It's a must-have for both teams, as No. 19 USC hits the road to take on Penn State Saturday night in Happy Valley. Penn State enters the game with its season seemingly spiraling out of control. After a 3-0 start in nonconference play under new coach Matt Campbell, the Nittany Lions have dropped their first two Big Ten games, and didn't look particularly inspiring in either.
The offense struggled mightily in losses to Wisconsin and Northwestern, and last week, the defense was gashed by Northwestern's rushing attack. Suddenly, a schedule that was considered one of the easiest in the Big Ten before the season began looks far more difficult for the Nittany Lions. Not that things have been much easier for their opponents.
The Trojans are 5-1 on the season and are coming off a win, but have looked shaky for three straight games. They found themselves in a shootout with Rutgers three weeks ago, followed that up with a 14-point home loss to Oregon, and last week flirted with disaster against a Washington team that hadn't looked impressive to start the season. Now they're on the road against a team with its back against the wall, and a second loss (with Ohio State and Indiana still to come) could crush USC's playoff chances.
It's the White-Out game: Penn State's White-Out game is a newer tradition in college football, having begun in 2007, but it's quickly become one of the games Penn State fans look forward to most. Everybody in Beaver Stadium is dressed in white and screaming at their absolute loudest. Unfortunately, the results haven't always matched the intensity.
Penn State is only 11-7 in White-Out games, but that's partly because the Nittany Lions reserve the tradition for their toughest games. It's a battle of the two winningest QBs in college football: That fact probably caught you by surprise, didn't it? Penn State's Rocco Becht comes into this game with 29 wins as a starting QB in his college career.
That's more than any other QB in the country. USC's Jayden Maiava is tied for second with 24. So Becht will either widen the gap this week, or Maiava will narrow it.
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