USC and Big Ten football history: Trojans vs Indiana head-to-head series
The head-to-head football series between the USC Trojans and Indiana Hoosiers doesn’t run very deep, but one of the four meetings carried enormous significance and pride for USC.
USC has all four wins in this series. The last meeting came in 1982. The teams won’t play each other until 2025 in Indiana.
“These two met in the biggest game in Indiana’s history: USC won 14-3 in the 1968 Rose Bowl, still the only appearance in the Hoosiers’ history. The Trojans have outscored IU 90-24 in these four matchups.”
That 1968 Rose Bowl victory by USC clinched John McKay’s second national championship with the Trojans. The national title maximized the immediate value and the long-term historical resonance of USC’s 21-20 win several weeks earlier over the UCLA Bruins. Had USC not beaten Indiana in the Rose Bowl, the win over UCLA wouldn’t be remembered as fondly. It would still rate as one of the most special USC-UCLA games of all time, but that 1967 USC team wouldn’t be as legendary as it is today, nearly 60 years later.
Because USC finished the job and beat Indiana in Pasadena, the 1967 USC-UCLA football game is — without question — the best Trojan-Bruin gridiron spectacle in history.
Notably, USC played a team from the state of Indiana in a second consecutive Rose Bowl in January of 1968. USC played Purdue one year earlier in the 1967 Rose Bowl. USC returned to the Rose Bowl for the 1969 game against Ohio State, in search of back-to-back national titles, but the No. 1 Buckeyes beat the No. 2 Trojans in O.J. Simpson’s last game in a USC uniform.
1968 pic.twitter.com/K6UH0ZzOnc
— Something different (@RealHowardBeale) June 14, 2023
