It was late into the night on New Year’s Day in 2006, and Lane Kiffin sat awake in USC’s team hotel near the Rose Bowl, racked with regret.
This was before Kiffin became college football’s most prominent villain at Louisiana State University. He was just 30 then, the hotshot young protege of USC coach Pete Carroll. And the Trojans, at the time, were the hottest ticket in town. So dominant that they hadn’t lost in more than two years. And so cool that celebrities lined the sidelines of the Coliseum on Saturdays.
They were a cultural sensation, unlike anything the sport had ever seen.
But after that night, in 2006, nothing would ever really be the same for USC again.
Heartbreak that never let up
A few hours earlier, the Trojans had fallen in heartbreaking fashion to Texas, coming just one play short of a third straight national championship, a feat no other college football program had ever accomplished. History had just barely slipped through their fingertips. And Kiffin couldn’t stop replaying the night in his head, wondering what he could’ve done differently.
He looked at the other USC staff members around him toasting the end of a great run.
“When people are in things, they just think they’re gonna last forever,” he told me. “A lot of the feeling was, like, ‘Oh, we’ll just do this again.’ And I’m like, ‘We ain’t doing this again guys.’ ”
Kiffin’s instincts ended up being right. Two decades later, the Trojans have yet to play for another national title.
USC’s now-distant glory days
By the time I joined The Times in 2019, the university and its beloved football team had basically hit rock bottom. The Trojans had just had their worst season in a quarter-century. The school was coming off a string of embarrassing scandals. Its president had resigned. The athletic director did too. Those glory days at USC felt then like a distant memory.
How could one of the greatest teams in college football history fall so far, so fast? And where did it all go wrong?
It took me four years and more than 100 interviews to find the answer. Today we’re launching “House of Troy,” a narrative podcast series from L.A. Times Studios that tells the story, one chapter at a time, of the epic rise, the fall and the grueling process of rebuilding one of college football’s proudest programs.
USC leaders struck out on one coach after another before landing on Pete Carroll in 2001, whose unlikely hire had USC fans ready to revolt. Carroll turned the Trojans into the coolest team in the nation.
The whole experience “ruined me the rest of my life,” Carroll told me, “‘There were never enough wins.”
After Carroll left in 2010, USC would spend years chasing that same feeling. And for a while, it sent the program careening down a dramatic path, one that the school is only just now emerging from.
More to this story
In “House of Troy,” we’ll bring you along for the ride with the star players, school leaders and never-before-heard-from insiders who were there as USC tried to chart a path back to the top of college football. And through each chapter of our series, we’ll offer new perspectives on a university that Southern California residents know well, regardless of whether they’ve ever watched a Trojan football game.
I hope you’ll join us in listening to “House of Troy” starting Tuesday on any platform where you get your podcasts.
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Things to do
A nod to Jim Lefebvre, Dodger player from 1965 to 1972, is surrounded by plants at Dodger Stadium.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Today’s recipe
White beans with chorizo, clams and shrimp.
(Los Angeles Times)
Some people mark the start of fall with an apple pie. Others start breaking out the big reds from their wine cellars. For food writer Russ Parsons, cooking beans is his favorite way to kick off the fall season. One of his go-to recipes is this Portuguese-style stew of white beans with chorizo, shrimp and clams.
Question for you
Where’s your favorite place to see fall colors in California? Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
Photo of the day
(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)
Games
Here’s today’s mini crossword, plus our other free, daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and jigsaw games.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Jack Dolan, investigative reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
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