Josh Rosen, Sam Darnold and the QB battle for L.A. being overlooked

LOS ANGELES -- This city is built on comparisons.

Whether it's boob jobs or beach bods, everybody thinks theirs is better. Fitting in here requires a certain vain competitiveness. Why else would there even be a B-list of actors?

For years, HBO subscribers paid good money to see a fake show about a fake squad of sycophant bros, a series that many said absolutely summed up the SoCal ethos.

Ever hear of "Entourage?"

Yup, appearances matter here.

Perhaps the latest example is the least known quarterback battle you've never heard. UCLA's Josh Rosen and USC's Sam Darnold have barely met in person. They've never met on the field.

That will change Nov. 18 in the Coliseum. Before, during and after, though, the pair will wage the city's most talented college quarterback competition in almost 30 years.

Ask around. The last time there were a pair of quarterbacks this good guiding the city's rivals was the late 1980s. UCLA's Troy Aikman and USC's Rodney Peete met twice -- both Trojan wins in 1987 and 1988 -- then played a combined 28 seasons and 269 games in the NFL.

Aikman was the overall No. 1 choice in the 1989 NFL Draft. Peete was taken in the sixth round. Most projections have both Darnold and Rosen rated among the top three quarterbacks available in next year's draft. Darnold, perhaps, could go No. 1 overall.

"Honestly, the guy has no flaws," said NFL personnel guru Gil Brandt.

"Josh -- talent-wise, obviously -- is the best quarterback in the country," said Jason Negro, Rosen's high school coach.

You haven't heard? They're both an integral part of The Year of the Quarterback in college football. The arms of Darnold, Rosen and Wyoming's Josh Allen top the NFL wish list going into the 2017 season.

Last year's crop of quarterbacks was thin to the point that North Carolina's Mitch Trubisky was taken No. 2 overall with only 13 career starts.

"I really believe that everybody benefits from playing four years of football, especially the quarterback position," said Jedd Fisch, the third offensive coordinator Rosen's had in his three college seasons. "I think Josh should play over 30 games."

Sunday's opener against Texas A&M will mark Rosen's 20th college game.

Darnold is starting a season for the first time, believe it or not. It was his ascension to starter in Game 4 of 2016 that began a turnaround of USC's fortunes. The Trojans lost that game to Utah but then won nine in a row.

Rosen is starting over after an injured shoulder knocked him out in last season's sixth game. The Bruins then cratered, going 1-5 to finish 4-8.

Since then, his views have kept him in the news more than his surgically repaired arm. Rosen's "football and school don't go together" quote is barely three weeks old. But it rocked the sport, shining a light on college athletics' priorities.

Rosen told CBS Sports he was urged to move a required class for his economics major to the summer because it bled "30 minutes into practice."

"School has to come first," he contended.

Their orbits don't/won't exactly intersect except for the weekly comparisons -- there's that word again -- fans, media, teammates and opponents will make.

Regardless, star athletes out of Southern California seem to understand the media attention.

Graphic illustration by Michael Meredith

Darnold is 180 degrees removed from Rosen's collegiate politics. This is a kid who can command a huddle but defers when asked about dinner venues when friends meet.

"He's so aware of how the hype could affect him if he allowed himself to buy into it," Darnold's private quarterback coach, Jordan Palmer, told me earlier this offseason. "A trap is a trap unless you know that it's a trap."

Some think Rosen needs a media coach because of his outspoken views. UCLA officials may be nervous when he speaks -- he wasn't taken to Pac-12 Media Days – but he is speaking from the heart, not out of ignorance.

"I think he's made some mistakes in terms of speaking too much," Negro said of Rosen. "He's a smart kid. Obviously, he's going to keep doing that because of who he is. Some of [the views] I agree with. Some of them I disagree with."

Viva free speech, then? Perhaps not in the age of Kaepernick, but let's move on.

It simply hasn't been this good at quarterback for both schools in three decades. Cade McNown's senior year at UCLA (1998) was Carson Palmer's freshman season at USC.

In 2005, UCLA's Drew Olson led the Bruins to a 10-2 record, including four fourth-quarter comebacks.

