Halfway True Facts About USC Trojan Football
USC football began in 1888 when quarterback Arthur Carroll put together the first team. He also volunteered to make the pants for the team.
Later he became a tailor but customers complained all their clothes had numbers sewn on the back.
The next year they played Throop Polytcechnic Institute, today’s Cal Tech. Throop was founded by Amos G. Throop, whose name is the sound of a soda coming through a straw. He started the Polytechnic Institute for just that reason, to find out why it makes the sound of his last name.
They also played Whittier College. One of their famous famous alumnus is Richard Nixon, who graduated in 1934, and was instrumental in improving the audio recording techniques of their football games, although one game in 1933 had a famous unexplained 18 minute gap, during which the opponent scored 3 touchdowns.
Guglielmo Marconi helped develop the invention of radio, but that was in the early 1900s. They didn’t have radio back and people outside USC wanted to listen to the games. So USC set up a string of students stretching to the highest hill in the area, Downtown’s bunker hill. They would update the line of students with each play, yelling the latest play to each other down the line, and the last student would bellow into a megaphone to broadcast the game over the city.
