Aboard a Gulfstream 200 high above a green expanse of Pennsylvania, USC coach Lane Kiffin and his entourage of assistants traced a path not far from Beaver Stadium, where Penn State plays its football games.
It was July 25, 2012, and an unusual connection had formed between the football programs of Penn State and USC. Both were proud. Both, within two years, had been slapped with some of the harshest NCAA sanctions in history.
Penn State's penalties had been announced two days earlier and Kiffin and USC were poised to take advantage.
Trojans coaches were headed to Connecticut to meet Penn State's best offensive player, running back Silas Redd. The NCAA, in an unprecedented move, had allowed opposing schools to recruit Penn State's current players, and Redd was the one Kiffin wanted to poach.
Early the next morning, Kiffin and five assistants met at a Dunkin' Donuts to polish a painstakingly rehearsed pitch. At 9 a.m., over muffins, Kiffin launched into the presentation. The coaches didn't finish lobbying Redd for another three hours. Within a week, Redd announced he was transferring to USC.
The courting of Redd was the only direct skirmish between programs in similarly dire straits. In 2010, USC had been saddled with penalties that included a two-year postseason ban and the loss of 30 scholarships over three years, after the NCAA found that Reggie Bush and his family had received cash and perks from sports marketers while the Heisman Trophy-winning running back was playing for the Trojans.
Penn State was dealing with its own sanctions, including a $60 million fine, the vacating of 112 wins, a four-year postseason ban and the loss of 40 scholarships over four seasons _ penalties that were later reduced _ as part of a child sexual abuse scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.
Each program navigated the fallout differently. USC chose caution and heavy planning. Penn State scrambled to keep its program from collapsing during one frantic week and throughout a longer court battle.
The sanctions have ended for each program, but their effects linger even as the Trojans and Nittany Lions prepare to meet in one of college football's most storied events, the Rose Bowl.
The matchup is a surprise for reasons beyond what happened on the field during September, when USC was 1-3 and Penn State 2-2.
A BINDER AND A PLAN
In the summer of 2010, after the NCAA announced USC's penalties, Kiffin met with Pat Haden, USC's incoming athletic director, and thumped a thick binder onto the table.
This was Kiffin's master plan, which he hoped would cover contingencies large and small. Attracting recruits would be more difficult, so Kiffin added a perk: a program that allowed players to graduate in three years. Depth would be thinned, so he proposed shortening practices. The plan drilled into specifics: recruiting a punter and kicker must be a top immediate priority, Kiffin advised. The staff couldn't afford to waste scholarships on specialists when the reductions hit.
The plan also included Kiffin's most important suggestion. USC had decided against suing the NCAA, but Kiffin requested that the university file an appeal. There were two motives: the Trojans wanted the sanctions rolled back, but, barring that, the appeal would buy time.
Kiffin, along with senior associate athletic director J.K. McKay, had initiated a study of past recruiting classes. They calculated that, of the 30 lost scholarships, at least five would have gone to "great" players _ potential first-round picks. An additional five to seven probably would have been starters.
"And not only are you not getting them," McKay lamented, "but they're going across town and they're playing for your rivals."
They figured the penalties would reverberate through the program for seven years.
"But I think in all honesty, these sanctions were so unprecedented, we had no idea what was going to happen," McKay said.
Instead of moving past the sanctions as quickly as possible, Kiffin determined that USC needed to establish a beachhead of talent. The appeal allowed the Trojans to load up their 2011 recruiting class.
USC landed several key players that year, including receiver Marqise Lee, quarterback Cody Kessler and defensive tackle Antwaun Woods.
That type of safe, developed player became the model. Tee Martin, who helped recruit two of the three affected classes and is now the Trojans' offensive coordinator, recalled that USC had to change the way it recruited.
"You couldn't miss," he said. "You couldn't redshirt and develop a lot of guys that quite honestly needed to be redshirted and developed. You had to come in and play. So you passed up great players."
The problem was depth more than talent. Many anchors of this season's Rose Bowl team were successfully recruited during the sanctions, including cornerback Adoree' Jackson, tackles Zach Banner and Chad Wheeler and receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster.
"I just saw an opportunity to play early," Smith-Schuster said recently.
The lack of depth put a cap on USC's potential, but the top layer of talent kept the Trojans afloat. Since the scholarship reductions began, USC has won two more games _ and lost one fewer _ than UCLA. (Some members of the athletic department kept tally.)
The Trojans were taken down a few notches, but the penalties weren't a death sentence either.
