No. 14 USC handled San Jose State 42-26 in its Week 0 home opener Saturday, and for a while the football itself looked like the whole story. Jayden Maiava threw for 286 yards and two touchdowns, the Trojans jumped ahead 28-0 by halftime, and the lead ballooned to 42-3 before the fourth quarter.
But once national cameras started panning the Coliseum, the conversation changed fast.
Kickoff came at noon in brutal conditions, with temperatures at 94 degrees and a real feel near 104. An extreme heat advisory covered much of Los Angeles that afternoon, and the Coliseum does not offer much shade. San Jose State also did not bring much of a draw, and large sections of the stadium were still empty when the ranked home team took the field.
USC announced attendance at 51,144 in a venue listed near 77,500, but the broadcast told a different story. Resale tickets dropped to six dollars and still left wide gaps at kickoff. David later said more people were eating brunch outside than sitting inside early, and he put one early count near 678 people, though the pictures still drew attention for all the wrong reasons.
The student section filled after kickoff, but the west side stayed sparse for long stretches on the broadcast. Heat and a noon start against a Group of Five opponent explain some of the empty seats. They do not explain tickets that cheap failing to move in a city of millions.
The optics landed especially hard because college football was already having a strange Week 0 elsewhere, with one brutal flag and another historic blowout loss grabbing attention the night before. USC has spent plenty of time selling Heismans, Hollywood, and a new $200 million facility, and an empty ranked opener on national television cuts against that pitch.
Big Ten membership raised the standard, not the turnout for a home kickoff. With College GameDay dark for the first weekend, the clips from the Coliseum carried even more weight, and rivals had no trouble treating the empty bowl as evidence that the fan base shows up only for stars.
Lincoln Riley’s team still controlled the game for three quarters before San Jose State scored late. Fresno State is next, followed later by Oregon and Ohio State. Those dates will say more about whether Saturday was just heat and scheduling, or something deeper.
For one afternoon, though, the result was simple: USC won the game, and the empty seats won the internet.
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USC Just Reopened A Frustrating Debate About Lincoln Rileys Program
USCs 2026 opener against San Jose State did more than start a new football season. It also reopened an old question about how much pull Lincoln Rileys program really has, after the Coliseum was filled to only about one-third of its capacity. The university tried to get ahead of the optics with a statement pointing to possible factors behind the turnout, including the weather and the opponent.
Still, the image of a sparsely populated Coliseum landed hard because it came against the backdrop of what fans have come to expect from this program on game day. The discussion quickly drifted beyond one afternoon and back to a familiar frustration around scheduling choices and whether USC is giving supporters enough reason to show up early and often. [Read more 🡒]
Oregons New Play-Callers Will Decide How Real This 2024 Hype Is
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For USC, the broader lesson is pretty clear: coordinator hires do not stay abstract for long. They quickly become the difference between a unit that merely looks organized and one that can actually hold up under pressure, and Orlandos early work will be judged in exactly that light as the Trojans try to make sense of a season defined as much by coaching changes as by on-field performance. [Read more 🡒]
USCs New Local Pipeline Already Looks Ready To Lift This Offense
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For USC, the broader takeaway goes beyond one opener. When freshmen are not just dressed but already helping shape the game plan, it suggests the Trojans may be closer than expected to having another wave of homegrown playmakers ready to keep this offense moving. The only real question now is how quickly that early trust turns into a lasting feature of what USC wants to be on that side of the ball. [Read more 🡒]