a game that was never really close. Mike Norvell’s Seminoles controlled the game from the start, pulling off a major upset. ALA, which missed the College Football Playoff last year, opens up its 2025 campaign – Year 2 under Kalen DeBoer – with a wildly disappointing loss. Angry ALA fans got some disheartening news on a potential DeBoer firing following the Crimson… Read more »
You do realize he was competing against Eastern Kentucky, right? FCS school that last year was blown out by known powers like Southern Utah and Abilene Christian. I hardly consider that a test.
Nice job Riley! USC ran the ball 30 times and attempted 28 passes, completed 24. Good balance, lets keep it up. I am a little concerned the great defense The Trojans are supposed to have gave up 13 points and 5 big chunk plays to Da Bears. Lynn has some teachable moments to fix there. There’s a good vibe on the sidelines. UCLA and Northwestern the only Big10 teams to lose. A good Sunday morning for us Trojans.
I’m so worried I’m beside myself. Not once did our punter impress me. In fact I can’t remember seeing a USC punt. Next week I’m going to message Riley and tell him, “Stop with all this scoring and let’s see our punter!”
Is anyone else worried?
I worry about the poor kicker. He’s going to pull a groin muscle with all those PATs and kickoffs! The punters can just stay in their Trojan polo shirts next week as well!
The MS AD is sitting on the plane thinking, $1,150,000 check in my pocket from USC, another $1,300,000 check in two weeks from SMU. A couple of these every year will do nicely.
Hopefully for the Bears football it can only get better in the FBS for them. The projected budget for MS Athletics is $36 million for the this year. The added $2.5 million for a couple nonconference road loses is probably a nice bonus if the team isn’t too banged up mentally and physically.
I think for the Group of 5 Conferences, they aren’t getting good prospects, it’s all about conference play, maybe travel to a big time venue, maybe you dream of some day being a Tulane or Northern Illinois that knocks off one of the big boys. These are the old school college players, love to game, not going pro, not getting NIL, just want a degree.
You think it was worth the bad, record-breaking negative national exposure for money to get players who just want a degree and “love the game.” That sounds like my Harbor friends who played JC ball at Orange Coast or Golden West. No wonder MO ST stinks. Just taking a devil’s advocate point of view, I don’t think MO ST helped itself with a game vs USC for a paycheck. They should stay in their own lane until they can compete without embarrassing themselves. 73-13 will last forever. I wonder how their own fans feel about the matter, outside of the… Read more »
My comment was meant in a joking way. However, If I were an AD no way I let my teams get embarrassed on national TV for a couple million. The words banged up mentally stick with me. This kind of loss really hurts the program in so many ways. Not to mention the chance of serious injury is elevated. However, does it happen….all the time. Look at the OOC games with the SEC,,,,,every third game is a smash up. It’s just that the game last night was so egregious. If we had not let up at the half it might… Read more »
Like you, I don’t think it ever helps a team to get badly embarrassed on a national stage, where you make a joke of yourself. People and fans have long memories. JMHO.
We all know they didn’t have the same caliber of players as USC, but they were well coached. I think we will see their head coach moving on to bigger jobs soon.
Poor Nico. Gonna be a long season pal. ESPN — PASADENA, Calif. — By the time Nico Iamaleava stepped onto the field for his final drive of the night late in the fourth quarter of his much-anticipated debut as UCLA’s quarterback, the Bruins were down 43-10 and the majority of the fans still left at the Rose Bowl were wearing red, chanting “Let’s go Utah!” as if the game were being held in Salt Lake City. It was that kind of night for UCLA. The Bruins had come into the season with the promise of a new start, a new quarterback, a new offense and a… Read more »
Opening season game, big rival, at home, televised game…electricity in the air, 100,000+ fans rocking your stadium, chanting your team’s name, pulling for you to throw for 600 yards…oops, that was “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
Nico screwed himself royally. He split from highly ranked TENN over pure greed, pretended he always wanted to come back home to perennial underachiever UCLA for a comparative pittance, and now is stuck as a starter on the second-class Bruins. Good plan Nico! 😂
Nico is now a lost soul in lowly Bruinville. He pissed away being on a real contender for good NIL $ to play for a coach who can’t talk and likely won’t get the Bruins into the bowl season again.
