On Oct. 6, 2007, I was a member of the No. 1-ranked USC football team. That evening, we were playing Stanford and were favored by 41 points. Admittedly, we did not have a great week of practice, and no matter what we did that evening, nothing seemed to work. We lost 24-23 in one of the biggest upsets in college football history.
Despite our superior athletes and five years of dominating our opponents, we had drifted away from focusing on fundamentals such as blocking and tackling and believed that, somehow, history would repeat itself and we would eventually win the game. After sulking on Sunday, I’ll never forget our team meeting Monday, when our leader, Pete Carroll, simply told us to focus on what we could control, starting with a renewed focus on fundamen
