USCs dress rehearsal is over. Now well find out if the Trojans are for real

The preseason is over. USC spent the first three weeks of its season doing exactly what a program with College Football Playoff aspirations should do against overmatched opponents: win, build confidence, develop young players and avoid disaster.Saturday night’s 49-30 victory over Louisiana at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum completed the assignment.Now tear it up.It’s time for the regular season to start.  The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story USC is 3-0 after victories over San Jose State, Fresno State and Louisiana, three opponents that allowed Lincoln Riley to tinker with his roster, establish rotations and give his young talent room to grow without paying much of a price for mistakes.“It’s been good for us to play a bunch of players in all three nonconference games,” said Riley.“I think if we’d set a goal, it would’ve been, win the first three games, get a chance to play a bunch of guys, develop your roster, and evaluate, which we’ve been able to do.”Starting next week, that luxury is gone. The Trojans travel across the country to face Rutgers next Saturday, beginning a Big Ten schedule that will tell us considerably more about this team than anything we learned during its three-game nonconference opponents. Because the gauntlet waiting for USC is downright vicious.Five of the Trojans’ next seven opponents are currently ranked inside the top 20: Oregon (6), Washington (19), Penn State (16), Ohio State (1) and reigning national champion Indiana (5).It’s time to take the training wheels off and see if USC is a legitimate national contender or gets swallowed up by the heavyweights it was built to beat. And nobody has more to gain over the next two months than Jayden Maiava.The USC quarterback threw for 261 yards and five touchdowns S...