Good first win and a great chance to see what Longstreet can do. It would have been a nice gesture for SC to take its foot off the gas pedal when their point total reached the 50s. However, it’s tough to tell the backups not to play as hard as they can to impress the coaches for playing time. Next week should be another high-scoring affair against Clueless Clay’s team. It will be interesting to see what kind of reception he gets in the LA Coliseum next Saturday.
Yes, great win. We’ve had so many openers post PC that we won but felt like we lost because of obvious flaws and errors and closer than they should’ve been outcomes. Very emphatic, very clean. Yes, the score was, well, lopsided to say the least. But I’ve come to embrace the idea the it is still the defense’s job to stop the offense. We had 2nd and 3rd stringers in the whole 2nd half. MO St signed up for the game. Glad we had a chance to really get a good look at the depth, it seems better than it’s… Read more »
USC TE Lake McRee scores on a 64-yd reception during the 2nd Q of the Trojans’ 73-13 beatdown of MO ST at the Coliseum on Saturday. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)
Quarterback Jayden Maiava was mostly seamless, completing 15 of 18 passes for 295 yards and two touchdowns before taking a seat at halftime. The offense averaged 7.6 yards per carry, busted three plays of 60-plus yards and never punted.
But as measuring sticks go, Saturday felt more along the lines of a well-orchestrated scrimmage. So much so that five-star freshman Husan Longstreet (4) played the entire second half, completing all nine of his passes and rushing for two touchdowns.
But from there, the Trojans outscored the Bears 45-3. They scored on a 75-yard rush, from King Miller (30), and a 73-yard screen, to Eli Sanders. Maiava and Longstreet combined for three touchdowns on the ground.
Updated September 1, 2025 – Final Results from Week 1 with Rankings
GAME BY GAME RESULTS CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO GO TO ORIGINAL POST
CLICK HERE
Fresno State ran for 37 yards in 29 carries against Kansas.They ran for 351 yards in 44 carries against Georgia Southern. We should be able to run all day long against GS.
Whoever hired Bill Belichick should be fired immediately. Without Tom Brady he’s a mediocre coach. His record without Brady is 70-93. I found that out by just doing a little research on ESPN. You mean the AD at NC couldn’t have done the same thing?…..not to mention that he is 73 years old.
I never thought Belichick would cut it in college. And I still don’t. As you point out, he was a creature of Tom Brady’s amazing leadership, talent and devotion to QBing winning teams.
It was amazing to watch the Tar Heel fans parade out of their stadium as their team flopped all over the place. What a big pill to swallow.
They must have money trees growing on NC’s campus
Jon Wilner of the Bay Area News Group has come out with Power Rankings for the Pac12 2.0, assessing the 8 teams in the rebuilt Pac12 as if they were competing in conference this season. 7th and 8th, Wazu and Oregon St. Apparently Wazu ran the ball 22 times and gained 3 yds in beating FCS Idaho 13-10. Talk about becoming irrelevant.
How does beating up a second-rate team help Lincoln Riley make USC a contender again? Dylan Hernandez (LA Times, Hernandez is a 2002 UCLA grad for what it’s worth) — Is Riley a fraud or is he actually building something other than a $200-million practice facility? Was scheduling cannon fodder such as Missouri State a necessary step to reach the College Football Playoff or a cynical effort to conceal USC’s mediocrity? Nobody knows. The soft early-season schedule will place USC in a limbo of sorts, as it will be incapable of generating any excitement for its team. Riley’s program has… Read more »
Even though most other programs are scheduling easy wins in preseason, USC only went as far as scheduling non-power 4 league teams and maybe a bottom dwelling power 4- league team. But it was respectable. What is going on now is copying shameless SEC team scheduling with one thing only in mind: to pad the season record and qualify for a better bowl game. USC came close in losing its mantle being the only program never to schedule a Division II team. But it came very close a few years back scheduling A Cal-State division II program that drew outrage… Read more »
Someone needs to tell Dylan Hernandez to look at UCLA’s program and see what a dumpster fire it is right now.
