University Southern California Trojans
WHO YOU PLAY MATTERS, TOO
September 10, 1999 | Football
Sept. 10, 1999
Los Angeles - by Cindy Rhodes of The Press-Enterprise
Beneath the USC athletics T-shirt Daryl Gross wears beats the heart of a stockbroker.
Gross, an associate athletic director, loves crunching numbers. Pile on spread sheets, rating percentage index, power index and you'd think he'd just won the Rose Bowl.
In fact, as the man responsible for setting USC's football schedules well into the next millennium, Gross could put the Trojans in a position to make a run at a national title in the not-so-distant future.
But this year, he finds himself defending the 1999 schedule he put together. People say its too cushy, citing games with Hawaii and Louisiana Tech. He is well aware that, maybe not this year but sometime, a schedule like this could hurt them in the competition for one of the eight spots in the Bowl Championship Series.
Kansas State felt the sting of a soft schedule when it was edged out by Florida State for the right to play No. 1 Tennessee in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 4. While Kansas State did beat Nebraska, the Cornhuskers and Missouri were the only tough games the Wildcats won. A loss to Texas A&M did more damage to them than USC losing to Arizona State would.
"Penn State played Akron, we played Hawaii," Gross said. "If you're in the big conferences and you schedule some softies, your RPI will still be up there because your conference is so tough. But for the first year, Gross said he's heard mutterings about the Pacific-10 Conference taking a hit because of the Arizona-Penn State game. Gross flashed a huge grin and said, "If Penn State would have been slaughtered, I wouldn't say that Michigan and Ohio State must be awful, too."
Gross readily admits this wasn't the schedule he had mapped out two years ago, but games sometimes fall through. Colorado backed out on the Trojans, muttering something about "scheduling conflicts. " Miami did the same thing. Replace Hawaii and Louisiana Tech with Colorado and Miami, like Gross wanted, and you have the toughest schedule in the nation.
"If you look back at the last 10 national champions, very seldom do you find they had a top-10 schedule," Gross said. "Sometimes you play games just because you have an unexpected opening. By playing at Hawaii, our alumni had a good time and the NCAA gave us a 12th game.
"Being in the Pac-10, already your RPI is so tough. You'd be pressed to find a team in the country playing as many top-25 teams as us."
Last week, even with Arizona being drubbed at Penn State, the Pac-10 had four teams in The Associated Press Top 25. For most people, the RPI equation looks like calculus. Variables not only include win-loss record and strength of schedule but also your opponent's schedule and your opponent's opponent's schedule.
Then there's the Bowl Championship Series equation, which the NCAA guards like Col. Sanders' secret 11 herbs and spices.
"I love stats," Gross said. "There's not a lot of subjectivity in numbers. The more you can quantify stuff, the more valid it is. I'm a big Jeff Sagarin fan. I'd rather go by the objective variables."
Sagarin, whose poll appears in USA Today, is a computer geek who inputs reams of college football data into his PC and it spits back a Top 25. This week, the Trojans are ranked eighth -- obviously margin of victory counts for something.
Gross has a computer, too, and he accessed the Trojans' football schedules for the next 12 years.
"If you look at our schedule for the next years after this one," Gross said, "it gets pretty tough."
Looking solely at non-conference games, the Trojans play Colorado and Notre Dame in 2000. In 2001, they meet Virginia, Notre Dame and likely will earn a 12th game by playing in the Kickoff Classic at the Meadowlands. After that, the Trojans are looking at games with Auburn, Brigham Young, Nebraska, Ohio State and Louisiana State.
"As you can see, here on out, strength of schedule isn't even an issue," Gross said. "What we're banking on in the future is a great coach that's a great recruiter. If we were a stock, this stock is going to rise fast."
As he was saying this, Gross read a phone message from a friend informing him that ESPN's website said USC's game ball should go to its scheduler.
Gross got a big kick out of that one.
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Cindy Rhodes covers college football for The Press-Enterprise. She can be reached by e-mail at crhodes@pe.com, by fax at (909) 734-2518, or by phone at (909) 782-7595.
