There's an example from Lincoln Riley's Oklahoma teams that these Trojans will probably hear about more than a few times.
He shared it with reporters Saturday after USC's final practice of fall camp.
"Hollywood Brown for us the year that he blew up started the year on scout team," Riley said. "I think like four or five games in he had not hardly played any, and all of a sudden he finishes the year with like 1,100 yards receiving, just goes nuts the second half of the season. And a lot of that started by scout team and he got some time when we got up in the game early in the year, made a couple plays, and it just went from a 2, 3 [on the depth chart] to probably one of the two or three best receivers in that league in the matter of six weeks.
"So it can happen that fast, and we're going to need it to happen that fast."
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Riley's overarching message, which he reiterated multiple times Saturday, is that for this team to reach its goals, the end of camp can't mean the end of progress.
USC will segue into a mock game week to get the players used to the schedule and routines as the structure changes with classes starting, before then rolling into the actual first game week ahead of the Sept. 3 season-opener with Rice.
But however the depth chart settles, he'd sure like to have the next Hollywood Brown -- or varying versions of that example -- keep pushing and improving behind the scenes until his moment comes.
"The best teams continue to improve throughout the year. And the only way you continue to improve is obviously learn lessons and all that in games but you've got to keep improving in practice," Riley said. "And to improve it's got to be competitive -- just human nature, that's the way it is. So we continue the competition throughout practices all year. And we'll see it -- there will be somebody this year that's a starter in Game 1 that isn't in Game 5 and somebody that's in scout team or a 2 or 3 in Game 1 that all of a sudden becomes a starter.
"We have a lot of great examples of that from the past, and it will be kind of fun to see how those competitions go on not only through the next few weeks and the first game but obviously throughout the year."
