USC sprayed players with hoses in practice to prepare for rain vs. Notre Dame

This isn’t the normal baptism Catholics do but whatever floats your boat

When No. 10 USC goes into South Bend to take on the No. 21 Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Saturday, they’ll be ready for anything the Irish throw at them. That includes the weather.

In order to prepare for potential rainfall, USC coaches went to a tried and true practice to make sure the Trojan hands were on point: spraying them and the footballs they practiced with in water.

Spraying water at players to prepare for inclement weather isn’t a new or innovative practice, but I do wonder if it helps mitigate the amount of fumbles or drops a team has when they have to travel into inclement weather. It’s incredibly funny seeing a coach run around with a water hose to spray water in the nearby area, on the ball and on the player to get them ready for an upcoming torrential downpour.

For what it’s worth, around the 7:30 p.m. ET kickoff time of the USC-Notre Dame game, there’s a projected 50 percent chance of rain and the weather will be in the high 40’s to low 50’s. Some people call that football weather. I call that hell. Nobody willingly asks to play in temperatures below 65 degrees, and if you do then you’re a psychopath.

I wonder how Notre Dame is preparing for this. Because there’s supposed to be rain in the South Bend area all week, is there a day where they practice in rain? Will they just use Mother Nature to prepare them in the game? Would that create an unfair advan—I’m just kidding with that, but it is an interesting point to ask about playing in the elements.

Of course, the weather in LA is always bright, so good on the USC coaches for ripping a page out of the old playbook to get the Trojans ready.