Bill Plaschke ripped UCLA and DeBong a new one in the LAT. I think Hernandez’s piece was meant to balance out the coverage. Plaschke — DeShaun Foster drags the Bruins into another embarrassment Year 2 of the DeShaun Foster era began at UCLA late Saturday night with tarped seats, yawning fans and a frightening question. What if this guy really can’t coach? Having endured Foster’s numerous growing pains in a 5-7 debut season, the Bruin faithful were hopeful this second go-around would reveal him as the inspirational leader whom athletic director Martin Jarmond promised when he surprisingly picked him to replace Chip Kelly. Still… Read more »
Dylan is so full of sh*t! Bowden is promising? Really? He is making fun of our schedule, which is laughable. So we suppose to play Ole Miss and the Irish in the non conference. His beloved bruins would never to that.This is just another hack journalist(like Joel Klatt) who can’t be objective about schools he doesn’t like. Asking him to evaluate USC would be asking someone on the view to grade Trump
I don’t know if it helps USC right now, but it has never hurt teams in the SEC with all their scheduling of Mercers, etc. I think if the goat coach (Saban) could do it year in and year out why can’t Riley.
Should USC lower itself the way SEC teams have padded their records? Should USC ignore its history not only as a true blue blood program but giving its fans its alumni and respect to itself? This isn’t the middle of Alabama where you are the only game in town that can schedule a junior college team and play before a packed house. LA won’t put up with that as it has shown every sports program in town. Half or even less seats will be filled if Riley continues to pick away at Trojan tradition. Honestly I could see one game… Read more »
USC should never have scheduled MO ST, basically an FCS team pretending to be FBS.
It’s all a little unseemly and charade-like, which is why both just released polls still kept USC outside the top 25 and in the also-ran dog house.
We’ve lost so much clout lately amongst the media, fans and coaches (yes, all three), that the Trojans will not be given the benefit of the doubt until they start beating good teams again in big games and getting into the playoffs.
MIA 24, ND 24. 3:21 left in the game, ND has thoroughly outplayed the ‘Canes in the 2nd half. MIA has the ball on their own 25.
MIA wins 27-24. Ya baby!
I have always rooted for ND to be unbeaten when we play them so our victory stings them so much more.
I know the temp was only in the 70’s, but that humidity had to be punishing for the Irish.
ND will be just fine when we play them next month.
I think Notre Dame has simply inflicted too much pain on me as a USC fan (thinking about that losing streak to impish but deadly Lou Holtz right about now) to EVER root for them. They’re a good team this year and will be favored to beat us as usual in South Bend. I’m not exactly counting on a Trojan victory, having been to South Bend four times and never seen us win there. But I love to see the Irish lose anytime, anywhere, and can count among my true CFB highlights the occasional crushing defeats they have suffered over… Read more »
It’s really hard for me to say this but…..GO HURRICANES
MIA WR CJ Daniels Goes Full Extension vs ND for Early Catch of the Year Candidate
I remember when Mike Williams made an amazing one-handed catch in the early PC era. Those kind of catches were so rare 20 years ago. Now you can see top ten plays on the World-wide Leader in Sports and more than half of them are one handed catches.
It’s all about those sticky Gloves!
that is probably a major factor, Allen.
There is still a long ways to go but you have to admit…..it’s a great start
Utterly amazing one-handed catch puts the ‘Canes up 14-7 12 seconds before half.
After watching Fresno run rampant over GSU, I am sure we are going to see a second 73+ point game, and USC won’t have to pass to do it. Maybe have receivers work this week on downfield blocking.
I did not see the game. I take it from your comments that Fresno ran it very well all night against Helton’s boys.
You mean Uncle Huggs warriors.
Gomer’s players always fight like warriors, they always are only 27 plays from winning a game they lost by 40, and whatever the results, he can look at the film and get everything fixed.
I hope we hang 1/2 a hundred on that fraud
Gomer! I remember calling him Gentleman Clay too, except I didn’t mean it in any positive way.
In 2021, after STAN cleaned his clock in the Coliseum 42-28 and he was fired, “Oh, what a relief it was!”
Here’s what Clay looked like during that last loss to STAN before he got the hook.
Reminds me of an old song about the cat came back, they thought he was a gonner…
in the first quarter, 50 points.
