{"id":193603,"date":"2026-02-25T20:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T20:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/193603\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T20:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T20:41:08","slug":"usc-announces-san-jose-state-as-week-zero-opponent-to-open-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/193603\/","title":{"rendered":"USC announces San Jose State as Week Zero opponent to open 2026 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

USC<\/a> announced San Jose State<\/a> as their opponent during Week Zero to open the 2026 college football season. The Trojans made it official for August 29th, 2026 during a Wednesday announcement.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Spartans, led by head coach Ken Niumatalolo, will visit Southern California for the seventh time in program history,\u201d the release read. \u201cUSC holds a 6-0 all-time record over San Jos\u00e9 State, with each game occurring in the Coliseum. In the teams\u2019 most recent encounter, the Trojans defeated the Spartans 56-28 to open the 2023 season.\u00a0 The Trojans are 37-1-1 versus teams from the Mountain West (not including 2 wins vacated due to NCAA penalty; original record: 39-1-1).\u201d<\/p>\n

USC notably ended their rivalry series with Notre Dame. San Jose State is the de facto replacement on the schedule.<\/p>\n

USC is coming off a 9-4 season (7-2 in Big Ten) under Lincoln Riley<\/a>. They finished the 2025-26 campaign ranked No. 20 in the final AP Poll. It was Riley\u2019s fourth season at the helm since coming over from Oklahoma<\/a>.<\/p>\n

USC hasn\u2019t had a double-digit win season since 2022. Nonetheless, ESPN\u2019s Greg McElroy believes USC is capable of flipping its public narrative with a phenomenal 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know what the skeptics are saying. \u2018Guys, they went 9-4 last year. They got bullied in the trenches by Notre Dame. Lincoln Riley hasn\u2019t been able to do it without a generational, once-in-a-lifetime quarterback.\u2019 Well, I\u2019m here to tell you that the 2026 USC Trojans are listening,\u201d\u00a0McElroy said.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve spent the last couple of weeks, the last eight months, the last however long it\u2019s been, in building a blueprint, overhauling that blueprint. I don\u2019t think this is the team that people currently think of when they think USC. They think finesse and offense and all stuff. That\u2019s not what this team is currently doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

USC is returning numerous key players from its roster last season. Most notably, the Trojans will be led by returning quarterback\u00a0Jayden Maiava<\/a>, who started all 13 of USC\u2019s games last season.<\/p>\n

Maiava completed 65.8% of his pass attempts for 3,711 yards and 24 touchdowns, compared to 10 interceptions. He also rushed for 156 yards and six scores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"USC announced San Jose State as their opponent during Week Zero to open the 2026 college football season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-193603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-san-jose","9":"tag-san-jose-headlines","10":"tag-san-jose-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}