The No. 4 Trojans harbor their usual ambition to reach the BCS title game, which this season is in Pasadena. But getting there with a freshman quarterback is a tall order.
True freshman quarterback Matt Barkley says the Trojans are driven by their detractors. (Kirby Lee / Image of Sport / US Presswire)
Go ahead, say it.Matt Barkley won't care.
Text it, tweet it or post it on a message board:
A team with a true freshman starting at quarterback can't win a Bowl Championship Series title.
College football fans and pundits began arguing the point the moment USC Coach Pete Carroll announced that Barkley would start at quarterback this season.
Those who say the Trojans will falter?
"Haters and motivators," Barkley says, grinning. "That's what drives us."
As USC prepares for Saturday's opener against San Jose State at the Coliseum, neither Carroll nor Barkley is worrying at this point about playing for a national championship.
The BCS title game is "a million miles away right now," Carroll says.
Figuratively, perhaps.
This season's championship will be played at the Rose Bowl, where the Trojans have bussed to so often in recent seasons they could get there on autopilot.
But it's been nearly four years since USC made a postseason journey to Pasadena with anything other than a consolation prize waiting in the Arroyo Seco.
With the title game rotating to the Rose Bowl for the first time since the 2005 season, the Trojans are fine with another journey up the 110 Freeway -- as long as it's to play in the Jan. 7 title game and not the traditional game on New Year's Day.
"We're most likely going to go to the Rose Bowl anyway," junior receiver Damian Williams says of the seven-time defending Pacific 10 Conference champions. "So you want to be in the second game, not the first."
USC reached the last title game played in Pasadena with an offense of stars.
Those two-time national champion Trojans opened the 2005 season ranked No. 1 and rode a 34-game winning streak to the title game before Texas stopped tailback LenDale White on fourth-and-two and Vince Young ran his way into college football lore.
This season's team lacks similar star power.
"We're two Heismans down now," Carroll says, referring to former Trojans Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush.
Like Leinart, who was a fifth-year senior in 2005, Barkley is a product of Santa Ana Mater Dei High.
And like Leinart, Barkley is surrounded by experience everywhere he looks.
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