Last night at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum the USC Trojan football team crushed the Notre Dame Fighting Irish by a score of 44-24, before more than 91,000 fans.
This marks USC’s fifth straight win over the Irish, though Notre Dame is still eleven wins ahead of the Trojans in overall victories since these two rivals first began meeting over 75 years ago.
But it was an unlikely triumph when viewed from the perspective of just a month ago.
That’s when USC fell to lowly Oregon State by a score of 33-31. Most people thought the Trojans were done for, at least when it came to competing for a national title, with ever-shrinking point gaps during their previous three games at Oregon State, having to rely on heroics from the team. fourth quarter just to catch wins.
But the opposite happened.
Losing seems to have been just what the doctor ordered to invigorate a team that seemed to have lost its motivation. After the OSU loss, the Trojans roared and shutout Stanford and convincingly defeated Oregon and a very strong team from California.
And now, after losing to the Irish last night, USC could be one win away from competing in their third straight BCS National Championship game if they can get past rival UCLA.
This isn’t the first time USC has benefited from a loss. A few years ago, the Trojans lost to Cal in overtime, and this setback launched them on an unbroken winning streak that continued until they lost to Texas in last year’s championship shootout.
It goes to show that USC may seem on the brink of collapse, but it knows how to forge success from failure, right itself and make the kind of quick adjustments true winners are expected to make.
You don’t have to be a Trojan to benefit from this example!