Picture this: You’re sitting in a sea of cardinal red and gold. You’re surrounded by 70,000 people. A massive band is playing another team’s fight song and nearly everyone is cheering against you. A Trojan horse runs by. And you’re in a corner of an 88-year-old stadium. This is the life of a visiting fan at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Welcome to a University of Southern California football game.

‘It’s one of the symbols of the college,’ said USC student and dance team member Kalee Shah. ‘It’s a really iconic thing for our school. I know when Syracuse fans come and visit they’ll definitely get that feeling.’

More than 2,000 Syracuse fans will experience that feeling in their orange-clad corner when they attend Saturday’s football game at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, one of the team’s biggest regular-season games in years.

Syracuse hasn’t played USC in the Coliseum since 1924 — an 87-year span. A lot has happened since then — the Trojans have won 11 national championships, according to the USC athletics website. Syracuse is college football’s 15th most winningest program and USC ranks 10th. The last and only other time the two teams played was in 1990 at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. USC beat SU both times, according to the SU Athletics website.

No current Big East team has played USC at the Coliseum since 1965. SU hasn’t played a regular-season game in California since 1968 when it visited University of California, Berkeley and lost. It hasn’t played in Los Angeles since it visited UCLA in 1967 — its last win in California.

Fans are traveling from everywhere — Syracuse, Los Angeles, San Diego and Arizona, said Brian Spector, SU Alumni Association president. East Coast or West Coast, they’ll be there, rooting for the underdog — SU.

‘The university has a huge presence in Los Angeles,’ Spector said. ‘So I think it’s going to be a major sports event for Syracuse, win or lose.’

There will be buses coming from Los Angeles and San Diego to the game, and the 750-person pregame tailgate party has sold out. Joan Adler, senior director of SU alumni in Los Angeles, helped plan LA buses and the tailgate with SU Alumni Club of Southern California president Jennifer Erzen.

Spector expects Syracuse to have a good showing at the game. Even though the cardinal and gold colors of USC will outnumber the Orange’s, he expects the fans to hold their own.

‘We travel well and are not shy,’ Spector said. ‘So I expect the fans to bring some real Orange spirit to the Coliseum.’

Because of the distance, most SU fans will be older, said senior sport management major Andrew Naylor. But he doesn’t care and plans to fly out to Los Angeles.

To Daryl Gross, there’s no stage like the Coliseum. A Los Angeles native, the SU athletic director arrived in Syracuse in 2004 from USC, where he was the senior associate athletic director.

‘I thought every stadium was like that until I got a little older,’ said Gross, who found out that other stadiums didn’t hold the same powerful aura as the Coliseum.

It’s hosted the Olympic Games twice and is a state and federal historical landmark, according to the LA Coliseum website. Its towers and arches give it a modern-day Greek coliseum feel.

Naylor hopes it can bring back memories of the big-time SU football games from his childhood. He remembers SU football games against past foes like University of Miami and Virginia Tech. The Carrier Dome was full, loud and packed with fans.

‘I can remember back to those days,’ Naylor said, ‘when coming to the Dome was a really crazy thing and fun thing.’

The historic pedigree of USC football brings more excitement to the game than most others. The match-up is right up there with last year’s Pinstripe Bowl, said Naylor.

With USC being such a big-time program, playing the Trojans creates branding out west and nationally both athletically and institutionally, Gross said.

‘This is the perfect kind of game for us to play,’ Gross said. ‘Are we ready for USC? We’ll find out.’

A win over the Trojans would pay huge dividends in the recruiting aspect for SU, Gross said. His thoughts have fans dreaming of the same scenario.

‘If we were to pull the upset I think it’d be a huge moment where Coach Marrone could go into the living room of recruits and say, ‘Hey, we just beat a Top 25 program at their place,” said Dan Lyons, senior writing and rhetoric major.

USC senior Alex Kefalos hopes that SU fans can see just how huge football games are for USC fans.

‘It’s such a part of the culture here,’ Kefalos said. ‘It’s fun to be a really integral part of the fan base.’

Blake Spencer, a USC spirit leader, will be among the USC fans drowning out any SU cheering. He’ll run the USC flag out onto the field and use the microphones to get the fans riled up.

USC isn’t intimidated by Syracuse. But SU fans don’t plan to sit there, said Jon Good, treasurer of SU’s alumni club in San Diego. The fans showing up to Saturday’s big game are ready to introduce the Orange to USC.

‘We may be outnumbered,’ Good said. ‘But we’re going to be wearing orange and we’re going to be loud.’

rnmarcus@syr.edu

Published on September 14, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Rachel: rnmarcus@syr.edu