Joyce Bell Limbrick, the highest-ranking Black female administrator in USC's athletic department, was fired in September 2023 after raising concerns about former athletic director Mike Bohn's behavior.
Two weeks before the Alamo Bowl, USC got its best news of the bowl season: Star quarterback Jayden Maiava was forgoing the NFL draft to stay in L.A. for another year. Two days later, TCU's star quarterback, Josh Hoover, delivered his own announcement: He was entering the transfer portal. Those two decisions will have the teams in drastically different places on offense.
Aiming to eliminate a budget deficit that ballooned to more than $200 million, the private school has cut nearly 1,000 positions, or almost 4% of its workforce. Faculty and staff said that the layoffs have been especially stressful because they have been ongoing for months, although the university said last week that they are nearly complete - and that as many as 200 of those who lost their jobs could find new positions at the school.
I appreciate the various points of view shared with me by many members of our community. Although USC has declined to join the proposed Compact, we look forward to contributing our perspectives, insights, and Trojan values to an important national conversation about the future of higher education.
Makai Lemon came screaming across the center of the field, gliding past one Michigan State defender, then another, moving as if the world around him were in slow motion. USC's top receiver had presumably been a top-line focus of the Spartans' game plan - and even more so after fellow wideout Ja'Kobi Lane was ruled out Saturday with an injury. But here was Lemon slicing his way through Michigan State's secondary as if no one had bothered to tell him as much, sprinting free as a deep pass soared in his direction and hit him in perfect stride.
Both teams gotta deal with it," coach Lincoln Riley said. "We gotta handle it well, our crowd needs to handle it well. At the end of the day, it's a game, it's being played, it's being played in the Coliseum, and we expect to win and we expect to have a really good crowd behind us. We're not going to make excuses about it.
