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YOU GET THE feeling that every time coach Pete Carroll walks out his front door, he trips over another high school All-America longing to be a Trojan. With an impressive recruiting haul that added to a roster already overflowing with talent, it's little wonder that the Trojans are the popular pick to win the national championship. The only thing they appear to lack is enough playing time to distribute among their various stars and stars-in-the-making.

The crowd at running back, where USC has 10--seriously, 10--former high school stars, might be the best evidence of the Trojans' wealth of talent. But most of those backs are notable more for their promise than for their production at the college level. Rather it's at linebacker, where Brian Cushing, Rey Maualuga and Keith Rivers are arguably the best three-man unit in the country, that USC's overabundance at every position is most apparent. "This is the biggest, fastest, most aggressive linebacking group we've had," says Carroll.

Maualuga and Rivers were first-team All- Pac-10 selections last year, while Cushing was a second-teamer. All three players are on various watch lists for national awards this season, and with Cushing returning to his natural strongside linebacker position, they should form a perfectly complementary unit.

The fiercest hitter of the trio is the 6' 3", 250-pound Maualuga, a junior middle linebacker whose skull-rattling tackle of UCLA quarterback Patrick Cowan along the sideline last December is still a YouTube favorite. "You can tell Rey's hits by the sound," former center Ryan Kalil, now with the Carolina Panthers, said after that game. "You don't even have to see them. He absolutely crushes people." The 6' 4", 240-pound Cushing, also a junior, is the most versatile of the group. He adapted so well to playing on the line that he led the Trojans with 13 1/2 tackles-for-loss in 2006 and was voted defensive MVP of the Rose Bowl, with 2 1/2�sacks and a forced fumble in USC's 32-18 win over Michigan. Rivers, a 6' 3", 235-pound senior, is the speediest of the three. Once, when asked for three words to describe his strengths, he replied, "Fast, physical and . . . fast." He led the team with 85 tackles and three forced fumbles last season.

Carroll would like to see the Trojans create more turnovers this season. The defense forced only 22 last season, down from 38 in 2005, a decline that Carroll is determined to reverse this fall. These stellar linebackers should help USC get back to taking the ball away, after which they may have to wrestle some postseason awards from one another.