Pac 12 Football: USC Looks to Break Records Today Against Colorado

You won’t find much more of a mismatch game today than Colorado traveling to the Coliseum to take on USC.

One side you have preseason national title favorites USC and even though they have lost one game they are still one of the top teams in the country. They have a ton of team speed and plenty of players that are already NFL ready.

Then on the other side you have a 1-5 team that is struggling to find its identity and they seem to lack the proper talent to compete at this point in the season. Colorado is also entering a brutal stretch of their schedule that has them at USC today, at Oregon next week and then they finish at home against Stanford.

USC is a 41 point favorite today at home and it probably will get ugly but maybe not as ugly as it could be. Earlier this week USC head coach Lane Kiffin commented to local media on the Trojans lack of depth and said once the game is in hand he will take out is starters so they don’t get injured.

“We have depth issues and we know that,” he said. “Our goal is to win games. We’re not gonna leave our guys in late in games if games are in our favor. We have a really good 22, but we obviously have a lot of depth issues behind them, so we’d like to not expose those.”

One of the ways that Kiffin will decide whether or not the game is in hand enough is after USC has the chance to break some of the records that are in reach by their star players.

QB Matt Barkley and WR Robert Woods both have a chance to break their respective positions’ school records. Barkley only needs four TD passes to break Matt Leinart’s previous school and conference record of 99 TD passes. He figures to break that today against a weak Colorado secondary, one in which he torched for a school record 6 TDs last season. Woods has the chance to set the USC all-time receptions mark with five receptions today and he should be targeted early and often today.

“I do think it’d be neat for those guys to do it at home,” Kiffin said. “Throwing touchdown passes is always a good thing, so if we’re throwing touchdown passes and Robert’s catching a lot of balls, that’s a good thing.”

First and foremost Kiffin wants to win the game but he’ll be keeping an eye on those records and once they are achieved, which they likely will be by halftime, he’ll call off the dogs.

David LaRose is one of the featured College Football writers for Rant Sports covering the Pac 12 and the University of Colorado. You can follow him on Twitter or check out his Facebook page.