Fresno ran for 351 yards for 7.8 yard per carry average. 176 yds passing with 6.5 yard per pass average. 527 total yards on offense and they turned it over to GSU 3 times. Warners son is a pretty good qb for Fresno. GSU seemed really slow compared to Fresno, imagine what they will look like this week. I think the Cat will be happy to get back to Georgia.
I’m hoping big-time that MIA beats ND. The game is just over two hours away.
TDBers, are you for the Irish, or the ‘Canes? In spite of Paul Dee, I’m praying the Convicts beat the Catholics today.
Well…..I’am catholic but so far that does not seem to be helping my betting picks.
As for the Canes vs ND……great game…..may the better team win.
Be interested to see if Cristobal coaches a good game….at Oregon he seemed a bit off for game coaching.
ND…..I don’t root for but……Freeman …..he has done a great job. Not sure anyone can make ND a NC but if anybody can it may be him. He would be on a short list for USC.
Can we beat the Irish this year in South Bend? I’m not sure about that. I wonder how big of a dog the Trojans will be?
Looking forward to ND at MIA at 4:30!
Miami could be pretty good, based on the first half.
ND is playing a freshman QB, so I expect ND could wet the bed early in the season
ND’s O-line has started to open holes up front. It’s now 7-7 with five mins to go to half. Raining now.
ND’s redshirt frosh QB CJ Carr (Lloyd’s grandson) looks pretty cool to me. He just winged in a bullet throw for a wide open TD after a mad scramble backwards. Shades of what Caleb Williams used to do when he won USC’s 8th Heisman.
Tide fans brace for unhappy times Andrew Holleran (The Spun) — The Crimson Tide opened the 2025 college football season ranked No. 8 in the country. ALA took on unranked FSU and fell to the Seminoles, 31-17, in a game that was never really close. Mike Norvell’s Seminoles controlled the game from the start, pulling off a major upset. ALA, which missed the College Football Playoff last year, opens up its 2025 campaign – Year 2 under Kalen DeBoer – with a wildly disappointing loss. Angry ALA fans got some disheartening news on a potential DeBoer firing following the Crimson… Read more »
Miller Moss looked good for Louisville yesterday. Amazing how good a QB can do when he has pass protection.
Good on Miller!
You do realize he was competing against Eastern Kentucky, right? FCS school that last year was blown out by known powers like Southern Utah and Abilene Christian. I hardly consider that a test.
He still threw 2 pics
Nice job Riley! USC ran the ball 30 times and attempted 28 passes, completed 24. Good balance, lets keep it up. I am a little concerned the great defense The Trojans are supposed to have gave up 13 points and 5 big chunk plays to Da Bears. Lynn has some teachable moments to fix there. There’s a good vibe on the sidelines. UCLA and Northwestern the only Big10 teams to lose. A good Sunday morning for us Trojans.
It is great that Riley has a balanced offense.
Take what the defense gives you.
This is what made CPC and Chow so successful
I’m so worried I’m beside myself. Not once did our punter impress me. In fact I can’t remember seeing a USC punt. Next week I’m going to message Riley and tell him, “Stop with all this scoring and let’s see our punter!”
Is anyone else worried?
I worry about the poor kicker. He’s going to pull a groin muscle with all those PATs and kickoffs! The punters can just stay in their Trojan polo shirts next week as well!
Missouri St on the way home. Let’s never do this again!
The MS AD is sitting on the plane thinking, $1,150,000 check in my pocket from USC, another $1,300,000 check in two weeks from SMU. A couple of these every year will do nicely.
Is it worth getting your fanny beat beyond recog in front of a national audience for good money?
Probably. But 73-13 is a prominent stain that will never go away for the Bears.
Hopefully for the Bears football it can only get better in the FBS for them. The projected budget for MS Athletics is $36 million for the this year. The added $2.5 million for a couple nonconference road loses is probably a nice bonus if the team isn’t too banged up mentally and physically.
Would you want to play for MO ST now if you were a good prospect? Not I. MO ST was horrible. I felt sorry for them.
As Ryan Kartje laughably explained, “The fourth quarter became more a question of mercy than anything.”
I think for the Group of 5 Conferences, they aren’t getting good prospects, it’s all about conference play, maybe travel to a big time venue, maybe you dream of some day being a Tulane or Northern Illinois that knocks off one of the big boys. These are the old school college players, love to game, not going pro, not getting NIL, just want a degree.
