24 Minnesota
17 USC (#11)
So that was fun. Minnesota hasn’t beaten USC since 1955. I was a Gophers fan when I was a kid, Tony Dungy was the quarterback, and upsetting a #1 Michigan team 16-0 in 1977 was the most exciting thing about growing up in Minnesota prior to The Miracle on Ice in 1980. I even went to a few games at the old Memorial Stadium, including the 1976 season opener that was a win over Indiana.
But too many seasons of losing 45-0 to Big Ten rivals and 73-0 to Nebraska, in company with the incredibly stupid move to the horrible Metrodome, caused me to lose all interest in college football, except for keeping an eye on future NFL players. They didn’t even make it to a single bowl game, no matter how lowly, between 1987 and 1998.
However, the new stadium is really cool – the Vikings played there in Brett Favre’s last year – and the expansion of the Big 10 means that the Gophers are now getting the chance to play teams like USC and UCLA that they seldom played without getting to the Rose Bowl, which hadn’t happened since 1962. In fact, this was only the sixth time the two maroon-and-gold teams had ever played in my lifetime… and the first time was the year I was born.
Because my mother is a football fan who grew up in Pasadena and attended USC, I spent many a late Saturday afternoon watching USC play, although I tended to prefer UCLA. PAC-8 football always seemed a little exotic compared to Big 10 football, although SWC football, with its tearaway jerseys, was the most exciting. I was a bit of a Texas fan, mostly because my parents’ friends, who were huge Arkansas boosters, were so annoying, with their “Pig-sueey” nonsense. The Michigan upset notwithstanding, 1977 was a tough year.
Most people think the development of NIL-related professionalism is a terrible thing for college football, and I certainly have my doubts about the evolution of the Big 10 and the SEC into superconferences. The disappearance of the PAC-12 is certainly to be regretted and I wonder if USC will one day regret its move to the Big 10 for the same reason Arkansas misses the now-defunct SWC. But it is at least possible that the money-related dispersal of talent across dozens of universities may end up having a very positive effect on the general level of competitiveness across the NCAA. After all, it’s a lot easier for teams like Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State to stockpile talent when all it costs them is a scholarship.
Because this certainly wasn’t happening before the NIL era. In fact, it’s been 118 years since Vanderbilt scored this many points on Alabama.
40 Vanderbilt
35 Alabama (#1)