USC cancels 2021 game with UC Davis This is all about labels. SJSU is D-1, FBS. UCD is D-1, FCS. USC faithful simply cannot bear the thought that they might have played an FCS school and the only two FBS schools that had never scheduled down are UCLA and Notre Dame.
Back in the Pete Carroll era I had family reasons to follow USC football. At one point there was a big chat-room banter that followed the USC vs LSU poll ratings. LSU and SEC fans pooh-poohed Pac 12 football and boasted that the only conference that really played football was the SEC. SC fans countered that SEC schools peppered their non-conference schedules with FCS/D1AA schools, and quite frankly, weak ones at that. They weren't scheduling the North Dakota States, James Madisons, etc. I think there were about five FBS schools at the time that had never scheduled FCS/1AA schools. Now it's down to three. This is a game of chicken and the first one to flinch loses. That's even tougher with the rivalries inherent in USC, UCLA, and Notre Dame.
Dunning's remarks about Ohio State, Michigan, Clemson, Oklahoma are good as far as they go, but if I recall when the UCD at USC game was announced USC claimed there were no FBS schools with an open date on Sept. 4, 2021. SJSU only became available when Clemson and Georgia scheduled a neutral site game and bought off their previously scheduled opponents. USC pounced on SJSU's availability. One wonders if someone at SJSU saw USC's need for an FBS opponent as leverage and squeezed some more money out of the deal.
Part of this, and something the new AD at SC mentioned earlier this year, was that USC had been adamant about playing home games. With the new PAC-12 scheduling, combined with an intersectional rivalry with UND, they are guaranteed 5 home games a year. WIth ten given games every season they now have two games to play with. They were unwilling to schedule teams home-and-away and insisted on home games with no reciprocal away game. A lot of teams balked at that. That "policy" will probably be changed.
Purely my $.02. I have no leads into the USC thought process.