He didn’t want to talk about them, but his face made it clear: Offensive coordinator Kennedy Polamalu has plenty of rivalry stories.
Saturday’s rendition of the USC-UCLA rivalry will mark the 16th of Polamalu’s career. He’s 10-5 all-time, though he was a Trojan for 11 of those matchups, four as a player and seven as a coach.
He spent four years as a fullback and linebacker for the Trojans from 1982 to 1985, losing in the first three rivalry games of his career before finally beating the Bruins as a senior.
As a coach, though, Polamalu is 9-2 in the rivalry, and perhaps that’s no coincidence. He played a fairly significant role in USC’s seven-game win streak over UCLA from 1999 to 2005.
After helping his nephew, Troy Polamalu, get recruited in 1998 to USC, where the safety would emerge as the captain of a defense that shut out UCLA in a 27-0 win in 2001, Kennedy Polamalu headed back to the school himself in 2000, taking over as the running backs coach.
In that role, Polamalu recruited star backs Reggie Bush and LenDale White, who played prominent roles in then-coach Pete Carroll’s Trojan dynasty.
Polamalu left USC after the 2003 season, but was back in 2010 as the offensive coordinator and running backs coach for what was arguably the most meaningless game in the history of the rivalry: that year marked the first time neither program was bowl-eligible, UCLA due to a losing record and USC because of sanctions assigned after Carroll’s time there.
The Trojans won that game, 28-14, at the Rose Bowl, and the next year would deliver the largest thumping either team had dealt the other since 1930, beating the Bruins 50-0 in Rick Neuheisel’s final year as the UCLA coach.
Jim Mora took over for the Bruins in 2012, and Polamalu suffered one of his few losses in the rivalry, when, with a Pac-12 South division title on the line for both programs, UCLA notched a 38-28 win.
UCLA and USC have split the two meetings since Polamalu joined the Bruin coaching staff in 2014, each of which came with division-title implications.
The division title is out of reach for the Bruins as they prepare to face the Trojans on Saturday, but the rivalry has a way of transcending any lack of playoff implications.
“It’s a fun week,” Polamalu said. “This is a fun experience – it’s two schools in LA, you can’t stop running into each other.”
Polamalu’s offense will trot out former walk-on Mike Fafaul at quarterback.
That’s perhaps not the best way to head into a tilt with the Trojans, but should the redshirt senior lead UCLA to a victory this weekend, it won’t be the first time Polamalu has watched a walk-on quarterback guide the Bruins to a win over the Trojans.
His introduction to the UCLA side of the rivalry came as a graduate assistant coach in 1992, when John Barnes, who had started the year as the fifth-string quarterback, brought the Bruins back from a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Trojans 38-37 at the Rose Bowl.
Even that story, though, he doesn’t want to tell.
“I’m gonna keep them to myself,” the offensive coordinator said after Tuesday’s practice. “It’s not about me. It’s about these young men. I want them to enjoy the experience. It will be the rest of their lives.”