USC Football

The USC football team will not be going to the College Football Playoff after falling to Utah 47-24 in the Pac 12 Championship Game on Friday evening in Las Vegas.

The No. 4 Trojans were guaranteed a postseason berth with a win over the No. 11 Utes, but a disastrous defensive effort led to USC's second defeat against Utah this year.

Utah rolled for 533 total yards, with quarterback Cameron Rising completing 22-of-34 passes for 310 yards and three touchdowns. His 60-yard toss to tight end Thomas Yassmin gave the Utes a 33-24 lead in the fourth quarter.

The Utes steamrolled the Trojans on the ground as well with 223 yards and three scores on 35 carries (6.4 YPC).

After the Yassmin touchdown and a R.J. Hubert interception of USC quarterback Caleb Williams, Utes running back Ja'Quinden Jackson rushed for a 53-yard touchdown for a 39-24 edge.

The Utes defense then forced a turnover on downs before a Micah Bernard score put the game away for good.

The USC offense did all it could with Williams, the clear Heisman Trophy favorite, hobbled with a midgame lower-body injury that briefly sent him to the medical tent. He still impressed with 363 passing yards and three touchdowns.

However, the Utah offensive line dominated the trenches, allowing the skill-position players with more than enough room to dissect the USC defense through the air and on the ground.

That enables Utah to finish the evening on a 44-7 run after falling behind 17-3 in the second quarter, and Twitter noted the team's significant defensive struggles as a result.

Utah will now be heading to the Rose Bowl as the Pac-12 representative. USC will await its bowl fate following Saturday's conference championship games.

The No. 7 USC Trojans clinched a spot in the Pac-12 championship game with a 48-45 win over the No. 16 UCLA Bruins on Saturday night at Rose Bowl Stadium and improved to 10-1 on the season.

The Trojans sealed the win when Korey Foreman picked off Bruins quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson with 1:26 remaining in the game, but it was quarterback Caleb Williams who stood out above the rest.

Williams completed 32 of 43 passes for 470 yards and two touchdowns against one interception in the win. He also rushed for 32 yards and a score on eight carries.

Following the win, Williams was celebrated as the Heisman Trophy frontrunner on Twitter:

Williams has been one of the best quarterbacks in college football this season. He entered Saturday's game having completed 63.7 percent of his passes for 3,010 yards and 31 touchdowns against two interceptions in 10 games, in addition to rushing for 283 yards and six scores.

If Williams is going to win the Heisman, he'll have to put together another impressive performance against the No. 18 Notre Dame Fighting Irish next weekend to close out the season.

Michigan running back Blake Corum and Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud have also been mentioned in the Heisman Trophy race.

If every season is solely judged on which programs reach the College Football Playoff, the Pac-12 has consistently fallen on the wrong side of that pass-or-fail exercise.

After two months of optimism in 2022, the conference is merely a USC loss removed from another failing grade.

Heading into Week 11, the Pac-12 had three legitimate contenders. Oregon, UCLA and USC each entered its contest with a single loss against a team currently in the Top 15. Relative to the CFP chase, any of those setbacks could be easily forgiven in a few weeks.

USC wrecked Colorado last Friday, improving to 9-1 and taking the first step toward what could have been a glorious Pac-12 weekend. The looming showdowns in Week 12—USC at UCLA and Utah at Oregon—had an immense potential impact on both the Pac-12 and CFP.

The latter, not so much anymore.

In order to maximize the College Football Playoff stakes, USC needed Oregon and UCLA to hold up their ends of the bargain at home. The full expectation was a couple of wins, considering they arrived as double-digit favorites over Washington and Arizona, respectively.

Instead, the night turned into two demoralizing losses that rapidly diminished the conference's shot at a national title.

Washington rode a late touchdown and last-minute field goal to edge Oregon, and Arizona also put together a fourth-quarter rally to stun UCLA in Pasadena. The results moved Oregon and UCLA into the dreaded two-loss territory, from where no team in eight previous editions of the CFP has emerged to finish in the all-important Top Four on Selection Day.

Suddenly, barring a string of improbable—even while not impossible—chaos, seventh-ranked USC has become the Pac-12's lone candidate to make the College Football Playoff in 2022.

The silver lining is that the Pac-12 is enjoying a resurgent year as a whole. That positive news can be lost within a CFP-or-bust mentality but deserves praise.

Yes, there is value in discussing the Pac-12's absence from the tournament since Alabama beat Washington in 2016. It's fair to criticize the former leadership, this extended drought and that the conference hasn't won a national championship since USC's (technically vacated) title in 2004.

Simultaneously, the Pac-12 has USC at 9-1 and a quartet—Oregon, Utah, UCLA and Washington—of 8-2 squads. All of them remain in contention for the Pac-12 Championship Game, which will include two teams with the best conference winning percentages. This depth of above-average teams is exactly why eliminating divisions is a wise choice.

Throw in 7-3 Oregon State and 6-4 Washington State, and the conference already has seven bowl-eligible schools. Last year, the league mustered six such teams.

