USC’s opener against San Jose State last weekend became more than just a game on the schedule. It turned into a talking point about empty seats, kickoff appeal and whether college football programs are being pushed to water down their nonconference slates.
The sparse attendance at the Los Angeles game drew attention on social media, with Stewart Mandel posting, “Didn’t realize USC’s spring game was today.” He later added, “you guys do realize this is why schools get away with dumbing down their schedules?”
The backdrop matters. Late last year, USC added San Jose State to its schedule after Lincoln Riley begged out of the Trojans’ semiannual Thanksgiving weekend date with Notre Dame. That decision gave USC a replacement game, but it also meant a matchup that did not have the draw of a major rivalry or a marquee nonconference opponent.
USC is not the only school facing this kind of scrutiny. Over the past year or so, marquee programs canceled upcoming home-and-homes including Georgia-Florida State, Georgia-Louisville, Alabama-West Virginia, South Carolina-Miami and Indiana-Notre Dame. The message from the broader sport is clear: scheduling attractive nonconference games has become harder, and in some cases less appealing, for schools trying to protect both attendance and playoff positioning.
That is part of why USC and Stanford tend to stand out in these conversations. They are in pro sports-heavy markets where college teams are not always the top entertainment priority, and USC’s local interest has also been reduced by three straight mediocre years under Lincoln Riley. Put those factors together, and an opener against San Jose State was always going to have more attendance risk than a bigger game would have.
Stanford’s Saturday game against Hawaii offered a similar reminder. It drew an announced crowd of 23,222, another example of how weaker matchups can look especially thin in certain markets. When the atmosphere falls flat, it becomes easier for critics to argue that schools should be careful about building schedules around games that do not have much natural pull.
The larger issue is not just USC. It is whether fans, TV windows and cost-conscious athletic departments are all pushing the sport toward safer scheduling. For programs with sellout habits such as Alabama and Oklahoma, those tougher dates can still make sense. For others, the incentive to keep the schedule manageable is only getting stronger.
For USC, the opener served as a quick snapshot of that debate. The game was on the calendar because the Trojans needed an opponent after the Notre Dame shift. The reaction afterward suggested that the USC football schedule conversation is not going away anytime soon.
