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Hello. How are you? Over the next two weeks, you’re going to hear the following Super Bowl fun fact about a hundred times, so here’s some background you can share as a follow-up:

Him? USC’s surprising first Super Bowl QB

Not really sure which of these two statements will end up being more surprising:

As of January 2026, no USC quarterback has ever started a Super Bowl. The Trojans have had more QBs drafted than any other school: 26, followed by Notre Dame’s 25 (and those Irish QBs were mostly long ago). USC has always had a case to be considered the top QBU, going back and forth in the modern era with Oklahoma in ESPN’s ratings on that subject — and that was before the Chicago Bears’ Caleb Williams ended up counting more for USC than for OU.
On Feb. 8, the first Trojan to do it will be … Sam Darnold! Not Williams, the Heisman Trophy winner who led about 79 different comebacks this NFL season. Not fellow No. 1 pick Carson Palmer or any of those other two dozen. Instead, it’s a man who once labored through a combined half-decade as a Jet and a Panther.

When you look back through the list of Trojans who got drafted to play quarterback, though, this fun fact starts to feel less surprising. Palmer and Williams are two of the list’s very few names with any Super Bowl-esque particles whatsoever. The former only reached one conference championship, and Williams fell just short in his second NFL season.

Otherwise, to remember USC quarterbacks in the pros means remembering Mark Sanchez’s Jets somehow made two straight AFC title games. Rodney Peete reached a second round with the Eagles in 1995. Pat Haden’s 1979 Rams made the Super Bowl, but he was injured weeks prior. Rob Hertel, Mike Rae, Rob Johnson, Matt Cassel and Matt Leinart were Super Bowl backups. Kyle Wachholtz has a ring … as a Packers tight end. And of course a million other Trojans have won NFL rings at other positions.

(Technically, one USC QB has led a Super Bowl victory. Mike Holmgren, who threw a 1968 touchdown as a Trojan, won it all as Green Bay’s head coach.)

Regardless, it’s pretty cool that USC’s Super Bowl-breakthrough guy is Darnold. Until now, the peak of the former California four-star recruit’s career was 2016’s Rose Bowl, when the redshirt freshman threw for 453 yards as the Offensive MVP in a 52-49 masterpiece against Saquon Barkley’s Penn State. That season was enough to overcome a shaky 2017 and get him drafted No. 3 by the Jets, at which point most football fans reasonably gave up on him forever.

Next thing you know: 2024’s partially redemptive season in Minnesota, and now this run to a Super Bowl with Seattle (being played in Santa Clara, six hours north of his hometown).

Darnold, 28, isn’t the star of these Seahawks, a team led by its defense and former Ohio State receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. The QB threw 14 interceptions this season, third-most in the league. But he also threw for 4,048 yards, and his team believes in him. Plus, since Seattle is favored (-4.5 at BetMGM) to beat New England, its quarterback is thus favored to be Super Bowl MVP.

Sam Darnold! The guy from the 2016 “Hey Arnold” memes and the 2019 mononucleosis graphic! Super Bowl MVP favorite! That’s fun.

How’d he hang on through so many rough years, making it all the way to football’s only stage significantly bigger than Pasadena’s? Our Jayson Jenks asked Max Browne, whom Darnold once replaced as USC’s starter:

“It was always so intense for me. You know, the Mamba mentality. The work. The process. When I think about guys who were not that way, Sam is the first one that comes to mind. And I think that’s why Sam never lost himself when things got tough during his first eight years in the NFL. He stayed light and kept perspective.

“That mindset didn’t just help him survive the challenging times — it propelled him to the Super Bowl.”

Long-term patience. Vision. Trust. Things of that nature. Sounds great, as long as your job doesn’t involve, ya know, trying to live up to Curt Cignetti’s timeline. Good luck to you, if it does. Let’s come back to this below.

More USC: Former TCU head coach Gary Patterson is the new defensive coordinator for Lincoln Riley, his 2010s Big 12 rival.
Quick Snaps

🏆 “It used to be that you needed to be a great high school evaluator … and good ol’ boy with donors. Now, you better be really good at evaluating college tape and knowing how to price it.” Since all college football coaches now have to attempt the impossible task of being Cignetti, here are the lessons they’re taking from his title run.

