The UCLA-USC Crosstown Rivalry: Explaining The Trojans’ Historical Advantage

This is the time of year when America’s second largest city becomes a house divided.

On one side is the University of Southern California, a private school located in a rather gritty neighborhood just south of downtown Los Angeles whose students, alumni and fans wear cardinal and gold and are fiercely proud of, and extremely fanatic about, their Trojan football team.

On the other side is the University of California, Los Angeles, a public institution that calls Westwood, a tony area of L.A.’s Westside, home. The exclusive Bel-Air neighborhood sits on the schools’ northern borders.

Better know to one and all as UCLA, their blue and gold clad community is known more for their dedication to basketball, where they’ve won 11 national championships, though there is still an enthusiastic fan base for the Bruins on the gridiron.

This year marks the 81st meeting of these two colleges, located a mere 11 miles apart, in football. Bonfire rallies have already been held on the respective campuses, and bragging rights in Los Angeles, among other things, will be on the line.

Though there were a few periods where UCLA had the upper hand, this crosstown rivalry has generally gone in USC’s favor as they lead the all-time series 45-28 (with two Trojan wins vacated due to NCAA sanctions), with seven ties.

The 21st century has been particularly one sided as the Trojans have won 11 of 12 meetings against the Bruins, many of those wins coming by blowout – with the exception of 2006, when UCLA knocked second-ranked USC out of the BCS National Championship game with an epic 13-9 victory, ‘SC has owned the Bruins.

That was also the case in the early days of this rivalry, as the Trojans outscored the Bruins by a combined score of 128-0 the first two times the teams met in 1929 and 1930.

The talent levels of the two squads were so lopsided that they stopped playing each other for seven years after that.

Throughout the crosstown rivalry’s history, USC has had a natural advantage over UCLA in football, to the point where with a few exceptions, namely the early 1950s, the early 1980s and the 1990s, it has been considered an upset whenever Troy fell to Westwood’s Bruins.

There are three significant factors that I feel explain why ‘SC’s generally been ahead of the Bruins as a football program…

First, the simple fact that USC has had a 31-year head start.

When UCLA first opened its doors as the Southern Branch of the University of California and fielded its first football team in 1919, the Trojans had been playing the gridiron game for over three decades.

That’s like running the Olympic 100-meter dash with Usain Bolt having a 30-meter head start, or swimming the 100-meter freestyle with Michael Phelps having that same advantage.

The second factor is a significant one, which lies in the cultural and institutional emphasis that football has had at the two schools over the decades and continues to.

In the 1920s, USC’s administration decided to make a serious commitment to building the best college football program on the West Coast. Lots of money from prominent boosters went towards that direction, which paid off with the Trojans’ first Rose Bowl appearance in 1923.

With its 22 Rose Bowl wins, 11 national championships and six Heisman Trophy winners (it was seven, but we all know what happened with that), USC has more than succeeded in becoming a football power; I’d be a fool to dispute that.

Most importantly, the “Trojan Family” demands championships from the pigskin; losses are devastating and anything short of the national championship is considered a disappointment at best and an absolute failure by many, if not most, USC fans.

This “win at all costs” mentality, in my view, is so entrenched that ‘SC paid for it with their recent sanctions; I suppose losing 30 scholarships over three years and vacating 25 wins, including the 2004 BCS crown, is worth it to Trojan fans.

In a stark contrast, UCLA does not really have a win-by-any-means-necessary mindset toward its football program, and never really has despite their good runs on the national scene in the 1950s and 1980s.

The biggest Bruin successes have been on the basketball court; with its 11 NCAA titles during the 1960s and 1970s, matching their Trojan football counterparts, any emphasis on sports excellence was funneled in that direction.

By the late 80s, UCLA’s athletic department decided that rather than committing themselves to just having the best football program at the expense of other sports, they wanted to build the best all-around athletic program.

That emphasis came to fruition in the past 15 years, as the Bruins overtook the Trojans in number of NCAA team championships; as of this writing, UCLA leads the nation with 107 national titles – and counting – with USC a distant third.

To put all of this in a nutshell, this level of football emphasis can be summed up this way:

At UCLA, football is seen as one piece of the athletic pie. It’s considered an important piece, but it’s still one piece nonetheless.

At USC, football is pretty much seen as the whole pie, the engine that keeps Trojan athletics going. Sure they have experienced success in other sports such as baseball and water polo, but the pigskin is the only sport that most USC fans really care about.

As for the third factor, it can be described very easily: $$$$$$$.

Quite simply, USC, as a private school with its many well-heeled alumni and boosters, has always had and continues to have the money to hire the best coaches and build the best facilities, which helps to attract the best players. Pete Carroll, the former Trojan football coach who led ‘SC to such great heights this past decade, had a yearly salary of over $4 million.

Which has never been close to what UCLA, as a public school that has often been hamstrung by the state government as far as budgets -particularly now – can afford. To illustrate the contrast, Bruin football coach Rick Neuheisel has a salary of $1.25 million, which is far below the market value of top-rung football schools.

In short, UCLA won’t pony up the money necessary to build a top-flight program like USC’s, and as long as that, and the cultural emphasis between the two schools, is what it is, UCLA’s football program will always be behind the Trojans.

For the Bruins to even things out, a complete philosophical change needs to happen as everyone, from the chancellor on down, needs to stop thinking that a team that has a few good years and beats USC a few times every decade is acceptable.

The Trojan community has never accepted mediocrity on the football field, and never will, while too many of the powers-that-be at UCLA have.

The worst thing about all of this?

That the reality, in my opinion, is that the Bruins will never put up the money, resources, and support necessary to have a program that will be a contender for the BCS championship every year, like USC.

Because of their culture – and it makes me unhappy as a Bruin to say this – I don’t think UCLA will ever completely eliminate the historical advantage that ‘SC has over them on the gridiron; as long as they beat the Trojans twice or so every five years and grab a Rose Bowl bid or two every decade, that’s fine with too many of the upper-ups in Westwood.

Which is too bad, as rivalries are best when both programs are completely even.

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