Texas, I believe, has more 10-win seasons in a row than any program right now. They don't start over every year, they reload. Same as USC.
However, USC not only is picked high at the start of each season and given a kind of automatic high ranking, they are seldom penalized much for any loss. Further, their team is talked about in terms of (a) greatest team yet under Pete Carroll, or (b) greatest USC team ever, or even (c) greatest team of all-time.
They are not simply talked about as having a better than average year or bringing back x-amount of starters and all that... but more like... that they have 7 All-American running backs, that they have 2 or 3 quarterbacks that could each be Heisman candidates at another school, and so on.
It's that the program is overly gushed over in terms of their players and their coach, when all along you could say the same thing about a handful of Big 12 or SEC teams. USC is in LA. The media is focused in LA. USC has a history of national titles and Heisman winners. It's all part of just being Hollywood.
Last night's game was a loss to an unranked team that USC was favored by 25 points to beat. Think about it. And yet this team was SOLID number one going into the game. Not even a "sort of" number one. But a hands down number one even talked about that they might stand up well against the St. Louis Rams.
The bashing is because the talk about USC is overblown. They are a good team. They have an equal chance in a given year to make a run. But, hell, so does Florida, LSU, OU, Texas, Georgia, and a few other teams.
The point is that USC is not necessarily reloading anymore than anyone else. It's right up there, yes, but the annointing is too automatic, too often, and too overstated.
And in all of that, they have one only one national championship under the BCS format. The same as the rest of the current BCS-era winners. And they have not put together a string of 10-win seasons as has Texas.
