The L.A. billboard battles that brought on Oregon’s invasion of USC territory

LOS ANGELES — The sight left Keary Colbert a bit perplexed.

The former USC wideout (and the Trojans’ current receivers coach) remembers the rides to the team hotel in downtown Los Angeles back in 2002. He remembers looking at the same thing every Friday night before Trojans home games: Oregon receivers Samie Parker, Keenan Howry and Jason Willis plastered on a billboard the Ducks’ athletic department had raised money to put up in downtown Los Angeles.

“I just kind of remember the first time seeing it, like, ‘Wow. Really?’” Colbert said. “It was like somebody putting up their flag in your territory.”

Seventeen years ago, Oregon was still in the process of creating its identity and building its brand. The Ducks, who sit atop the Pac-12 North and are No. 7 in the latest AP poll, don’t have any unavoidable billboards in Los Angeles these days, but they are still trying to make a major push into the Southland.

It’s a push that USC has been forced to try to fight off while dealing with its own uncertainty. And Saturday’s matchup against the Ducks (7-1, 5-0 Pac-12) in the Coliseum can go a long way in helping the Trojans (5-3, 4-1) do that.

Oregon made a Rose Bowl run in 1994 and a Cotton Bowl appearance in 1995, Mike Bellotti’s first season as head coach. Shortly after that Cotton Bowl is when senior associate AD Jim Bartko and the athletic department went to work. The Ducks needed a vision. They needed an identity.

“We didn’t have a USC’s history and legacy, and traditions, national championships, or an Alabama’s,” said Bartko, who is now a senior adviser to the executive director of Oregon’s Alumni Association. “We were kind of wallowing around a little bit. We had good coaches and good people, but we just had to figure out what we could do to be unique about what we’re about.”

The Ducks couldn’t apply the formulas of schools like USC or Penn State to themselves. With the help of Nike and co-founder Phil Knight, Oregon put together a plan. Part of that plan was to upgrade facilities. The other part was to spread brand awareness to recruits across the country.

Of course, a big part of that brand ended up being the uniforms, which still holds true today. But in 2001, there were also billboards. Quarterback Joey Harrington had legitimate Heisman Trophy potential entering that season, and to ramp up the hype, the athletic department spent $250,000 to put up a billboard of Harrington across the country in Times Square.

That same fall, a billboard of Ducks running back Maurice Morris appeared in Los Angeles. Oregon won the Fiesta Bowl and finished No. 2 in 2001’s final BCS rankings, a year after going 10-2 and finishing seventh. The marketing created buzz off the field for a program that was succeeding on it.

In 2002, Oregon put up another billboard in the Bay Area. Then, another one in Los Angeles, which featured three receivers: Parker, Howry and Willis, all Southern California natives. That was no coincidence.

“I remember thinking it was kind of brilliant marketing for a place that you’re going to recruit, if you kind of think about it,” said Florida Atlantic coach Lane Kiffin, who was an assistant for the Trojans at the time. “Years since, people have kind of followed that. I remember being at Tennessee and putting up billboards in Atlanta and these areas we were trying to recruit.”

The mindset was simple: Put yourself where the athletes are.

“It was a formula for success that Oregon had. It doesn’t mean it’s a blueprint for everybody else,” Bartko said. “We needed to penetrate the areas where we were getting not just our student-athletes but a lot of our academic students from California up to Oregon.”

The one person who Bartko says doesn’t really get enough credit is Bellotti. Oregon’s former coach didn’t read the papers, so he didn’t see the criticism for the billboards in enemy territory or the flashy uniforms.

Belotti knew those showy displays were a risk, but he also knew the power of branding, and he knew Oregon, which isn’t surrounded by fertile recruiting territory, needed to be willing to take chances to get people’s attention.

“It wasn’t about one-upping any school or anything like that,” Bellotti said. “It was all about exposing our brand and striking while we were hot because we won games and we were on a roll at that time.”

Understandably, that’s not how some USC players took it.

“We saw Samie Parker, Jason Willis and Keenan Howry in our backyard posing, basically trying to send a subliminal message they were the top receivers in the Pac-10,” said former Trojans receiver Kareem Kelly, who is sixth on the program’s all-time receptions list (204). “We took that as a slight and as disrespectful. That’s how I felt about that.”

To make things tougher on USC, Oregon had beaten the Trojans four consecutive times from 1998 to 2001, which still stands as the Ducks’ longest winning streak in the series. Oregon won the ‘01 game on a late field goal.

Meanwhile, after USC’s Rose Bowl win to wrap the 1995 season the program drifted back to mediocrity and went a combined 11-13 in the 2000 and ‘01 seasons. A four-game winning streak to close out the ‘01 regular season and close losses to Oregon and Washington offered some hope.

“To be honest with you, they had beaten us a couple years. So for me, personally, I kind of had to respect them,” Colbert said of his attitude toward Oregon at the time. “At the same time, we looked forward to playing them.”

