Important Housekeeping Items: For those of you new to this contest, there are a few things you should know.
- The winner chooses the charity that the Fight On Funds go towards. Only rule is that the charity cannot be affiliated with any religious organization. I also use some tools to make sure the charity has a good historical record and doesn't have any strikes against them for misusing funds.
- The winner is determined via Pythagorean Theorem. This objectively measures which guessed score was closest to the final score. It is especially useful because it considers both teams’ scores together and penalizes a large miss on either score. There is a 10 point penalty if you predict the wrong team to win.
- There is a season-long contest called the Man in the Coliseum (MiTC) which is the ultimate trophy of this contest. We take each person's five best predictions (lowest differentials) and average them out. The lowest average wins the final trophy! The more predictions you participate in the more chances you have at achieving a low differential.
- There will be enemies infiltrating our contest so just be respectful and show them that USC fans are just better than them and don't stoop to their Notre-Dame-Low-IQ comments.
Game:
USC vs Fresno State University, Friday September 4th at 6 PM at the Coliseum
Congrats to u/quotesforlosers for becoming this seasons first winner of the contest!! They predicted an outcome of USC 45 SJSU 24! They asked the donation to go towards International Rescue Committee at rescue.org but since I fumbled and said the second place winner u/jjnotjayjay won I’m also sending the FightOn Funds donation goes towards Autism Speaks.
Thoughts:
I’ve been watching USC for 30+ years and the one thing I can tell you is that there’s only been ONE TIME where the first game predicted the outcome of USC’s season. That game also happened to be on September 4th but in 2016 at a neutral site versus Alabama. After that game you knew what USC was made of.
Against SJSU? Nah, that game was just the cover of the book. And what do we say about judging books by the cover???? We say, USC’s depth at the safety level is probably not their best attribute. Or something like that, I forget exactly how the saying goes.
But that’s all I have as far as my judgments of this years USC team. That and #8 Desman Stephens II backup LB is not where he needs to be, same for #9 Kennedy Urlacher backup safety and nickleback, same for the other backup NB Isaiah Rubin, and definitely the same for true freshman #31 Madden Riordan (although he did get beat by a damn good WR with a good history of teams if he played for). Basically Nickleback and Safety positions are in question.
Fresno State:
This is no slouch team but it is their season opening game so we can’t say for sure what this team will look like. Remember, we are in 2026 where every high school in the country has access to the best coaching the best strength and conditioning resources and a large sample size of human beings to draw from. The competition is saturated now so the difference between a Fresno State player and a USC player could be just a matter of luck or late maturity that prevented the Fresno player from playing at a bigger college.
This game will require backups going into the 4th quarter. They have a B+ QB Khristian Martin (edit: it is in fact Jayden Mandel the local hero and last years QB who gets the start), an A- and B- running backs (#2 Rayshon Luke and #6 Bryson Donelson), and their defense is an all around C+ with a few Grade A players peppered throughout.
Prediction:
USC 38 Fresno State 17
I think one should take the over on this game at 51.5 points.
Comment yours!