USC Football: SCNG Columnist Defends Suspended Colleague

Through the first few weeks of the new season, the USC Trojans have seemed to have little to no problems. The team is playing very well, and the questions surrounding the defense have started to fade away.

It has been a great start to the new college football season for USC, but while everything has seemed to go smoothly on the field for the Trojans, things off the field have looked a little shaky. Recently, the Trojans and head coach Lincoln Riley placed a beat reporter under suspension after the program deemed him violating their media policy.

USC should be ashamed. Revoking a beat writer’s credential for reporting a (harmless! charming!) conversation a player had with a teammate in front of the media?

Horrible. https://t.co/zb9D9dPIBU
— Bill Oram (@billoram) September 19, 2023

Apparently, first-year USC Trojans beat report Luca Evans of both The Orange County Register and The Southern California News Group, who wrote a piece about an interaction between two members of the USC football team. It was seemingly off-record and was a positive piece, but it seemed to get on the bad side of Riley.

It has led many to believe that Riley is just trying to control things and that the punishment doesn't fit the crime. It's a not-so-great look for the second-year head coach, but he does have the power to do this.

This move by the Trojans was met with a ton of criticism from other reporters around the area, with most calling it completely unreasonable. The school backed Riley up about the suspension, sparking even more controversy.

Jim Alexander, a colleague of Evans, took to his social media to defend Evans. It is a nice show of support, much like the other reporters, and it shows that if you mess with one person, you mess with everyone.

This latest USC gaffe could have been avoided, if only someone in the athletic department had the gumption to tell the football coach he was (a) overreacting and (b) out of line.

But we know how that goes, don’t we?https://t.co/EgLVfZE5eL
— Jim_Alexander (@Jim_Alexander) September 20, 2023

It remains to be seen if this becomes a distraction at all for the Trojans, but it will certainly be something to keep an eye on as the year progresses.

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