This is an opinion column.

Fight on, USC, and hang the banner. Roll over, college football, because the 2023 season is already done. It ended earlier than any season before it, on Tuesday the 11th of April to be precise, when Lincoln Riley officially added Kliff Kingsbury to the Southern Cal coaching staff as an analyst to help tutor returning Heisman winner Caleb Williams.

Hate to break it to you, Nick Saban, but on first glance, it looks like Alabama’s about to go three straight years without a big ring for the first time in your tenure. Sorry, Kirby Smart, but on paper, your quest for a storybook three-peat just got sent back to rewrite for a different kind of Hollywood ending.

The Trojans have too many horses in the quarterback room alone. There has never been such a meeting of offensive megaminds. Scoreboards have begun to short-circuit at the thought. Defensive coordinators from Athens to Tuscaloosa and beyond must be cowering over their Corn Flakes as we speak.

Surely, the Trojans are destined to hang half a hundred by halftime on anyone and everyone in their path en route to their first national championship in two decades.

After all, Kingsbury is the supercool super genius who turned Johnny Manziel into Johnny Football at Texas A&M and developed Patrick Mahomes into the model postmodern quarterback at Texas Tech. Riley is the boy wonder quarterback whisperer who put the names Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray in lights at OU, then took his talents to Tinseltown and did the same for Williams last season at SC.