Athletics
The USC Trojans participate in the NCAA Division I (FBS) Pacific-12 Conference and has won 115 total team national championships (non-NCAA and NCAA): 92 for men and 23 for women. Of this total, 80 and 14 are NCAA National Championships for men and women, respectively. The NCAA does not include college football championships in its calculation. Though there are multiple organizations that name national championships, USC claims 11 football championships. The men's 361 Individual Championships are the second-best in the nation and 53 ahead of third place Texas. USC's cross-town rival is UCLA, with whom there is fierce athletic and scholastic competition. USC's rivalry with Notre Dame—though generally limited to football—predates the UCLA rivalry by three years. The Notre Dame rivalry stems mainly from the annual football game played between these two universities and is considered one of the greatest rivalries in college athletics.
USC has won 94 NCAA team championships, 3rd behind cross-town rival UCLA (108) and Stanford (103). The Trojans have also won at least one national team title in 26 consecutive years (1959–60 to 1984–85). USC won the National College All-Sports Championship, an annual ranking by USA Today of the country's top athletic programs, 6 times since its inception in 1971. Four Trojans have won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in America: diver Sammy Lee (1953), shot putter Parry O'Brien (1959), swimmer John Naber (1977) and swimmer Janet Evans (1989).
From the 1904 Summer Olympics through the 2008 games, 393 Trojan athletes have competed in the Games, taking home 122 gold medals, 76 silver and 60 bronze. If it were an independent country, USC would be ranked 12th in the world in terms of medals. Since 1912, USC is the only university in the world to have a gold medal-winning athlete in every summer Olympiad.
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