The USC Trojans handed out two scholarships to two of their players today.
One was kicker Alex Wood, who has actually seen plenty of action on the field. He handled kickoff duties as a sophomore for the team's final eight games. He also was the team's placekicker when Andre Heidari went out and hit all of his PATs. Wood will be the team's starting placekicker again this season, as he managed touchbacks on about 30% of his attempts.
"I have been out there before for PATs, they're simple kicks," Wood said. "It's the same feeling, a field goal should be the same kick. It's three points instead of one obviously, but I've been out there for kickoffs and I think I've gotten the nerves out."
The other was wide receiver Christian Tober, who has seen brief action each of the last few seasons (he had a broken collarbone early last season and missed the remainder of the year). Tober is easy to overlook on the USC receiving corps with crazy talents like Darreus Rogers, JuJu Smith, Adoree Jackson and Steven Mitchell ahead of him. But Tober had a great fall camp, catching passes and housing them.
Both of these Trojans earned those scholarships.