Fun fact: in odd years, USC is always @ Cal, Oregon, ND, ASU and UW. In even years, they get those teams at home, and are at Oregon State, Wazzu, Arizona, Stanford and UCLA. Ergo, notwithstanding recent struggles in Corvallis, the Trojans’ road is MUCH easier in even years. Would be nice if we could split up that Cal/Oregon/ND trio somehow. Brutal.
And the worst part is, they’re 0-1 after the easiest leg of that quintet* of road games (on paper, anyway). Objectively, with the personnel they’ve got, you’d have to think that 2-2 would be a reasonable prediction for the remainder of it. Yet a 9-3 season under Pete Carroll is unthinkable. Could this finally be the year USC doesn’t go to a BCS bowl?
(On the bright side, the Big 12 team we’d play in the Holiday Bowl could easily be a better, more intriguing opponent than the Big 10 champ we’d play in the Rose Bowl…)
*Of course they also played @Ohio State, but that isn’t one of the mandatory slate of ten games against the same opponents that they play every year, so it doesn’t factor into this discussion.
Huh, I didn’t realize they had a regular pattern but the Huskies have the same thing going on (going back the last four seasons, before that it was different with only 11 games).
ODD YEARS: USC, Arizona, Oregon, WSU, and Cal at home
EVEN YEARS: UCLA, OSU, ASU, Stanford at home.
Looks like they set it up so the regional games are always split. Odd years shoudl be easier for the huskies, since at Oregon is always tough, at USC is always tough, and having WSU in Husky Stadium is much better than having to play in the middle of nowhere, i mean Pullman.
Iowa State has a two-years-on-two-years-off with both Oklahoma and Texas. This is one of the off years. (Here’s wishing for Big 12 No. 7 on the bowl pecking order. And as long as I’m wishing, I want a new computer.)