The USC-Ohio State football series began in 1937. We have been providing brief recollections of the various regular-season installments of this series, dating back to that first meeting in the Los Angeles Coliseum. The 1990 meeting between the two teams was unremarkable in terms of what actually happened on the field that day, and for the rest of the season.
The Trojans defeated the Buckeyes in Columbus, 35-26.
By season’s end, USC had finished with an 8-4-1 record and a loss in the John Hancock Bowl. Ohio State had a 7-4-1 record and ended its year with a Liberty Bowl loss. Neither team was particularly good. The two coaches, Larry Smith of USC and John Cooper of Ohio State, were struggling. Smith was on the downslope of his USC career. Cooper was going through a rough time in Columbus. Had a less patient athletic director existed, he might have been fired in 1990, and no one would have been too upset if the replacement was viewed as a home-run hire. As it was, Cooper did get to coach Ohio State in 1991. A few years later, the Buckeyes began to win big under Cooper, who guided OSU to a No. 2 national ranking at the end of the 1996 season.
What is notable about the 1990 game is that it began an 18-year separation between the two schools on the football field, the longest gap between meetings in series history. USC and Ohio State played at least twice in every prior decade going back to the start of the series in the 1930s. They met at least twice in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Then the music stopped. The series didn’t return until the 2008 game in the Coliseum, when Pete Carroll and Jim Tressel had both programs back in the top tier of college football.
Now, in the Big Ten, USC and Ohio State will become a lot more familiar with each other … again. It should be fun.