USC fooled everybody in the first half of its victory over Northwestern on Friday night, when quarterback Sam Huard discretely lined up to punt and then executed a successful fake-punt pass for a first down.
Why did this catch everybody off guard? Huard, who wears No. 7, was given a No. 80 jersey for the play, which is typically worn by punter Sam Johnson.
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy expressed his thoughts on the matter on FOX’s “Big Noon Kickoff.”
“I don’t know when we started doing this,” Portnoy said. “There should be one No. 1, one No. 2. Fine, you have over 100 guys? [You have one No.] 101, 102, 103, but I don’t want to see Arch Manning No. 16 on Texas and their safety [Michael Taaffe] wearing No. 16.
“And it leads to this: a fake punt that shouldn’t be a fake punt because you have a quarterback pretending to be a punter. What happened? When did this go on? Get rid of the double numbers. It’s got to go.”
Following Portnoy’s rant, in which he jokingly referred to USC as “dirtbags” for the number switch, former Trojan quarterback and Big Noon Kickoff analyst Matt Leinart fired back at Portnoy with some friendly banter of his own.
“Dave Portnoy is the biggest dirt bag of all time,” Leinart joked after the segment.
No. 19 USC defeated Northwestern by double digits, 38-17, to improve to 7-2 overall and 5-1 in Big Ten play.
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