The Painful Game

It all culminated in Pasadena. A season full of letdowns and frustrations culminated in a loss to UCLA on Saturday. The result really should not have surprised anyone who has been following this team each week. I guess it just hurts more when it’s to the Bruins. More troubling than the loss itself, the stats, the turnovers, or the penalties is the overarching feeling of indifference around the program right now. Maybe we’re a victim of the Los Angeles sports market where the Rams are red hot and the Lakers have superstar Lebron James on the court each night and our sidelines, once lined with celebrities, have become an afterthought. You could make a long list of excuses such as game times, renovations etc, but at the end of the day our team is losing and doing so in bad fashion. Fans have quickly become accustomed to the troubling second half play and the undisciplined actions of our players. You can call it a fair weather move, and to some degree it is, but even the most hardcore of fans have a distaste for the product their seeing on the field. Many of the more casual fans have decided it’s just not worth their time or money and have disappeared. The historic Rose Bowl has room for 91,000 and what a majestic place it is for a rivalry game so enriched in tradition. On Saturday, just over 57,000 turned out for this meeting of the teams. The only thing USC really had left to play for in this game was to get bowl eligible, beat our rival, and help protect the future of our coach. With #3 Notre Dame coming into town next week, getting bowl eligible and helping our coach’s case seem like a pipe dream.

There should be serious concern for the matchup this weekend. It’s interesting that Vegas has USC as 11-point underdogs currently. It shows that the odds makers respect the level of talent on our roster and seem to know, like so many fans, we are capable of playing with anyone. But with the lack of execution week over week, it’s hard to think we have any sort of real chance against the Irish this week. The real concern isn’t so much what we can’t do, but what Notre Dame needs to do. Because Notre Dame is not a part of a conference and won’t play a conference title game, this will be their last chance to impress the Playoff committee. They will be looking to make a statement so strong that no matter what sort of chaos happens around other conferences, their spot is secure.

As painful as it is to write, here is my prediction for how this is all plays out. We will lose this weekend to a very good Notre Dame team by a large margin. Clay Helton will be our coach in 2019. The instability in the President’s office at the University will prevent Lynn Swann from making a head coaching change. Helton will survive on the argument that his team is young and this season was just a down year. Swann will choose giving him another chance to right the ship over paying his buyout and the contract of a new hire, until a new President is hired and can guide the coaching search. Clay either turns it all around next year or struggles again and the decision to replace him is an easy one. As I have written many times here before, I hope I am wrong on multiple fronts. Until then, I will be there in attendance to support our student-athletes and enjoy what could be our last game of the year. I will be there to Fight On.