USC’s Worst Start to a Season

Dang Bruddah SC Gator, A Big Shaka,  you’re a USC football encyclopedia and historian.  You come up with very impressive stuff …  Keep um coming.  You good Brah…  Cheers

For me the 1976 loss to Missouri was da big shocker and upset.   I was sick to my stomach after da game.  Heck, Missouri was an average team.  But, 1st year coach, J. Robinson got the team going after da loss and won all da remaining games.  Fight On, the team ended up #2 in final polls…  Cheers

Scud from Ryan’s old board (or was it Gary’s? Can’t remember) LOVED Jrob. Almost like Pasadena and Giuliani – you couldn’t criticize Jrob2 at all. Kept glowing about how he beat Notre Dame and snapped the streak – which was true – so it made up for all the mediocrity or worse, losses to ucla like that one triple overtime doozie. jrob was two coaches, was great absolutely terrific during the first stint and very mediocre the second. Two different guys sadly. I really wanted him to succeed, more than any other SC coach. Wasn’t meant to be sadly.

Was it JRob’s 2nd stint where we were up 17pts with 5min to go at the RB only to lose to a backuup B named Barns?

You’re mixing up two different games, 1992 and 1996.

The Barnes-JJ Stokes game was 92.  That was Larry Smith’s last year.  SC blew a 14-point fourth quarter lead and then scored a TD with virtually no time left, went for two and the win, and got stuffed.

The 17-point late lead evaporated in 96.  That was JRob’s team.

So if you take Barnes out of your question the answer is yes.

1996. Double OT, not triple. My mistake. Yes, 17 point halftime lead evaporated. And RJ Soward dropped a wide open bomb – wide open that would have all but sealed the game. And then Lavelle Woods fumbled fresh off the bench with less than two minutes to go, after Delon Washington had been struggling but not stinking up the joint. If I remember right, it was Woods’ first carry of the game, with two minutes to go. Really? I remember when they put him thinking we could have probably taken a knee and even with the bruins’ timeouts punted and left them like 30 seconds. I don’t know, maybe that would have been stupid. But not as stupid as bringing someone off the bench who was cold to seal the game. I was just bitter lol. Both teams sucked, but that was one of the low points to me. And I was at the Rose Bowl surrounded by obnoxious ucla fans drunk talking smack to my 4 year old son. I was like, really? To a four year old? Tell me all you want but not a 4 year old. And I know, alcohol makes people stupid and ucla fans have their share of stories of obnoxious SC fans as well. But it sucked. I took about 20 family members with me and it was a disaster. Never took Junior to the Rose Bowl after that, only the Coli lol. If I remember right Otton got hurt, which probably didn’t help. Can’t remember if he was knocked out or just sat for a while before coming back. Not sure about that but we had some unknown backup playing for a while, still can’t remember his name. We had a couple of picks and that fumble killed us. No defense of course, Skip Hicks did his damage.

Yup, was McNown for ucla.

Trauma will do that to you!