LOS ANGELES – The butterfly effect was real on Selection Sunday, the flap of dismay that flowed through Florida State’s CFP watch-party room in Tallahassee, Florida, birthing a chaos so grand it threw USC’s bowl-game status into temporary oblivion.
It was apparent, simply from the hung heads and expressions of disbelief when Alabama was announced in their stead, that a 13-0 Florida State team expected to be selected for a College Football Playoff spot on Sunday morning. It was apparent in the scathing words of coach Mike Norvell; apparent, too, in a statement from athletic director Michael Alford, who wrote, “the committee failed college football today.”
It was likely, then, as Bowl Season Executive Director Nick Carparelli put it, that FSU’s Atlantic Coast Conference “assumed they would have one team in the playoff and a second team in a New Year’s Six game.” They, instead, got no teams in the playoff.
“Once that didn’t happen,” Carparelli said, “they needed to adjust.”
And thus, USC fans were left waiting for over an hour Sunday afternoon on an Instagram Live streaming of the Holiday Bowl’s announcement, set to host a Pac-12 team and an ACC team but forced to recalibrate. When the dust mercifully settled, it was announced USC (7-5) would face Louisville (10-3) in San Diego – an appropriately anticlimactic bowl-game matchup for an anticlimactic season.
No national championship. No CFP. No Pac-12 title. No New Year’s Six bowl. Just a trip to San Diego against a Cardinals team USC has never faced before in program history.
There’s still more than enough intrigue, though, to warrant a holiday road trip down to San Diego for Trojan fans. Chief among them is the status of quarterback Caleb Williams, who by all conventional logic will likely declare for a high selection in the NFL Draft in lieu of returning for another season at USC, throwing his motivation to play in a mid-level bowl game in doubt.
“I haven’t necessarily run out of stones yet to step on,” Williams told the Southern California News Group a couple weeks ago, describing the notion of college as a stepping-stone for the future. “And I have to decide if I’m gonna jump into the water or if I’m gonna stay and keep walking on the stones. And that’s a decision that I have to make here at some point, but just don’t necessarily know yet.”
The question would become who would start at quarterback for USC – a potential audition for the starting job in 2024 heading into the Big Ten. Sophomore Miller Moss has been a capable backup to Williams for two seasons, but the Trojans could elect to give freshman Malachi Nelson some run, given his recruitment as one of the top-rated quarterbacks in the class of 2023.
It will be the first test, too, for newly-minted defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn, who’ll be working with the patchwork remainder of a roughshod Trojans defense before a new wave of recruits and transfers hits. On paper, it could be a bloodbath. USC finished the regular season ranked 117 out of 133 FBS in rushing yards allowed per game, while Louisville backs Jawhar Jordan and Isaac Guerendo each ran for over 6 yards a carry and combined for 21 rushing touchdowns. Lynn, though, transformed the Bruins into one of the best run-stopping teams in the nation – and all Trojan eyes will be on his ability to galvanize a returning group.
USC and Louisville will meet at 5 p.m. at Petco Park on Dec. 27 and the game will be televised on FOX.
