D12 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, APRIL 25 , 2022
transferred, threw a pretty
4 8-yard touchdown pass to Kyle
Ford, a redshirt junior from
greater Los Angeles who has not
transferred.
Eventually players signed
autographs on the field and went
down the tunnel to the interview
dais, five of them at one point,
shoulder to shoulder and
including three transfers, Caleb
Williams and Dye and Shane Lee,
a former Alabama linebacker who
said, “It’s been amazing to see the
progress since I got here.”
As they spoke, a mind long
addled with college football
might struggle to remember
where all they had been, a most
kinetic generation and all the
wiser for it. When they speak of
building a culture, they’re talking
rapid construction. “We’ve
worked our ass off the last
41 / 2 months,” Riley said while still
38 himself, “to build a culture and
to build a standard for our
program that we believe in.” He
noted they would need more
players inbound, but he said:
“The point really has to be
understood: The guys that we
have right now have set the
foundation. The guys that we
have right now we are thrilled
about.”
Once Riley departed the room,
Caleb Williams went on about
culture for impressive paragraphs
rather than throwaway lines, his
voice now old enough for all to
hear (unlike as a freshman under
interview restrictions at
Oklahoma). He said, “A big part of
it is being coachable, and
sometimes you’ve just got to eat
it,” and he explained how “elite
teams are led by the players, held
accountable by the players.”
They have the leadership
council thing going, such that
Moss said: “Just as someone who
was here last year and went
through that, I don’t think we
lacked the players and the
personalities within the locker
room to have good leadership. I
just think there wasn’t a forum
that fostered leadership. I think
with Coach Riley and his staff
coming in, we’ve been given a
playbook so to speak on how to do
that and structure within that.”
Maybe they, like Oregon or
Utah or somebody fresh, will up
and help out the country at large.
Spring games always do brim
with dreams, however confusing.crowd size did seem blasé early. It
didn’t seem to match the fervor
reputed since Riley’s stunning
sign-on Nov. 28, and it didn’t
seem a threat to fulfill a parlor
game and match the lowest
home-game total of the regular
season during the forlorn 4-8 of
last season, that being a scattered
51,564 for a 45-27 loss to Oregon
State.
But in they trickled and at
times maybe even gushed, 33,427
of them, at least somewhat a tell
of how excitement can build in
America when one guy from
Muleshoe moves from Oklahoma
to California. (That’s Riley, with
Muleshoe in Texas, near the New
Mexico border.)
In one fevered moment,
Athletic Director Mike Bohn
appeared on the big screen
midgame and said, “You’re part of
what we believe to be the largest
crowd in spring ball history, since
the 1990s.” It did not rate with the
40,000 or so for the nongame up
at Oregon on Saturday or the
75,000 or so for the nongame at
Oklahoma, but this is Los
Angeles, famously rich in options
and famously indifferent to non-
winners.
So the people who weren’t
elsewhere dug into boxes of
jerseys and whatnot at a surplus
sale on the concourse, with one
man reporting 30 percent savings
over the norm even if jerseys in
general have never been more
fleeting. They made a thick
passage of a section behind one
side of the stadium between some
taco stands and some restrooms.
They ordered from food trucks
such as the Lebanese Pickles and
Peas, or they sat watching in their
old jerseys of Lynn Swann,
Ronnie Lott, Marcus Allen,
Reggie Bush — shirts that say
from the audience, “You really
should win.”
In a helmet with Trojan
feathering makeshift on top,
there walked that rare kind of
USC fan: a recently gained one.
Miguel Cervantes has an excuse
for that: He’s in USC’s master’s
business program for veterans.
He feels “super pumped” and
said, “I can feel the energy
difference coming from last year
to this year — a huge change.”
Down on the field after
halftime, quarterback Miller
Moss, a redshirt freshman from
Los Angeles who has not’Rio,” Caleb Williams said, “as we
all know it goes back to the old
school that we were at.”
Now in the fever dream their
country needs them — and their
communication — because they
might have a chance to lend some
geographic variety to a College
Football Playoff that has gone sort
of stale with three of eight title
games between Alabama and
Clemson and two more between
Alabama and Georgia, making
national championships seem
less national.
Come surreal Saturday, thethe 2020 Pac-12 title game or
when he gained 75 yards in a
happy 56-24 thumping in 2019,
another time just ducky.
That’s different from Williams,
who followed Riley here and who
threw two touchdown passes
Saturday to Mario Williams, who
also followed Riley here, meaning
a 19-year-old who hopscotched
from D.C. to Norman to Los
Angeles throwing to another
1 9-year-old who hopscotched
from Tampa to Norman to Los
Angeles.
“That communication withBrenden Rice, like Williams
and Dye and 10 others,
transferred in, meaning the
Trojans have transfers from TCU,
Colorado, Washington, Oregon,
Virginia, Auburn, Stanford,
Alabama, Oklahoma, Colorado,
Kansas State, Oklahoma and
Oklahoma.
“It’s a little shock for me,” Dye
said, “because I was getting
flashbacks to when I was in this
Coliseum before,” such as the
time he gained 55 yards and
caught a four-yard touchdown
pass for Oregon against USC inlos angeles —
Imagine sitting in
the stands
absorbing sun at
the Los Angeles
Memorial
Coliseum on a Saturday in April
only 196 days after sitting in the
press box at the Cotton Bowl in
Dallas, where that D.C. guy Caleb
Williams steered Oklahoma
through the Oklahoma-Texas
hostilities along a screaming
5 4-48 trail. Imagine the sky not
just cloudless but that art form of
cloudless, L.A. cloudless, and the
old clock hands of the 99-year-old
Coliseum reading about quarter
past noon, the old temperature
gauge on the other side of the
grand facade nudging past 70 but
nowhere near 80.
Now, as Southern California
plays Southern California in the
spring game, here’s a snippet
from the public address
announcer:
“Caleb Williams on the
keeper.. .”
It’s an epitome of transfer-era
reality and some sort of fever
dream.
Spring football, that eccentric
pursuit amid the broader
eccentric pursuit known as
college football, concluded across
much of the land this past
weekend with public scrimmage
games, and the most fever-
dreamy spring game must have
been USC vs. USC.
Lincoln Riley, so familiar with
Oklahoma, coached for USC,
vaguely familiar under his visor
while apparently salaried at USC.
Williams played for USC after
transferring from Oklahoma and,
while not salaried technically, was
the subject of a sign-of-the-times
out on the concourse:
“ EXCLUSIVE CALEB WILLIAMS
APPAREL AVAILABLE HERE.”
Running back Travis Dye also
played for USC, meaning the
quarterback who went 21 for 27
for the winner in the Alamo Bowl
less than four months earlier
(Williams, Oklahoma) and the
running back who rushed for
153 yards for the loser (Dye,
Oregon) share a backfield at
neither Oklahoma nor Oregon.
How 2022.
Just to go full fever dream after
the game, onto the field stepped
the greatest football player ever,
Jerry Rice, here because...
His son Brenden plays for USC.
At Southern California, possibly the most fever-dreamy spring game ever unfolded
On
Football
CHUCK
CULPEPPER
CHUCK CULPEPPER/THE WASHINGTON POST
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