The college football weekend has a number of exciting games going on and the top matchup is the Stanford Cardinal taking on the USC Trojans in Southern California at the Los Angeles Coliseum at 9:00 PM on ABC and in the morning ESPN's College GameDay crew with Chris Fowler, Desmond Howard, Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso will be in LA starting up at 9 am.
The Trojans have rebounded after a pretty bad start and the firing of head coach Lane Kiffin and Stanford comes into the game after defeating the Oregon Ducks and now they have a huge Pac-12 matchup coming. Stanford now is in first place in the North division in the Pac-12 conference ahead of Oregon and now they have the inside edge for the championship game and Kevin Hogan has been playing very well this season and now he faces and improving Trojans team that has been able to bounce back. The team is ahead of Oregon and Oregon State in the division, while Arizona State and UCLA are tops in the South over USC. The Cardinal held one of the highest scoring teams in the nation to just 20 points and those came late in the game as Stanford was pitching a shutout for most of the time and now they have the chance to make a run and if anyone ahead of them clips up, they easily could take advantage.
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The Cardinal comes in with Hogan passing for 1,600 yards and 13 touchdowns and Tyler Gaffney has been stellar, rushing for over 1,000 yards and he has 13 scores as well, while Ty Montgomery is leading the team with 41 catches for over 600 yards and five scores on the year. The Stanford offense is not highly rated, but the defense is allowing just 20 points per game and the offense is scoring over 30 and after the team started the season with five straight wins, they lost to Utah in a big upset on the road and then the team bounced back with three straight wins over solid teams that are ranked, taking down UCLA in the top 10 at home and then the team defeated the Beavers to get to 7-1 and that game was on the road and after that the team defeated the Ducks and that was a top five team at the time and now they will play USC before finishing the season with games against California and then against Notre Dame at home.
The Trojans are coming off of a big win against California after putting up over 60 points and the team has only lost once since firing Lane Kiffin and they have been much improved under Ed Orgeron. Cody Kessler has passed for nearly 2,000 yards and 12 touchdowns and Marqise Lee has been solid with 38 catches and two touchdowns after having an amazing season last year. The team plays Stanford and after that they have a matchup against Colorado and after starting the season 3-2, the team has now gone 4-1 over the back stretch and they have a chance to really start turning things around as they look for a new head coach and reports say the team will be paying the new coach a ton of money and to finish the season they will host crosstown rival UCLA and there is a chance depending on what happens ahead of them that USC could slip into the championship game, as they have only now lost to Washington State and Arizona State in the conference and that could help get them ahead, especially if they can win over UCLA.