🅾️ Matt Patricia was surprisingly great in Year 1 as Ohio State’s DC (and/or his lineup happened to include three likely top-10 draft picks). Now, Ryan Day is adding another NFL coach as coordinator: Arthur Smith, former Falcons head coach and most recent Steelers OC.

⛵️ If an athletic director’s three most important tasks are hiring a football coach and two basketball coaches, then Vanderbilt has the best AD right now.

📰 News:

The NCAA will begin allowing teams to wear ads on uniforms. Eww.
How Mohamed Toure, Miami’s leading tackler, is able to return for an eighth season. College is all about making lots and lots and lots of memories.
North Dakota State sounds as open as ever to the idea of a long-discussed FBS move. Nothing underway, however.
For the third year in the past five, Rutgers lost more than $70 million on sports, per NJ Advance Media — despite this time getting $72 million from the Big Ten. Man, just move football to FCS and otherwise rejoin the Big East.

👴🏻 Diego Pavia’s height, according to Vanderbilt and New Mexico State: an even 6 feet. According to this week’s Senior Bowl: 5-9 7/8. To be fair, he is kind of an old person, so it’s possible he’s begun shrinking. (The main NFL Draft stuff to know from Mobile.)

🏀 I can believe Indiana’s really good at football, but only because I saw it happen before in a video game. But now you’re trying to tell me Nebraska’s really good at basketball? Be serious.

Portal Stuff: Next QB up, over and over

Here’s another quote from that Cignetti article, on the lessons coaches are learning from him:

“Unfortunately, the component of patience and development is being strained by a lot of us. Can you wait? I had a Big Ten coach tell me it’s basically 18 months for skill players and 24-plus for linemen to develop. You’ve gotta be able to move your roster along.”

That existential urgency applies to all levels of the sport, relating to everything from trotting out freshman wide receivers to investing in slow-developing quarterbacks like … well, Darnold.

You can’t win if you don’t spend. You can’t spend if fans don’t care enough to invest. Fans don’t care unless you convince them you might win soon. That’s the cycle every coach has faced for over a century, even before Cignetti decimated the concept of “soon.”

Keep that in mind when you see so many young QBs transferring every year. Another quote, this one from Antonio Morales’ article on why schools don’t develop their own quarterbacks anymore:

“There is no such thing as a build,” a Power 4 head coach told The Athletic. “You may go from being undefeated to being on the hot seat in 12 months. So this era just forces you to constantly win, which removes the ability to have growing pains with a young quarterback.”

QB transfer chaos isn’t really about Kids These Days having especially happy feet. All human feet have always been happy. It’s also about coaches feeling pressured to rifle through potential solutions, keeping the mob at bay. (And to be fair, why should the mob put up with unenjoyable football? I say this as someone who has watched many Atlanta Falcons games.)

Combine an ungovernable transactions system with a sport in which you are today what people believe you will be tomorrow. Mass impatience was always going to be the only outcome.

Schools do still develop QBs, of course. They just develop them for each other. Last year’s Tennessee-UCLA trade (and this year’s Syracuse-Kennesaw State trade), for instance. The days of training your backup for three years so that he can take over as your senior might mostly be gone, but maybe your new starter was better off spending his first three years as a California Golden Bear anyway?

Guess we’ll find out in September!

Elsewhere in portal stuff over the last few days:

Today, Duke and QB Darian Mensah reached a resolution that will allow him to play elsewhere, ending their legal battle.
Lane Kiffin’s 39th LSU transfer was a big one: Colorado OT Jordan Seaton. We’ll have to see how much of this overhaul was a net gain, but Seaton was very highly sought.

Late last week, Dabo Swinney went off on Ole Miss, accusing Pete Golding’s staff of tampering. The NCAA is now looking into the matter.

While the NCAA investigates, Clemson’s roster page for the transferred player in question, linebacker Luke Ferrelli, is nothing but a link to a video of Swinney calling out Ole Miss.

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