Game Day: Is USC vs. UCLA football this year the last of its kind?

Editor’s note: This is the Wednesday, Nov. 16 edition of the “Game Day with Kevin Modesti” newsletter. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.

Good morning. Excitement is building for the USC-UCLA game on Saturday almost as if it’s the biggest thing happening in the Trojan and Bruin sports worlds these days.

More on that, but first the headlines:

After keeping players in limbo, Whittier College announced the cancellation of its 115-year-old football program and three other sports.
Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp will miss at least five or six weeks after he was scheduled for ankle surgery and placed on injured reserve.
Dodgers 15-game winner Tyler Anderson jumped to the Angels for a three-year contract.
Columnist Jim Alexander stuck up for Dave Roberts, who lost the National League Manager of the Year vote to a “surprise.”
The Ducks needed overtime again to beat the Red Wings.
And the USC men’s basketball team and Drew Peterson finished strongly to beat Vermont.

The Rose Bowl is sold out for the L.A. schools’ 92nd meeting on a football field, and cross-town trash talk has commenced with UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson saying the Bruins’ offense aims to improve on last year’s 62-33 victory.

With the Trojans No. 7 and the Bruins No. 16 in national rankings, it’s their highest-caliber clash since 2005, when No. 1 USC opened a can of Reggie Bush and Lendale White on No. 11 UCLA in a 66-19 win at the Coliseum.

At stake is a shot at the Pac-12 title, a Trojans victory clinching a spot in the conference championship game or a Bruins win keeping them alive.

It’s impossible to forget, though, that UCLA and USC are in the process of snubbing the Pac-12 and moving to the Big Ten starting in 2024. That puts a cloud over Saturday’s fun and games. If not a full-on Ohio snowstorm.

In coincidental timing, on Thursday, in a meeting at UC San Francisco-Mission Bay, the University of California Regents are expected to decide whether to block UCLA’s part of the move to the Big Ten.

You know which way Bill Walton is rooting after the UCLA basketball great blasted the planned move earlier this month, voicing the concerns that many share about the effects of increased travel, not to mention the upending of decades of West Coast college sports tradition.

If UCLA and USC want fans to get more excited about the move, this Pac-12 football season and Saturday’s game probably won’t help.

The game is even bigger than usual because of its certain effect on the Pac-12 title race. It would be less likely to affect the conference race if the Trojans’ and Bruins’ conference right now were the Big Ten instead. The Trojans (9-1, 7-1 in conference) almost surely wouldn’t be in first place in the Big Ten as they are in the Pac-12, not with No. 2 Ohio State and No. 3 Michigan (both 10-0, 7-0) to contend with.

This has been a strong and entertaining year in the Pac-12, which has six teams currently ranked in the current AP top 25, twice as many as the Big Ten can boast.

But the rankings say the Big Ten is stronger at the top. So do any rankings based on national-championship odds in Las Vegas. So does sportsreference.com’s “simple rating system,” whose team ratings based on point margins and strength of schedule become pretty telling after this many games have been played.

Those ratings say USC and UCLA would be only the fourth and fifth best teams in the Big Ten right now, behind Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State. It’s likely that any Big Ten schedule the Trojans would have played this season would have been harder than the Pac-12 schedule they have played.That’s assuming they weren’t playing in the Big Ten’s current two-division format, which is expected to be scrapped in 2024 in favor of one division.

I said right now. This is all what-if conjecture.

Ohio State and Michigan won’t always be this tough (although the Buckeyes have finished between No. 1 and No. 9 in the nation in 17 of the past 20 seasons, so they aren’t going anywhere). USC’s and UCLA’s moves are “about money,” as Walton said, and maybe the tens of millions of dollars in extra revenue projected to come from it will lead directly to even better football teams.

But for many of us who root for UCLA or USC (or both, at various times, in my case over the years), winning the West Coast always was the first objective. The extra resources produced by a move to the Big Ten would be great if it helped to win the Pac-12 – but that’s not how this is going to work.

Let’s enjoy the USC-UCLA game, for a shot at the conference title, while we can. It’s a rare treat that might be about to get rarer.

TODAY

Kings visit the Oilers in Edmonton (7 p.m., TNT), scene of their playoff defeat in May. Preview.

READERS REACT

The newsletter asked readers: Should World Cup players from the United States and other countries demonstrate opposition to host Qatar’s human-rights abuses?

Twitter user Asta’s Daddy said: “No, the time to do that was before the tournament, by declining the invitation for cause. Once you go, you need to act like a decent guest.”

NEXT QUESTION

Do you hope the University of California Regents block UCLA’s plan to move with USC from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten in 2024? Respond by email (KModesti@scng.com) or on Twitter (@KevinModesti).

280 CHARACTERS

“Big win for Lindsay Gottlieb. Some serious star power coming to Galen Center next year.” – USC beat writer Adam Grosbard (@AdamGrosbard) on the Trojans women’s basketball coach landing national No. 1 recruit Juju Watkins, a guard at Sierra Canyon High (Chatsworth).

1,000 WORDS

Game winner: Ducks forward Ryan Strome puts the puck past Red Wings goalie Ville Husso in the final minute of overtime to beat Detroit 3-2 last night in Anaheim. Photo is by Leonard Ortiz of the Orange County Register and SCNG.

TALK TO ME

Thanks for reading the newsletter. Send suggestions, comments and questions by email at KModesti@scng.com and via Twitter @KevinModesti.

Editor’s note: Thanks for reading the “Game Day with Kevin Modesti” newsletter. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.

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