In this special edition of the Peristyle Podcast host Ryan Abraham is joined by Shotgun Spratling to give their initial reaction to the newly released Big Ten football schedule for the 2024/2025 football seasons. The Big Ten announced the removal of divisions and the introduction of the Flex Protect Plus scheduling model that will allow every Big Ten team to play a home and road game against all 15 other conference opponents in a four year period.

For the Trojans their protected rival (program you will play every season) is UCLA and in year one USC welcomes Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois to the Coliseum with UCLA, Penn State, Maryland, Northwestern and Purdue on the road (to go along with Notre Dame at home and LSU in Las Vegas). In 2025 USC has Indiana, Michigan State, Nebraska, Penn State and UCLA at home and Ohio State, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Rutgers on the road.

Initially Ryan and Chris Trevino were scheduled to discuss the massive USC recruiting weekend on Tuesday, but Ryan got ill and we had to postpone the show. So now the guys will spend the latter part of the show talking about how USC hosted more than a dozen class of 2024 official visitors to campus, a well attended USC Elite Camp and what seemed like a constant stream of Fight On! emojis signifying player commitments.

The list of scholarship pledges included Modesto (Calif.) Central Catholic four-star offensive lineman Manasse Itete, Clearwater (Fla.) High’s 247Sports Composite four-star safety Jarvis Boatwright, Englewood (Colo.) Cherry Creek offensive tackle Hayden Treter, Gardena (Calif.) Serra four-star defensive back Dakoda Fields and Atlanta (Ga.) Booker T. Washington Top247 edge Kameryn Fountain.

USC moved up from No. 57 all the way up to No. 21 in the country and No. 2 in the Pac-12. They did so by adding players that should help balance out the class, not only positionally but also geographically.

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Make sure you check out USCFootball.com for complete coverage of this USC Trojan football team. 

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