You think it was worth the bad, record-breaking negative national exposure for money to get players who just want a degree and “love the game.” That sounds like my Harbor friends who played JC ball at Orange Coast or Golden West. No wonder MO ST stinks. Just taking a devil’s advocate point of view, I don’t think MO ST helped itself with a game vs USC for a paycheck. They should stay in their own lane until they can compete without embarrassing themselves. 73-13 will last forever. I wonder how their own fans feel about the matter, outside of the… Read more »
My comment was meant in a joking way. However, If I were an AD no way I let my teams get embarrassed on national TV for a couple million. The words banged up mentally stick with me. This kind of loss really hurts the program in so many ways. Not to mention the chance of serious injury is elevated. However, does it happen….all the time. Look at the OOC games with the SEC,,,,,every third game is a smash up. It’s just that the game last night was so egregious. If we had not let up at the half it might… Read more »
Like you, I don’t think it ever helps a team to get badly embarrassed on a national stage, where you make a joke of yourself. People and fans have long memories. JMHO.
If USC goes on to become NC it wouldn’t hurt so bad.
Gee, we got beat 73-13 by the national champs. Great! Let’s do that again. 😂 😂
We all know they didn’t have the same caliber of players as USC, but they were well coached. I think we will see their head coach moving on to bigger jobs soon.
Early returns suggest the Vols won the trade with the Gutties.
You think? Nico’s handler’s really screwed him
Poor Nico. Gonna be a long season pal. ESPN — PASADENA, Calif. — By the time Nico Iamaleava stepped onto the field for his final drive of the night late in the fourth quarter of his much-anticipated debut as UCLA’s quarterback, the Bruins were down 43-10 and the majority of the fans still left at the Rose Bowl were wearing red, chanting “Let’s go Utah!” as if the game were being held in Salt Lake City. It was that kind of night for UCLA. The Bruins had come into the season with the promise of a new start, a new quarterback, a new offense and a… Read more »
Opening season game, big rival, at home, televised game…electricity in the air, 100,000+ fans rocking your stadium, chanting your team’s name, pulling for you to throw for 600 yards…oops, that was “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
On the ESPN Sunday morning CFB recap show (Sirius XM 84), the guys are saying than TEN got a huge upgrade at QB when Nico left.
Nico screwed himself royally. He split from highly ranked TENN over pure greed, pretended he always wanted to come back home to perennial underachiever UCLA for a comparative pittance, and now is stuck as a starter on the second-class Bruins. Good plan Nico! 😂
And to think Joel Klatt said Nico left, not for the money, but because he wanted to play for fucla. Can someone explain the logic of that to me?
Nobody ever believed that story line that I know of.
It’s like Yogi Roth constantly telling viewers than bottom feeder schools have a strong shot to suddenly see vast improvement. Right Yogi.
Problem is that Nico’s behavior leading up to the split suggests none of those homesick narratives, but rather one of holding out for more money.
Nico is now a lost soul in lowly Bruinville. He pissed away being on a real contender for good NIL $ to play for a coach who can’t talk and likely won’t get the Bruins into the bowl season again.
Things are looking up!
He could really tank his NFL potential too.
Absolutely
Good first win and a great chance to see what Longstreet can do. It would have been a nice gesture for SC to take its foot off the gas pedal when their point total reached the 50s. However, it’s tough to tell the backups not to play as hard as they can to impress the coaches for playing time. Next week should be another high-scoring affair against Clueless Clay’s team. It will be interesting to see what kind of reception he gets in the LA Coliseum next Saturday.
Yes, great win. We’ve had so many openers post PC that we won but felt like we lost because of obvious flaws and errors and closer than they should’ve been outcomes. Very emphatic, very clean. Yes, the score was, well, lopsided to say the least. But I’ve come to embrace the idea the it is still the defense’s job to stop the offense. We had 2nd and 3rd stringers in the whole 2nd half. MO St signed up for the game. Glad we had a chance to really get a good look at the depth, it seems better than it’s… Read more »
Hope you have a great time at the Purdue game! Wishing you safe travels. Fight On!
If I were an entrepreneur I’d be outside of the Coliseum hawking used “ FIRE HELTON” signs to GSU fans.