USC hopes to live up to Lincoln Riley's 'championship November' mantra

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For the first time in three years, USC is playing meaningful football games in the month of November. With three games remaining in the regular season, the Trojans still have everything to play for in the Big Ten and College Football Playoff races.

How is the team approaching the massive month? In his appearance on USC’s Trojans Live show last week, head coach Lincoln Riley discussed USC’s huge November slate of games.

“This is championship November,” Riley said. “This is the time where, if you’re gonna do it, you gotta go play your best ball.

“You work all year to kind of get this time of the year where you really got something big riding on it, you know, and really some cool things that you can accomplish. So this is the time to go be at your very very best and to go embrace it.

“It’s just gonna take everyone, but we got a chance to do something pretty cool.”

The past two years, the Trojans had already accumulated three or more losses by the first week of November, and had nothing more than pride (and rivalry trophies, of course) to play for down the stretch. Hence, “championship November” is back at USC for the first time since 2022.

That year, the Trojans went undefeated in the month of November, defeating both UCLA and Notre Dame and advancing to the Pac-12 Championship Game. Can the Trojans recreate some of that magic in 2025?

USC has already passed its first two tests of “championship November”, defeating Nebraska and Northwestern. The difficulty now gets much tougher, however, with a very good Iowa team coming to the Coliseum and a road trip to face a top ten Oregon team in Eugene, before closing out the regular season with the Crosstown Showdown against UCLA.

Win all three of those games, and USC likely in the College Football Playoff, and possibly the Big Ten Championship Game, too. One loss, however, would likely relegate the Trojans to the Alamo or Holiday Bowl.

As Riley stated, each game means a ton this time of year. “Championship November” is upon USC, and the next three weeks will determine the outcome of the Trojans’ season.

This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Lincoln Riley, USC football face ‘championship November’ crucible

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