Through 30 minutes of maize-and-blue dominance Saturday, the USC Trojans looked not so much like an elite college football team and more like a college student hit with a sudden midterm exam having not studied a single solitary bit.
No. 18 Michigan was beating the No. 11 Trojans up and down Ann Arbor’s South Main Street with the same intensity that won the Wolverines a shiny trophy in January, and USC appeared ready to sprint 2,200 miles back to Los Angeles via the nearest trap door.
That script was flipped the full 180 after intermission – as the Trojans found an offense that had been mired in the muck and also found themselves on the brink of taking down the defending national champs on their fabled home turf in their Big Ten debut…