USC vs. UCLA rivalry proves it’s still kicking as college football evolves

LOS ANGELES — A de-commissioned fire truck sat on the dirt lot off West Drive, marooned on the outskirts of the parking lots that spotted the Rose Bowl, still thumping with the loudest source of noise at any rivalry-week tailgate on Saturday night.

The alarm had been deactivated, on truck number 136. There was no need. Instead, nearby loudspeakers had been plugged into a DJ booth under a tarp on the very top of the vehicle. Chris was in tie-dye overalls and neon-green sunglasses spinning some bass to a smattering of nearby fans gripping White Claws.

A couple of years back, he approached his buddy Victor Carrizalez with the idea of splitting the cost of a fire truck for $6,000, taking it to Burning Man and playing a set on top of it.

Sounds perfect, Carrizalez thought.

Ever since, they’d largely parked the party at a swath of music festivals, with the Carrizalez-described goal to drop attendees into a “state of flow” and ignite conversations around contemporary societal issues.

On Saturday, though, they set out to tap a new market. The best of Los Angeles would be here in the Rose Bowl parking lots. They figured the beating heart of USC and UCLA’s crosstown rivalry still draws new crowds almost a century later.

“If LA’s your home,” Carrizalez agreed, asked about the continued persistence of the Battle of LA, “you want to win at home regardless.”

Perhaps the soul of USC-UCLA has changed over the years, in a new era of collegiate football that has radically altered the nature of rivalry-week games, as USC head coach Lincoln Riley expounded on Thursday.

There’s the ever-expanding transfer portal, suddenly drawing in one program’s players like Kyle Ford and dropping them in rival colors a year later.

There’s the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, forcing schools to widely re-evaluate scheduling.

“I’ll say the hope is that the rivalries can survive because they are a huge part of college football and college football history,” Riley said Thursday, “but it’s going to continue to get tested, I think, depending on how that all works out.”

But USC-UCLA is founded on regional pride, just as much as historic tradition, and the fight for the Victory Bell proved very much alive on Saturday in a 19-13 USC win.

The final attendance of 59,473 flew far short of the 70,000-plus in Pasadena two years ago in the days of Caleb Williams and two more competitive programs.

Both teams entered without winning records for the first time since 2018.

Organizers put down not one but two tarps across upper sections at the Rose Bowl as a light drizzle opened and fans still found a way to fill every extra inch of available space, spilling into the creases above the blue coverings at the highest point of the stadium.

There was bulletin board material, galore, from former Bruin and first-year head coach DeShaun Foster.

There was constant chirping from the Bruin student section at anyone who walked past in cardinal-and-gold.

There was a skirmish, as teams went to the locker room, USC staffers having to corral a horde of players and funnel them into the visitor’s tunnel as a band of Bruins was whistled for a slew of unsportsmanlike-conduct penalties.

And after UCLA players had planted their program’s flag at midfield of the Coliseum following a 38-20 blowout of USC in 2023, a handful of Trojans returned the favor, with wide receiver Zachariah Branch and running back Woody Marks returning the favor on Saturday night and pile-driving a Trojans flag into the turf in Pasadena.

“Only reason I did it,” Marks grinned postgame, “’cause I saw a video. I was watching, just to see about this rivalry … and the last thing that was on the video was them planting the flag.”

“I didn’t like that,” he added.

Still, it was every L.A. kid’s dream as former Mater Dei High product Kyron Hudson said postgame, to play in this game. Senior safety Akili Arnold, who’d grown up in Mission Viejo but transferred from Oregon State, grew emotional as USC’s bus pulled into the Rose Bowl on Saturday. I’m from here. 

And the Victory Bell rung again, in USC’s favor, a pillar of collegiate football that has refused to bend to a new era.