Saturday's match-up between the USC Trojans and the Syracuse Orange will be the fourth in history. SU has a mountain to climb if they want any chance of winning the game, which would also be their first-ever win over the Trojans if they could pull it off.
Let's take a quick look back, shall we?
1924: USC 16, Syracuse 0
John F. "Chick" Meehan led a pretty solid Syracuse team (8-1-1) to Los Angeles for the final game of the season against an 8-1 USC squad that was playing in their first full season inside the Coliseum. On the year, the Orangemen would outscore their opponents 154-58 and score as much as 35 points in one game. However, they must have left the offense back in Syracuse for this one as the Trojans as they dropped the game 16-0 in front of 47,500 screaming fans.
1990: USC 34, Syracuse 16
They two schools wouldn't meet again until the 1990 Kickoff Classic in East Rutherford. It was a showdown between young, star quarterbacks, USC's Todd Marinovich and Syracuse's Marvin Graves. Marinovich would win the day, throwing for 337 yards and three touchdowns in the 34-16 win. The game was close until penalties and costly mistakes doomed the Orangemen (sound familiar?).
2011: USC 38, Syracuse 17
I don't need to remind you about this one. With the DOC Gross crossover and a Marinovich in a Syracuse jersey, there were quite a few connections between the two schools when they rekindled the love affair last season. The Orange expected to run into a buzzsaw and run into a buzzsaw they did. Matt Barkley threw for 324 yards and five touchdowns and the outcome was never really in doubt.
If we've learned anything from past Syracuse vs. USC match-ups, it's that someone is going score roughly 16/17 points and someone is going to have career-making day at quarterback. Lets see how those things hold up on Saturday at MetLife Stadium.