Sept. 1, 2026, 6:30 a.m. PT<\/p>\n
USC football versus Fresno State is an all-California matchup which has been staged multiple times<\/a> in Southern California over the years. USC’s ugly loss to Fresno State in the 1992 Freedom Bowl was in Anaheim, but the Trojans<\/a> have hosted the Bulldogs multiple times in the Los Angeles Coliseum, most famously in the 2005 game which cemented Reggie Bush’s Heisman Trophy. In those games, USC represented the Pac-10\/Pac-12 Conference, while Fresno State was in the WAC, and later the Mountain West.<\/p>\n Here we are, all these years later. USC plays Fresno State in the Coliseum once again. Just like old times, one team will represent the Pac-12 while another team will stand on the other sideline as a nonconference opponent.<\/p>\n Wait a minute!<\/p>\n Yes, the switcheroo is hard to process, even now. Fresno State will be the Pac-12 team in this game, and USC will be the non-Pac-12 team. It’s a reminder of how wild and weird and crazy conference realignment has been.<\/p>\n USC playing Fresno State but not Stanford or Cal is hard to digest. Fresno State being seen as one of the favorites to win the Pac-12 this year, along with Boise State, just feels wrong. It’s certainly not the world any of us grew up in or ultimately wanted.<\/p>\n Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a><\/p>\n A team will wear a Pac-12 logo on its jersey this Friday in a game hosted by USC … and it won’t be the Trojans. You can read that sentence a million times and never feel comfortable absorbing the information.<\/p>\n Contact\/Follow\u00a0@TrojansWire<\/a>\u00a0on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0to follow ongoing coverage of\u00a0USC Trojans<\/a>\u00a0news, notes and opinion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sept. 1, 2026, 6:30 a.m. PT USC football versus Fresno State is an all-California matchup which has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[243,112,114,113,129117,91058,13081,378,5727,507,1348,65397,1350,40808,259,83608,377,246],"class_list":["post-450015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-accessfree","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-sourcetrojans-wire","tag-sstssportscollegetrojansfootball","tag-sstsnfootball","tag-tagamerican-football","tag-tagbig-10-hub","tag-tagcalifornia-gold-rush","tag-tagcalifornia-state-university","tag-tagcgr-sports","tag-tagcollege-sports","tag-tagncaa-pac-12-conference","tag-tagoverall-negative","tag-tagsouthern-california-trojans-football","tag-tagsports-news","tag-typestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450015","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=450015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}