"I've talked about this for years," Carroll said. "I was going to do it the first year here, but I thought it was maybe too arrogant. But I thought about it."

Ironic footnote: Neuheisel's UCLA team was the first to wear the road whites in the rivalry, in 1983 at the Coliseum in his senior season. And he remembered the incident that was the impetus for the rule requiring the road whites -- and it wasn't a UCLA-USC game. It was the Arizona-Arizona State game the previous year at Tucson.

The previous week, UCLA had beaten USC, and would earn a Rose Bowl berth if ASU lost the following week. Since Neuheisel's sister, Nancy, was an Arizona cheerleader, he attended that game.

"Arizona State came out in their home uniforms," he recalled. "Arizona was out there in their navy blue and ASU in their maroon. So the officials meet and they send Arizona back in (to change). Some of the guys had to wear practice jerseys, because they didn't have all their white jerseys ready.

"So after that, they made a rule that the visiting team would always wear white, unless there was this deal like LSU had (to wear white both home and road."

Although, Neuheisel noted, the length of halftime can be changed beyond the mandated 20 minutes if both schools agree.

"Why couldn't we have the same agreement on the jerseys?" he asked.