This progression must be a massive sigh of relief for a conference with an uncertain future.

During the summer, USC and UCLA revealed their plans to join the Big Ten in 2024. That announcement sent the Pac-12 scrambling to retain its 10 other members—particularly Oregon and Washington, seemingly the most appealing options for further B1G expansion.

However, the praise due to a decent-sized group of competitive teams has a ceiling when there's no CFP representative.

The inconvenient irony is the Pac-12's hopes of refurbishing its status as an elite conference rests in the hands of a school that is leaving the league after next season.

This particular brand of USC schadenfreude is complicated, huh?

If you're rooting against Lincoln Riley and Co., do your thing. If you support USC or are Team #SaveThePac12, the best-case hypothetical is still a promising one.

After traveling to No. 16 UCLA, the Trojans host No. 18 Notre Dame. If they survive both teams, the Trojans will take on a strong opponent—perhaps the winner of Utah's trip to Oregon—in the Pac-12 Championship Game. Win there, and a 12-1 USC team is certainly playoff-bound.

But those Oregon and UCLA losses have narrowed the national focus of a potentially huge night for the conference to a single team.

On the CFP grading scale, on Saturday through the rest of the season, the Pac-12 is USC-or-fail.

Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff believes USC and UCLA leaving the conference will be an unpopular decision.

"I think saying hundreds would be an exaggeration—dozens, more than a hundred," Kliavkoff said when talking about discussions he has had with people connected to the programs, per Myron Medcalf of ESPN. "And I have yet to talk to anyone in the UCLA and USC community who's in favor of the move. I will say that I probably hear from folks who are not in favor, not surprisingly."

As Medcalf noted, the Trojans and Bruins will become members of the Big Ten in 2024 as the landscape of college sports continues to change with conference realignment that will also see Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC from the Big 12 in July 2025.

While Kliavkoff is a biased source who would clearly benefit from the two major brands staying inside the conference, there is something to be said for the difficulties it will present.

USC and UCLA will be in for multiple long road trips in football, basketball and other sports as they travel to places such as Penn State, Maryland and Ohio State. The Big Ten is also based in the Midwest and operates its high-profile conference championships and tournaments in cities such as Indianapolis and Chicago.

USC and UCLA will also lose some long-standing rivalries within the Pac-12 as they play new schedules.

Kliavkoff suggested expenses that come from additional traveling and salaries with the move to the Big Ten will counteract the gains available from a financial standpoint, but Medcalf noted reports say "UCLA will reap an eight-figure gain annually" with the move.

Thuc Nhi Nguyen of the Los Angeles Times pointed out the Pac-12's "archaic TV deal" has hamstrung powerhouse programs from a financial perspective, with the conference giving $33.6 million to each school in 2019-20 when the Big Ten gave an average of $49.2 million to its schools in that same period.

The gap figures to only grow, considering the Big Ten agreed to a new television rights contract with CBS, Fox, NBC, NBCUniversal's Peacock, Big Ten Network and FS1 in August. It will start in July 2023 and run through the 2029-30 season and give the conference between $7 billion and $8 billion.

Escalators could even bring the value to $10 billion.

Money talks, and USC and UCLA are headed to the Big Ten even if some within the Pac-12 wish it wasn't happening.

The No. 7 USC Trojans were upset by the No. 20 Utah Utes 43-42 on Saturday at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City to fall to 6-1.

The Utes took the lead with 48 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter when quarterback Cameron Rising rushed in for a one-yard score and converted on the two-point attempt. It was a risky call, as an extra point would have tied the game, but the decision to go for two paid off for Kyle Whittingham's squad.

The Trojans tried to respond on the final drive of the game, but two false starts made it nearly impossible for USC to get into field goal range for a potential game-winner.

It was a tough loss for the Trojans as quarterback Caleb Williams threw for 381 yards and five touchdowns in the loss. However, the offense wasn't a problem. The issue was the USC defense allowing 562 yards of total offense—including 424 yards passing—to the Utes.

Rising finished having completed 30-of-44 passes for 415 yards and two touchdowns, in addition to rushing for 60 yards and three scores. Wide receiver Devaughn Vele also completed one pass for nine yards.

Tight end Dalton Kincaid led all receivers with 16 catches for 234 yards and one touchdown.

Things may have gone differently for USC had they had star wide receiver Jordan Addison available for the final drive. Addison exited the matchup late in the third quarter with an apparent lower-body injury.

A Utah defender landed on the 2021 Biletnikoff Award winner's leg while making a tackle, and he was later seen on the sideline with crutches. Addison caught seven passes for 106 yards and one touchdown before exiting.

Addison's status moving forward is unclear, though he'll luckily get an extra week of rest as the Trojans aren't back in action until Oct. 29 against the Arizona Wildcats.

The Utes, 5-2 on the year, also will not be in action next weekend and will return Oct. 27 to face the unranked Washington State Cougars.