Kiffin may have thought it was a good idea for Oregon, but at the same time, he used that billboard as motivation for his position room. He put a picture of it on the Trojans’ offensive playbook that week, and he placed another one in their weekly Friday tests before games.

“Just a reminder, motivation, ‘Hey, who’s really the best receiver group?’ type thing,” Kiffin said. “Just trying to motivate Mike (Williams), Keary and Kareem. I think it meant a lot more to Keary and Kareem obviously being Southern California kids.”

Oregon and USC faced off on Oct. 26, 2002, in Autzen Stadium. The Ducks were 6-1 and ranked 14th entering the game, while the Trojans, who already had three victories over ranked teams, were 5-2 and No. 15.

“We wanted to win the game for the sake of winning the game, but I think in the back of some people’s minds, a lot of that little stuff was there,” Colbert said. “There was that billboard, or just coming into California and recruiting or trying to recruit. They had a lot of kids from California on their team. We knew a lot of those guys and played with a lot of those guys. At the end of the day, when the week of the game came, everybody was kind of locked in and ready to play it.”

Carson Palmer threw two first-quarter touchdowns, including a 35-yard touchdown pass to Williams, which basically set the tone for the day. USC trailed 19-14 at halftime, but then the Trojans’ offense took over.

Kelly opened the third quarter with a touchdown catch that gave the visitors a lead they would never give up. Williams caught another touchdown from Palmer later in the quarter, and USC extended its lead to as many as 25 points.

“(Their DBs) were so intimidated,” Kelly said. “They didn’t know what hit them. We punched them in the mouth. We saw the DBs’ coverage slowly start to deflate, so it was bombs away for us.”

USC won 44-33 and cemented itself as a contender in the Pac-10, going on to win the Orange Bowl to cap that season. Palmer completed 31 of 42 passes for 448 yards and five touchdowns. Williams caught 13 passes for 226 yards and two scores. Kelly had six catches for 94 yards and a touchdown. Colbert caught four passes for 77 yards. The group who took offense at having to look at the billboard every trip to the team hotel didn’t forget about it before the game. And they didn’t forget about it afterward, either.

“They had their receivers up on the billboard in L.A., but at the end of the day once the game was over, I think USC’s passing attack showed up more that day,” Colbert said.

“It was about winning the game and showing we were the better group. At the end of the game, we did that and we took our little photo.”

Fast-forward 17 years. Oregon doesn’t really need billboards to build its brand anymore. The Ducks have won two Rose Bowls and a Fiesta Bowl, played in two national title games and finished in the top 10 five times this decade. They’ve enjoyed more success than any Pac-12 team in that span and appear poised to win the conference again.

The success has made an impression on recruits, too. The Ducks signed six of California’s top 25 players in the 2019 recruiting cycle — all from Southern California. USC ended up with five of the top 25. Oregon has received commitments from four of the state’s top 25 2020 recruits. Meanwhile, the Trojans have received just one.

“I used to say it was like when you’re 8 years old going to Disneyland. Now you’re 17 years old, it was like Disneyland for a football player,” said Kiffin, who said losing De’Anthony Thomas to Oregon in 2011 was the biggest recruiting shock he can remember from his time at USC. “You go up there and it’s like everything is unbelievable, the newest best everything and bigger than everything else.”

Bellotti said he’s talked to current Ducks head coach Mario Cristobal about recruiting Southern California and thinks Cristobal has done a great job at it. The two coaches have something in common: They’ve both been able to recruit against a wobbling USC program. Bellotti’s programs peaked as the Trojans sputtered under Paul Hackett during the transition to the Pete Carroll era.

Now Cristobal is recruiting against Clay Helton, whose future has been uncertain since he posted a 5-7 campaign last season and is just 5-3 this fall. Even though Oregon has proven to be an obvious threat on the recruiting trail, Helton didn’t ascribe any additional importance to Saturday’s matchup.

“Anytime you play a Pac-12 team, I think it’s important because when you win Rose Bowls and when you win Pac-12 titles, that’s when you sign great players,” Helton said. “You look at all these great freshmen and sophomores that are playing right now, it’s not a coincidence they got signed right after that Rose Bowl year, right after that Pac-12 title year.”

It’s also not a coincidence USC finished 20th nationally, per the 247Sports Composite, in the 2019 recruiting rankings, which was tied for its lowest finish this decade. With the uncertainty surrounding Helton increasing, the Trojans are 64th nationally and 10th in the Pac-12 in the 2020 recruiting rankings.

That has left the door open for the Ducks to capitalize and build even more momentum.

“By all means, it’s never over. We never say we’ve arrived, let’s move on,” Bartko said. “I think now we’re at a different stage (of the process). We’ve got it built, now we’re trying to maintain and get better.”

Wins are the only way the Trojans can stem the tide in these recruiting battles. For their sake, Saturday would be a good place to start.

(Top photo courtesy of George Fry III)