USC's continuous football success is a mind-boggler. How the heck do the Trojans do it? Perhaps you Angelenos can shed some life on something for me is one of the most amazing things in sports.

USC's football history defies common held belief. USC is a private school. It is a highly selective, highly ranked private school. It is the only highly selective, excellent private school that constantly has been among the elites of college football throughout the history of college football other than Notre Dame.

Yet Notre Dame can be dismissed as a different phenominum. Notre Dame can be explained: it's Catholic. It is the only Catholic university that has constantly been a major player in college football. It grabed the interest of Americna Catholics throughout the 20th century. It used independence as part of its aura.

Other than SC and ND, Miami comes up next among succesful priates...but Miami's rise is far more recent and less traditional than what the Trojans and Irish experience. And Miami (no knock intended) is not the academic schol that SC and ND are.

Once past ND, SC, and Miami...what's left? Norhwestern manages to hold its own in the Big Ten with a bit of 1990's brilliance but that's about it. Duke, Wake, Vandy...not much has happened at those places down through the years. Nothing great at Syracuse either. Tulane, SMU, TCU, BYU...they play in smaller ponds. And the private school that has the longest string of games with SC and a close in-state relationship, Stanford, has hardly ever been a thron in Trojans side (despite how successful the Cardinal has been vs. Cal).

That brings us back to USC...excellent school. private. selective. no special Catholic/independent/win-one-for-the-gipper ND aura. Yet USC is always among the elite. Always recongized as one of the greats. Easily national championship material in so many seasons.

And to make matters even more amazing....USC shares LA with one of the top academic/athletic public universities in the land in Westwood. UCLA is one of those bigger-than-life universities and while the Bruin tilt has always been to b'ball, there is no denying football success down through the years and that this major, public university is in LA itself...yet USC still transcends it in its amzing success in both LA and the US in genral.

So how do you Angelenos explain the success of this private and selective university that accomplishes not only more than expected....but enough to make it one of the real elites, that shares the Golden State with two high profile public universities, UCLA and Cal, but manges to leave both in the dust.

How do they do it?

USC may have high academic standards for their general student body but, like many D-1 private and public universities, they significantly lower these standards for their athletes (of course, it's all hush-hush - don't ask them to come out and admit it). So they can take players that aren't exactly the sharpest tacks in the bucket... despite what their academic rep may make you think.

Plus they're a private school so they can draw many more out-of-staters than UCLA or Cal.

Also, UCLA's head coach of the last five years has been an incompetent ninny. The coach before that wasn't much better. It could be argued that UCLA's slide from greatness (ALMOST made it to the national championship in 98 and then the wheels fell off) has allowed USC to become the behemoth it has been since ca. 2002.

And let's not forget all the shady dealings that have been in the news (Bush's free house, etc etc) as well as those that haven't been exposed to the light of day.

Of course, this coming from a UCLA grad, so no bias here in the least.

actually, stuck, its a tribute to you and your Bruins that adds to USC's success. For LA to have such an academically prominent and very good football program in a public school like UCLA and still have USC among the football elite is more than tribute to UCLA....a school if placed anywhere else who probably blow a near by private university out of the gridiron waters.

As I noted before, UCLA's promience goes well beyond LA and extends across country. It's one of those schools that everybody respects. And its profile is quite large.

Your point about "out of state" recuiting possiblities for private USC goes against what schools like Northwestern, Vandy, Duke, Stanford, etc. face: they all have lots of troubel staying up with the big public universities. But not USC.

edsg, I understand what you are trying to say. USC has been extremely successful in leveraging its location, wealth, size, and football tradition. Moreso than any school, even ND, which lacks certain benefits that Southern California provides. USC is the largest non-religiously affiliated private school in the country as well. Size many times in college sports does matter. It doesn't hurt that the Trojans also are not shy about being flexible when it comes to ethics as well. But at the end of the day they have had strong leadership and a solid vision of what to become.

