Customer Reviews

The USC Trojans: College Football's All-Time Greatest Dynasty

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The book is well done and covers the complete history of the USC football program. The author has done a ton of research and put it together in a well organized order for easy reading. The chapters are not long and that makes it easy reading. The author has rated all the college football programs and presented them in the order of their successes.
The author is an ex-athlete and is able to express the Trojan stories very well. His research also corrected some myths that have been built on for years.
It is a history book that you love to read.

Travers' latest book is a must have for every college football fan, especially USC Trojans. He did serious research and was able to capture the events as they happened. It made me feel like I was back at USC. I could not put this book down. It backs up in every way how USC football is THE dynasty. I highly recommend this excellent book.

While Mr. Travers makes some good points, the premise of the book is wrong. USC is not the all-time #1 team in college football. To the extent that there could ever really be anything such as an all-time top ten, here's my admittedly subjective try, subjective because I abjure any effort to use any complicated mathematical system in rating the all-time programs. You only need think of the BCS annual rating system to see how far wrong mathematical point formulae can go in rating teams. My criteria are at the bottom of the list.

1) MICHIGAN (1st all-time wins, 1st in winning percentage)
2) ND (3rd all-time wins, 2nd winning percentage, which percentage, like Michigan's, is still signicantly higher than the eight teams under them)
3) TEXAS (2nd all-time wins, 3rd all-time winning percentage)
4) USC (10th all-time wins, 7th all-time winning percentage, but ranked this high because of head-to-head advantage over virtually all the top ten here except ND. However, ND still has a significant lead in the historical head-to-head annual rivalry match)
5) OKLAHOMA (8th all-time wins, 4th all-time winning percentage, but is historically dominated by Texas in their total annual rivalry comparison)
6) ALABAMA (7th all-time wins, 6th all-time winning percentage; the historical dominator of history's premier conference)
7) OHIO STATE (5th all-time wins, 5th all-time winning percentage; however, is not even first in its own conference, but is historical loser to Michigan in their head-to-head series)
8) NEBRASKA (4th all-time wins, 9th all-time winning percentage, but is dominated by Oklahoma in their long, head-to-head rivalry)
9) PENN STATE (6th all-time wins, 11th all-time winning percentage)
10) TENNESSEE (9th all-time wins, 10th all-time winning percentage)

Obviously, I've put greatest significance on all-time victories and all-time winning percentage. These figures are current through the 2008 football season and BCS series into early 2009. I've also taken head-to-head rivalry into account when it applies, as it is a good indicator of relative strength. I've ignored national championship titles because they are strictly mythical and essentially meaningless: just witness this year's travesty - Texas, USC, and Utah could all reasonably lay claim to the national championship and have at least as good a case as Florida. In fact, I think the BCS should have matched USC and Texas, which would have been as good a draw as Florida-Oklahoma. Perhaps the BCS folks didn't want that match for that very reason, and because the competing AP poll might have voted the winner of that game as its National Champ.

Trojans rule, and there is no other book that tells it like it is. All USC fans need this one.

Like every other American, I'm obsessed with college football, but not like Steven Travers. Travers goes overboard flinging down every adjective and the opinion of every sportswriter or fan he ever heard say anything good about the Trojans. He just doesn't seem objective. It is the book of a fervent alumnus of a particular college with a particular crush on Matt Leinart, so get out of the way if you don't care for Leinart, for you will be overwhelmed by the Augaean stables worth of Leinart flattery. If you don't think he is "the greatest college football player of all time," then this is not the book for you. Leinart's triumphs in 2004 and 2005 (and those of his "Vice President" Reggie Bush) lead Travers to think back retrospectively and to claim dynasty status for USC.

It's just all wrong from beginning to end. Plus, what's so great about the dynastic anyhow? There's the suggestion of royalty, I guess, attached to the word "dynasty," and also the glamorous, sometimes tawdry taint of scandal, thanks to the longrunning Aaron Spelling TV soap that starred Linda Evans and John Forsythe. In the case of USC, Travers has to run backwards and forwards just to keep in place when discussing the historical import of former Trojan O.J. Simpson. Good man, or bad? I'm drawing a blank here, but Travers isn't much help. For him, Simpson is just one more figure in this amazing longlived USC dynasty, the "greatest college running back of all time." Maybe how you like this book depends on whether or not you think the merit of a man is how well he does in college or what he does with his life afterwards. That said, Travers knows how to make games that were played decades ago come to life with some snappy play by play reporting. His account of Anthony Davis from the legendary 1972 Trojans squad becoming the "Notre Dame killer" is outstanding, and it's backed up by interviews with many of the key participants.

