USC Football: 5 reasons the Trojans will beat Stanford for Pac-12 title

The first Power Five championship takes place on Friday night between USC football and Stanford. Here are five reasons the Trojans will knock off the Cardinal.

We get one last taste of #Pac12AfterDark action this season, when No. 10 USC squares off against No. 12 Stanford at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California on Friday night. The Trojans came into the season as a trendy pick to win their first conference title since the Pac-12 was still the Pac-10.

Now all they need to do is finish the job against a Cardinal team they already knocked off once this season. When the two teams met for the first time in 2017 back in September, they ran away with a 42-24 victory at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Though the game was close throughout the first half, the Trojans pulled away for a convincing victory.

While they are playing a Cardinal team that has been playing far better than it did earlier in the year, USC still enters the contest as a one-touchdown favorite. Two years after the teams met in Santa Clara for the Pac-12 championship, the Trojans get another shot to earn their first league crown since the Pete Carroll days of 2008.

What will it take for USC to prevail on Friday night? Here are five reasons why the Trojans will knock off Stanford for a second time this season and lay claim to the first Power Five title of the 2017 season.