{"id":278632,"date":"2025-11-08T04:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T04:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/278632\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T04:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T04:59:07","slug":"uscs-sam-huard-wearing-no-80-fools-northwestern-with-trick-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/278632\/","title":{"rendered":"USC’s Sam Huard, wearing No. 80, fools Northwestern with trick play"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES — No. 20 USC<\/a> pulled off a remarkable fake punt against Northwestern<\/a> on Friday night by sending out third-string quarterback Sam Huard<\/a> in the same uniform number as the Trojans’ punter.<\/p>\n

Wearing a No. 80 jersey, Huard came on the field with the punt team in the second quarter and completed a 10-yard pass to Tanook Hines<\/a>. The first down extended the Trojans’ second drive, which ended with a TD run by Jayden Maiava<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This bit of trickery was quite legal, apparently: Huard wore No. 7 earlier this season for the Trojans, but he is listed as No. 80 on the USC roster for this week after Lincoln Riley’s team quietly made the change.<\/p>\n

USC punter Sam Johnson<\/a> also wears No. 80. College football teams frequently feature two players wearing the same number.<\/p>\n

Huard, who is a couple of inches shorter than the 6-foot-3 Johnson, grinned widely as he high-fived teammates on the way off the field. He is a former five-star recruit who began his college career at Washington<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bowling Green<\/a> pulled off a similar stunt in last season’s 68 Ventures Bowl in Mobile, Alabama.<\/p>\n

Third-string Falcons quarterback Baron May<\/a> switched his uniform number before the game from 8 to 18 — very similar to punter John Henderson<\/a>‘s No. 19 jersey.<\/p>\n

Late in the first quarter, May came on the field instead of Henderson and threw a 43-yard touchdown pass to Malcolm Johnson Jr.<\/a> — although Arkansas State<\/a> overcame it for a 38-31 victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES — No. 20 USC pulled off a remarkable fake punt against Northwestern on Friday night by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-278632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}