Unfortunately for him, that was when Matt Leinart led the Trojans to an undefeated season, one year after winning the Heisman.

Olson went undrafted.

Matt Barkley was USC's all-time leading passer playing from 2009-12. But he never was a first-team Pac-10/12 selection and was a fourth-round draft pick.

The UCLA starters during those years were a mix of Brett Hundley, Kevin Prince and Richard Brehaut. Hundley, eventually a fifth-round draft choice, beat the Trojans in 2012.

Darnold and Rosen are projected as possible franchise talents.

American blueblood runs through Rosen's veins. His mother Liz Lippincott is the great, great granddaughter of Joseph Wharton, founder of the elite Wharton School of Business at Penn.

She is also related to Joshua Lippincott, who founded the J.B. Lippincott & Co. in 1836. Josh is named after him. The firm originally published "To Kill A Mockingbird" in 1960, among other titles.

Josh's dad, Charles Rosen, was once considered for surgeon general by Barack Obama, according to Sports Illustrated.

"He's so quiet about his lineage," Christensen said of Rosen. "The way I look at it, it's the closest thing to American royalty. Those are my words."

If that's true then Darnold is Trojan royalty. His grandfather Dick Hammer played basketball at USC in the 1950s; he was later an Olympic volleyball player and eventually became the Marlboro Man.

Everyone in the family, it seems, is a USC fan. Darnold is a child of San Clemente, a beach town on the I-5 at the southern tip of Orange County. Young Sam learned to chuck it playing in the Pacific Ocean surf.

In saving USC's season, he threw for 3,086 yards and 31 touchdowns, the last five in an epic Rose Bowl win over Penn State.

"Personally, I think it's harder to come back from lots of success than it is failure," Darnold said.

Why?

"A lot of people see you and expect that every single time."

That's the idea this season, isn't it? Rosen's worth to the Bruins showed in that 4-8 season, tied for UCLA's worst in 45 years. Darnold is seen as the difference, perhaps, in a championship season.

Only Oklahoma (10) enters the season with more consecutive wins than USC's nine.

"I get the vibe in the locker room that we're not really satisfied," Darnold said.

Rosen himself is from a beach town -- tiny Manhattan Beach near L.A. Defensive coordinators have plenty of tape on both.

In his only full season in 2015, Rosen threw for 3,670 yards and 23 touchdowns. In that season, only Cal's Jared Goff completed more passes of at least 50 yards in the Pac-12 than Rosen.

A lot of the history and glory in the two programs has been made by quarterbacks. The teams have combined for six consensus All-Americans at the position in their history. There is something about stepping on the field when a quarterback at the top of his game steps onto the field at the Rose Bowl or Coliseum. He owns not only the moment but the city.

Fisch was curious what he was inheriting when he came from Michigan. The new offensive coordinator set up what he called an "official visit" with the family.

"To get to know somebody, you really want to meet their parents," Fisch said. "You want to see them in family atmosphere. I'm in a unique situation. I've had nine [starting] quarterbacks in nine years."

That would include NFL stops as an assistant at Denver, Minnesota, Seattle and Jacksonville, as well as Michigan and Miami in college.

It has become an athletic and psychological mingling. Fisch knows NFL talent when he sees it. He has been part of NFL teams that drafted four quarterbacks in the top 20.

"He's awesome," Rosen said. "Very sarcastic. We get long very well. He kind of gets me a little bit."

Is this at least one of the best college quarterback years in the city's history?

"A lot of people would say that, [but] I don't worry about that," said Darnold, who met Rosen before last year's UCLA game. "I'm working hard every day to help the USC Trojans, which is true. But you can't ignore something like that."

No, you can't. Looks matter more than anything else in this town. The runway is ready. And we're not talking about the airport variety.

The judges and judgments are ready, too.

"Does he care about that? I don't think he cares," said Jessie Christensen, director of football operations at Rosen's high school, St. John Bosco in nearby Bellflower.

"It's probably going to light his fire a little more because Josh is better than everybody. That's the mentality you have to have."