Despite Colin Cowherd's halftime speech, Penn State defeated USC on Saturday with a game-winning kick from Ryan Barker in overtime. Photo Credits: Colin Cowherd on X (Colin Cowherd, left); Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images (Ryan Barker, right). Photo Credits: Colin Cowherd on X (Colin Cowherd, left); Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images (Ryan Barker, right).
By Reice Shipley on

On Saturday, the Penn State Nittany Lions overcame both a halftime deficit against the USC Trojans on the field and some trash talk from longtime FS1 personality Colin Cowherd off of it to secure their biggest win of the season, leaving egg on Cowherd’s face in the process.

The Trojans went into the second half with a 20-6 lead, looking primed to upset the No. 4 ranked Nittany Lions. This led Cowherd to preemptively declare that people are going to need to apologize to USC head coach Lincoln Riley an apology. He also claimed that he “doesn’t know” if Big Ten teams can “handle coming out west” to play USC.

“Some of you guys are going to owe Lincoln Riley an apology,” said Cowherd in a video posted to his X account. “I don’t know if some of these Big Ten teams can handle coming out west. The sunshine, the distractions of L.A., probably not. Look at the halftime score. I don’t hold grudges, apologies accepted.”

At the time, it probably seemed like a wise decision to get ahead of the praise that would have come Lincoln Riley’s and USC’s way with a win over Penn State.

However, James Franklin and the Nittany Lions had other plans, crawling all the way back in the game and ultimately forcing the game to overtime. In overtime, they capitalized on a missed field goal from USC in their first possession, winning the game on their own field-goal attempt in overtime from kicker Ryan Barker.

As you may expect, college football fans didn’t let Cowherd off the hook for his premature comments about Lincoln Riley and USC. His video has since generated over 1,000 replies on X and counting, some coming from his peers in the sports media space.

Next time, Cowherd may want to save his thoughts until after the game has concluded…

[Colin Cowherd on X]

About Reice Shipley

Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.

View all posts by Reice Shipley