LOS ANGELES — For a week, a nasty case of the November flu has swept through USC’s practice facility, robbing much of the energy around the defining rivalry in Los Angeles sports.
UCLA’s player-favorite head coach DeShaun Foster, certainly, has lobbed his fair share of potshots across town. But USC head coach Lincoln Riley, asked Tuesday if Foster’s comments served as any sort of bulletin-board material – cracking “the smarter one usually comes over here” from families in the region – responded with a complete lack of vigor in hoarse vocal cords.
“Nah,” Riley said, shaking his head, visibly exhausted. “No.”
Most Trojans have followed in his wake, despite obvious ties westward. Defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn, who Riley stole away from UCLA in the offseason, simply called it “another big game for our guys” on Monday. Safety Kamari Ramsey, who followed Lynn east to USC, said the week was “business as usual.”
Most. Except for a certain wide receiver. Because nobody in Westwood or South L.A., ultimately, carries as much back-and-forth history here as Kyle Ford.
“Yeah, yeah, I’d say,” Ford deadpanned Wednesday night, to a reporter’s joke that this was just any normal week for him.
“I don’t think this week ever gets too normal, so,” Ford continued. “Especially over the last three.”
His own voice carried a rasp, perhaps another victim of USC’s practice facility-turned-“M.A.S.H. unit,” as Riley cracked on Saturday. But Ford, a senior who has little left to lose and little left to hold back, didn’t mince words Wednesday on the complicated emotions bubbling inside his 6-foot-2 frame.
He did not much celebrate USC’s victory over Nebraska last Saturday. The whistle blew, and cardinal-and-gold jerseys streamed toward the tunnel, and Ford’s mind had already long moved to his return to the Rose Bowl the night of Nov. 23. He will play the villain, again. Just as he had last year, when he donned a Bruins jersey at the Coliseum, a complex mess of thoughts brewing from beneath his gold helmet on his former turf.
“When you transfer and you leave,” Ford said, “it’s just something that you dream about and you sleep about and you think about, and now it’s here, so. Just trying to keep all my emotions just, tucked away until that clock starts rolling, for sure.”
How about when you transfer and you leave – twice?
After Ford’s redshirt junior season at USC in 2022, it was simply time, as father Dan put it, to find more consistent opportunity. He had chased targets behind Michael Pittman Jr. He had chased targets behind Amon-Ra St. Brown. He had chased targets behind Drake London. He had chased targets, behind transfers Jordan Addison and Brenden Rice, when Lincoln Riley came to town.
Chip Kelly, over in Westwood, came calling to promise opportunity.
“It didn’t come to fruition,” Dan Ford told the Southern California News Group, in late October. “Let’s just put it that way.”
Ford caught 22 passes for 236 yards in 2023, and UCLA went 8-5, and he was so miserable by midseason that he essentially made a decision with his father to gut it out until the winter rolled around. Things made “no sense” that year, Ford put it on Wednesday. When he returned to the Coliseum last November, he wasn’t so much consumed by motivation to stick it to USC as he was to flush his season.
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“I was more frustrated with my own team,” Ford reflected Wednesday, “more than USC at that point.”
“That’s why I’ve said,” he continued, “this game’s been on my mind longer than anything, so.”
His journey will stand as one of the strangest in recent city rivalry memory, embroiled in cross-town moves and injuries that dimmed his former five-star shine coming out of Orange Lutheran in 2019. But Ford could have hung it up, and made use of a communications degree, after his year at UCLA. He returned to USC determined to finish his journey, wherever it might take him. Quietly, he played the most snaps of his season against Nebraska
And he will enter the Rose Bowl on Saturday night with as much to prove as anyone on either side, the game this winding path has all led toward.
“Hopefully everything that I have on my mind helps the team in a positive way,” Ford said, contemplative, on Wednesday.
“And like, that’s just all I’m going to take into this game, is just doing everything I can to hone in my emotions and use them to the best of my abilities.”
USC wide receiver Kyle Ford celebrates after scoring a touchdown during the second half of their game against Washington earlier this month in Seattle. Ford’s college journey, transferring from USC to UCLA and back to USC, makes him one of the interesting subplots surrounding Saturday night’s rivalry game at the Rose Bowl. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)