We are 80 days away from the first USC football game of the 2024 season. September 1 also marks the Trojans’ first start as a member of the Big Ten conference. Despite leaving the Pac-12, USC remains eligible to play in the Rose Bowl if its regular season record supports that possibility.
An appearance in the 2025 Rose Bowl would be phenomenal for Lincoln Riley and company. USC football has historically experienced its best results on the historic Pasadena field.
Among the six New Year’s bowl games, no college program has more wins than USC’s 25 Rose Bowl victories. The Oklahoma Sooners are a distant second with their 12 Orange Bowl wins, followed by the Texas Longhorns’ 11 Cotton Bowl wins.
The Trojans’ 25 Rose Bowl wins are a major part of the program’s 35 bowl game wins all-time. Technically, USC has 36 bowl game wins, but the NCAA erased the 2005 Orange Bowl from the record books following the Reggie Bush scandal. Bush was recently reinstated as the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner.
There remains hope that the NCAA will eventually reinstate USC as the 2004 national champion.
Reggie Bush said @latimes that now that he has his Heisman back, the next step is to get the NCAA to reinstate his records and USC’s 2004 title.
-Ryan Kartje (@Ryan_Kartje) April 25, 2024
The Trojans have not appeared in the Rose Bowl since their 52-49 victory over Penn State in 2017. What’s worse, seven of their last ten bowl appearances were in non-NY6 bowl games. In fact, I have little interest in watching USC compete in the Holiday Bowl.
USC must do whatever it takes to get back to the best game in college football this January.
The 2025 Rose Bowl will be a quarterfinal game in the newly expanded College Football Playoff (CFP). It will be the 111th performance of “The Granddaddy of Them All,” but without its usual showdown between the Big Ten and Pac-12. Thanks to the CFP, the Rose Bowl will feature one of the top four teams remaining after the first round.
The CFP Committee will regionally align the top four remaining teams with its quarterfinal game. Therefore, if USC is among the top four quarterfinal teams, there is a good chance they will appear in the 2025 Rose Bowl. The Trojans can also return to Pasadena if they are among the bottom four teams.
In that scenario, USC would be seeded against the top four teams selected as the Rose Bowl home team. Ultimately, winning the Big Ten is USC’s best path to a postseason run that goes through Pasadena.
Next. Story link. USC’s all-time best football recruiting classes. dark
The new CFP format grants a first-round bye to the four highest-ranked CFP teams. The Big Ten champion is supposed to get a top-four spot.
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