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Iowa football 2025 early opponent preview: USC
Trojans do not have same level of preseason hype after disappointing 2023, 2024 seasons
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Editor’s note: Tenth in a 12-part series previewing each of Iowa football’s 2025 regular-season opponents.
IOWA CITY — Iowa football’s 10th opponent on the 2025 schedule has not fallen short of the preseason hype.
USC began the 2024 season ranked No. 23 in the preseason AP Poll, but the Trojans went 7-6 and finished the year unranked. It was even greater of a fall in 2023, when USC started the year ranked No. 6 in the preseason AP Poll and ended the year unranked with an 8-5 record.
In fact, the Trojans have finished ahead of their preseason AP Poll ranking only once in the last eight seasons. (That was when Lincoln Riley’s group finished the season ranked No. 12 after beginning the season ranked No. 14.)
As Iowa prepares to visit USC at the famed Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Nov. 15, the Trojans do not have necessarily the same level of preseason hype as in past seasons.
Athlon Sports predicts USC will finish ninth in the Big Ten and 34th nationally. Lindy’s Sports projects USC to finish seventh in the Big Ten and 28th nationally. National college football writer Phil Steele is relatively bullish on USC, describing Lincoln Riley’s program as a “legitimate contender” and forecasting the Trojans to finish in a tie for fifth in the Big Ten.
Jayden Maiava is back after starting USC’s last four games of the regular season. He threw for at least 220 yards in each of his four games as the starter and had 11 touchdown passes versus six interceptions. The Trojans went 3-1 during his time as a starter, with the one loss being to then-No. 5 Notre Dame.
He will be working with a talented receiving corps, which includes 2024 team receptions leader Makai Lemon and Las Vegas Bowl MVP Jakobi Lane. Lemon had 52 receptions for 764 yards. Lane was second in the Big Ten with 12 touchdown receptions.
USC’s defense ranked 15th among Big Ten teams last year with 377.1 yards allowed per game and 16th among Big Ten teams with 5.83 yards allowed per play. (Rutgers and Purdue were the only teams in the conference to give up more yards per play.) Kentucky defensive line transfer Keeshawn Silver and safety Kamari Ramsey are among players to watch on defense.
This will be Iowa’s first regular-season game against USC since 1976. The Hawkeyes and Trojans also faced each other in the Orange Bowl following the 2002 season and the Holiday Bowl following the 2019 season. USC won the Orange Bowl, and Iowa won the Holiday Bowl.
Iowa vs. USC: 3 things to watch
- Jayden Maiava vs. Iowa’s secondary. USC has ranked in the top 10 in passing yards per game in each of the last three seasons. The last time that USC finished outside of the top 20 in the metric was in 2018.
- How many strides does USC’s defense take in 2025? USC was 1-6 last year when allowing 24-plus points in a game. When allowing fewer than 24 points in a game, the Trojans were
- Does Iowa turn around its West Coast woes? The Hawkeyes’ woes in games to the west of the Central Time Zone were most recently evident in Iowa’s 2024 loss to a five-win UCLA team.
2025 prognosis
Even without the national hype that USC often garners, this could be another challenging West Coast game for Kirk Ferentz’s Hawkeyes. A win is certainly not out of reach for Iowa, though, especially if Phil Parker’s secondary lives up to its usual standard.
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