Ask the Trojans and they'll tell you it's never about anybody else, always just about themselves and what they do with their program.
Only it's not. Not when you're as competitive as Pete Carroll is. Not when competition is your lifeblood.
And not when whatever goes right across town will ultimately be pegged to the work of two former USC assistants -- Norm Chow and Dewayne Walker.
The better UCLA does on offense, no matter how many players it loses, puts the hat on the Trojans to keep their offense at the level it showed Saturday at Virginia.
No more just getting along as the Trojans did with a conservative, show-up-some-weeks, just-try-no-t-to-get-beat offense of the past two years.
There are lots of reasons why USC's offense looks so different from a year ago, and if you don't think the return of Chow to LA isn't one of them, you just don't understand how competition works...