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There are lots of great “what-if” questions we can ask every year in sports. In college football and in every other sport, fascinating situations emerge which make us wonder what might have been if a key moment or decision had broken in a different direction.
What if the Portland Trail Blazers drafted Michael Jordan in 1984 instead of Sam Bowie?
What if the 1994 Major League Baseball season was not ended by a work stoppage?
What if the College Football Playoff had existed in 1990, or even 2006, instead of being birthed in 2014?
What-if questions can never be answered, but they are impossible to ignore or resist.
One what-if question has relevance for USC football and its rivalry with UCLA: What if Dillon Gabriel had stuck with the Bruins instead of changing his mind and going to Oklahoma to play for Brent Venables with the Sooners?
Oklahoma went 10-2 this year with Gabriel having a strong season. UCLA, on the other hand, limped to a 7-5 finish largely because its quarterbacks weren’t very good. USC didn’t beat UCLA this year in spite of the quarterback gap between the two schools, but the Trojans might not have beaten the Bruins last year if Gabriel — not Dorian Thompson-Robinson — had been their starter. Lincoln Riley’s rough start at USC would have been even worse than it already is. USC might not have made the Pac-12 Championship Game in the 2022 season.
We will never know. However, UCLA’s offense under Chip Kelly likely would have been better. Oklahoma’s offense — without Gabriel — almost surely would have been worse.
Would Jeff Lebby be Mississippi State head coach right now? How would we evaluate Venables as a head coach?
There is certainly a lot to think about when we realize how influential Dillon Gabriel’s UCLA-Oklahoma decision ultimately was.
Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire,…
[ad_2]Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/dillon-gabriel-picking-oklahoma-over-171530973.html
Author : Trojans Wire
Publish date : 2023-11-29 17:15:30
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