There also will be a time when USC is not that good at football. All it takes is one bad coach hire or an incompetent AD for things to get rocky real quick.

edsg, I understand what you are trying to say. USC has been extremely successful in leveraging its location, wealth, size, and football tradition. Moreso than any school, even ND, which lacks certain benefits that Southern California provides. USC is the largest non-religiously affiliated private school in the country as well. Size many times in college sports does matter. It doesn't hurt that the Trojans also are not shy about being flexible when it comes to ethics as well. But at the end of the day they have had strong leadership and a solid vision of what to become.

There also will be a time when USC is not that good at football. All it takes is one bad coach hire or an incompetent AD for things to get rocky real quick.

and along with all that, they sort of poke a lot of holes in the way that Northwestern, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Duke, and Wake Forest approach college football, don't they?

In fact, USC should be thrown in the face of those programs...not to make them as succesful as the Trojans, but to eliminate any sense that they have a right to expect high academically inspired roles as the bottom feeders of college football. They don't. And they shouldn't. USC proves they can and should compete. I think Stuck's observation about the privates' draw for out-of-state talent actually makes a lot of sense...they, more so than the public universities, can transcend their regions and can draw from across the US.

As for two of the schools in question, Northwestern and Stanford, each has a lot to learn from USC. Both Chicagoland and the Bay Area respectively for Northwestern and Stanford should pack the same type of wallop that the LA area does for USC. True Stanford shares the bay with Cal (at a time when Cal is once again a major player) and Northwestern, though alone in the Chicago market has to contend with Illinois and Notre Dame locally, the three metro areas in question (LA, Chgo, Bay) are all big enough to deliver for the private school if the marketing and program warrant it...and that's exactly what happens in Los Angeles...again a shared market with UCLA and other programs.

If you are talking about football Stanford has done a great deal with it's many restrictions (often self-imposed). Standford has far less students than USC (about 7,000 versus 30,000) and sets higher academic requirements for their students and student athletes than USC.

I was pretty surprised to learn that Stanford has less than 7,000 undergrads. Northwestern might be a better comparison but I know very little about that school. This is also not to say size is everything or Cal State Long Beach and Northridge would be dominating California football. But when you are looking to fill 100,000 seat stadiums (drawing ample revenue and recruit attention) it helps to have a big pool of alumni and students.

The ability to get more out-of-state students really doesn't effect recruiting between UCLA or USC I would suspect. These student athletes get a special pass into admissions regardless of where they come from and recruiters get large budgets to look all over the region to find top players. State schools do have a leg up in they receive state dollars to compete with private institutions and the state can artificially tilt the balance towards favored schools and against other (case study to research would be Penn State versus the other 14 Pennsylvania state schools). But private schools also don't have as much oversight in how they operate or "accept" student athletes into their ranks, which is a considerable bonus.

Trojans! Cool!

I never liked Pete Caroll. Ever since that mock choking incident several years ago when he was coaching in the NFL. Not a very classy guy.

I never liked Pete Caroll. Ever since that mock choking incident several years ago when he was coaching in the NFL. Not a very classy guy.


Mock choking incident? What's the story behind that one?

it was in a game against the Dolphins several years ago. Carroll was the New York Jets defensive coordinator and when the Dolphins kicker missed the game winning field goal, Carroll put his hand on his throat to mimic a choking move

This is what I remember about USC success since I was there.

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j161/kevinsblogger/CarterTaunt.jpg

13-9 baby!

I remember Los Angeles magazine devoted their cover story a few months ago to the USC-UCLA rivalry. They released two covers, one that was pro-Trojan with a sexy blonde USC song girl on the cover, and another that was pro-Bruin and the cover was an exotic looking UCLA cheerleader. I wanted to purchase both, but I realized that would have been playing into the magazine's hands by actually paying for two magazines, so I ended up just buying the USC one.

http://www.lamag.com/Media/PublicationsIssue/1106_Cover_ani.gif

13-9 was great, but after the Utah game I'm not looking forward to this year's showdown