USC Football: What If Trojans Make Statement vs Alabama?

The 2016 college football season is upon us, and yet that quiet before the storm that you hear is in all actuality a low rumble from USC football.

Gaging the temperature of college football has never been an exact science, yet with the season set to kick off within the week the excitement is palpable, and running rampant on college campuses throughout the nation.

This time of the year, when everyone is 0-0, most teams feel a college football championship is within their reach. Yet once the season begins, reality kicks in rather quickly and it becomes apparent that only a couple handful of teams at best will have a realistic chance at making the 2017 College Football Playoff for a possible berth in the national title game.

For all of the returning talent in college football, and for all the returning talent on each team ranked in the preseason Top 25, no opening weekend match up of the 2016 college football season holds more intrigue than the Sept. 3 tilt between the defending national champion Alabama Crimson Tide and the USC Trojans.

An early season battle pitting two of the most storied programs in the nation against one another will have ramifications which reverberate throughout the college football landscape for the duration of the season.

Having not faced one another since 1985, a 24-3 Crimson Tide victory, the Men of Troy will face the Tide in which is easily their biggest game of the last decade.

The game, which none who reside outside the Land of Troy view the Trojans as having even the slightest chance of upsetting the balance of power in the college football hierarchy, couldn’t come at a more opportune time for USC, as well as for the game of college football.

Both teams are largely healthy and equally hungry for one another.

Both teams have offensive coordinators who are quite familiar with one another, having hailed from the same coaching tree.

And both teams, while led by new signal callers, have rosters which are loaded on both sides of the ball, leads to the following question:

What if the Trojans do indeed show up on September 3rd? What then?

What if the chatter surrounding USC’s lack of a quality defensive line just so happened to reach the ears of Rasheem Green, Stevie Tu’ikolovatu and company? Would it be a safe bet to assume they’d step up to the challenge?

What if the Trojan offensive line were embracing a challenge of their own? What if “big” Zach Banner and his battery mates saw before them an opportunity to not only help correct the perceived notion of being unable to compete for a Pac-12 title, much less hang with Alabama, and soar towards loftier goals. What if they committed to stand and be counted among the greats.

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What if the Trojan linebackers and tailbacks, as one, have been all along quietly trading notes among themselves on how they won’t be able to match up with the boys from the SEC? What if they prove them wrong?

Would the defensive backs need a special invite to this particular group chat?

Wide receivers and defensive backs alike have been known to have a certain penchant for being labeled as both flashy and of the more vocal variety. But if Smith-Schuster, Adoree` Jackson and Iman “Biggie” Marshall made it a point of emphasis to do their talking on the field, would anyone take notice of the deviation from the norm?

What if none of these things, yet all of these things, became the impetus for the most unlikely Trojan resurgence in modern history? What then?

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