How one emoji — ✌️ — ignited Caleb Williams hysteria among USC’s football faithful

Oklahoma quarterback Caleb Williams (13) warms up before the start of an NCAA college football.
Oklahoma quarterback Caleb Williams warms up earlier than a sport in opposition to Iowa State on Nov. 20.
(Alonzo Adams / Related Press)

It was simply earlier than midday on Jan. 15 when a single emoji from USC soccer’s official Twitter account whipped a complete fan base right into a frenzy.

It was posted with out rationalization. For an hour, it sat unexplained, inspiring message board threads and festering within the deepest, most paranoid recesses of USC’s fan base. However contemplating the context, the emoji’s arrival at that specific second actually appeared as if it had been full of which means. Followers had been already on pins and needles, awaiting phrase on whether or not school soccer’s most coveted switch was coming to USC. A single emoji despatched them spiraling.

May this ✌️ be an indication? Was Caleb Williams on the way in which? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN??

Since coming into the switch portal in early January, Williams hasn’t supplied any clear indications he plans to observe his former Sooners coach, new Trojans coach Lincoln Riley, from Oklahoma to L.A. However all indicators proceed to level in that path, and right here, it appeared, USC was content material to throw digital kindling on the hearth within the type of its “Combat On” emoji. When extra USC accounts adopted swimsuit, sending out their very own bat alerts through Twitter — typically, with a number of emojis at a time — the cryptic tweet would ignite an web inferno.

9 days later, that fireplace continues to be burning. Williams stays within the portal, and USC staffers proceed to ship out cryptic emojis, knowingly fanning the flames as Trojans followers’ persistence wears thinner with every passing tweet.

They gained’t have to attend for much longer. To take part in USC’s spring semester — and thus, spring soccer follow — a brand new switch should be enrolled as a full-time scholar by Jan. 28. If Williams intends to be USC’s quarterback of the longer term subsequent fall, he'll virtually actually have to determine his destiny by Friday.

Within the meantime, the final quarterback to carry that title continues to make use of the switch portal to its fullest extent. Jaxson Dart has already visited Mississippi, Oklahoma and Brigham Younger since unexpectedly coming into the portal quickly after Williams, a choice that appeared to point on the time that Dart’s days as USC’s inheritor obvious had been numbered.

Dart hasn’t selected his vacation spot both — maybe as he too waits on Williams’ resolution. However whereas its future at quarterback continues to hold within the steadiness, USC has got down to remake nearly each different place on its roster.

Within the 9 days since that first emoji was despatched, USC has added eight transfers by way of the portal, flashing its emoji bat sign over Twitter for every. The additions gave the Trojans a switch class of 12, greater than all however three applications in school soccer.

In the previous couple of days alone, Riley has rebuilt USC’s offensive backfield with two beginning operating backs from the Pac-12 Convention, Oregon’s Travis Dye and Stanford’s Austin Jones. Earlier than that, he solidified the Trojans’ receiving corps, including Colorado’s Brenden Rice and Oklahoma’s Mario Williams, the latter of whom visited USC with former Sooners quarterback Williams earlier this month.

With the most recent addition of two linebackers from the Southeastern Convention, Alabama’s Shane Lee and Auburn’s Romello Peak, the Trojans’ class of transfers ranks second within the nation, in line with 247Sports.com. And that’s with out Caleb Williams, the highest accessible switch in school soccer.

Extra readability needs to be coming quickly on that entrance. Till then, USC followers could have no alternative however to proceed their excruciating wait, not sure whether or not the subsequent emoji would possibly lastly be adopted by the switch announcement they had been hoping for all alongside.

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