As Travers finally is forced to admit, his extolled dynasty has never been very consistent, and there have been many wilderness years. Before the hiring of "Saint" Pete Carroll, when people thought of USC, what floated into their minds was the pleasant, amiable, Jeff Spicoli lookalike Todd Marijuanovich. "Todd Marinovich," writes Travers briefly, "was a symbol of lost potential." The one time in the whole book where Travers uses any understatement.

I am a huge USC fan and alum and was excited to read this book. However, I was very disappointed in it. It does have some interesting information, but it feels like it was poorly written (and edited). The narrative seems jumpy, name references sometimes only include last names (when the first name hasn't been mentioned since previous chapters), and small spelling and grammar errors (including spelling Bronko Nagurski's name "Bronco"). I know that might seem picky, but it adds up. I also did not like the author infusing his own politics in the book. It is supposed to be a book about USC football. Instead, he takes jabs at Michael Moore and the "liberals" of Cal and Stanford, references that the Democrats of the mid 1900s were against integration (even though it was the Dixiecrat part of the party, who transitioned into Republicans, including future Republican senator Strom Thurmond, due to the Democrat party supporting integration) and hypes Lynn Swann as a Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania. These themes repeat themselves throughout the book and are not needed. Of course there are some moments that do need to be discussed in regards to changing the world, like the game against Alabama in 1970.

Instead of reading this book, pick up "Fight On! The Colorful Story of USC Football" and "The History of USC Football" DVD set. They keep it to USC football and leave the political opinions on the sideline.

I had to laugh at the whole premise of this book that wrongly proclaims USC as "the greatest dynasty of all time" in college football. Let's cut through the rose colored hyperbole of the possibly inebriated author and look at the facts.

1. The overall #1 criteria in measuring a college football program is national championships. Notre Dame has won 11 consensus national championships (ie recognized by the majority of recognized selectors), by far the most of any program. ND is credited actually with 13 national titles but only claims the 11 consensus. USC on the other hand, laughably CLAIMS 11, but not all those are consensus or even recognized. In fact, they have only 5 consensus titles at his point if the 2004 season title is vacated. USC's claims for 1928 and 1939 are disputed and not recognized as consensus titles(1928=Ga Tech as consensus and 1939 =undefeated untied Tex A&M as consensus--USC had 2 ties). 1974 they split with Oklahoma and did not win the AP title. 1978 they split with Alabama and again did not win the AP title. 2003 USC won the AP but not the BCS, making another split and not consensus title. And then, if the NCAA vacates the Orange Bowl from the 2004 season, that title will be vacated. That leaves 5 consensus titles, 1931, 1932, 1962, 1967 and 1972. ND has 11, USC 5. Even if you count only poll titles, ND has 8 and USC has 6 if 04 is vacated. The bottom line is Notre Dame has way more national titles, and USC is going backwards in numbers.

2. The second most commonly cited criteria in determining all time best programs is winning percentage. Percentage is a better indicator than overall wins since not every team started the same year or played the same number of games. Notre Dame is 2nd all time right now behind Michigan for all time win pct, just fractions behind (.735-.734). USC is far far behind at .702.

3. All time wins, Michigan leads but of course started playing 8 years before Notre Dame. Notre Dame is presently 3rd in all time wins with 845, again comfortably ahead of USC with 761. ND has more wins than any program since the start of the 20th century. ND is also the only program that has played 70 or more seasons with less than 300 losses.

4. ND has produced 7 Heisman trophy winners. USC now is back to 6, with Reggie Bush's forfeited trophy not counting.

5. Notre Dame has produced the most consensus All Americans (96) to USC's 78.

6. Notre Dame has the most College Football Hall of Famers than any other program, 49. USC has 34.

7. Probably most importantly, its hard to claim you are the greatest team ever when your biggest rival has beaten you more than you have beaten them. Notre Dame leads the all time series with USC 43-33-5.

By every important objective measurement, USC falls short in comparison to Notre Dame. The only real debate for greatest program ever might be between Michigan and Notre Dame because of all time win pct, but ND comes out on top in the overall comparison because most of Michigan's claimed titles came before 1919 and Michigan has won only 1 consensus title since WWII (1948)(1997 was a split). Or put another way, ND has 8 wire service poll titles and Michigan has 2. Notre Dame dominates in the rest of the above criteria except for all time wins, which goes Michigan's way because they played games for 8 more years.

Edit--UPDATE. With USC now officially stripped of its 2004 national championship due to cheating, that is one less title for USC, furthering how much greater Notre Dame is than USC over the course of college football history. Fight On Cheaters!

I'm a huge USC football fan but I couldn't get past the introduction. It was about four pages in when Mr. Travers had to refer to "anti-American filmmaker Michael Moore". All I could think was "what a jackass".

Mr. Travers is welcome to his politics, but his assumption that all football fans share the same political point of view is just stupid. It's the mark of a bad writer. I put the book down and may never go back to it.