Colton, CA—Turns out a Colton High School campus mural featuring the logos of prominent Southern California colleges was missing one.

Today, the University of Southern California’s famous Trojan logo was added to the college mural on the side of the 500 building facing Dorothy Cooley Lane. The mural, which already displays the logos of Californian universities and community colleges, such as UCLA and San Bernardino Valley College, somehow left out USC, one of the region’s most popular institutions.

Turns out, this may not have been an accident.

Alongside signifiers of universities like Long Beach State, UCR, and CSUSB is also the logo for Ohio State University, the alma mater of CHS Principal, Joda Murphy. The rivalry between the two schools dates all the way back to 1937, when the Trojans defeated the Buckeyes 13-12. USC currently holds a 12-9-1 record in the schools’ head-to-head matchups. The sting of those defeats may well indicate why Principal Murphy did not include USC’s Trojan among the collage of school logos.

However, don’t expect Principal Murphy to admit the omission was intentional. “After multiple eyes approved the California college schools, once the mural was up we recognized another familiar California college needed to be added. Despite a fierce rivalry between the principal’s alma mater and USC, it was decided USC should be added to the wall.”

ROP STEAM Shop teacher, Daniel Hearon, told a slightly different story. Before taking a position at Colton High School, Mr. Hearon was Supervising Project Manager for the Engineering department at USC. He noticed the omission of his school’s logo and reached out to Principal Murphy.

“I happened to be walking by and saw [USC] weren’t up there, so I was on my way to the office and I went and talked to Ms. Murphy about it. I said, ‘Hey, I retired from there, and I’m pretty proud of it, and somehow they got overlooked and weren’t on the wall.’ So, apparently, Ms. Murphy is resolving that and I couldn’t be happier.”

Principal Murphy shared that before Mr. Hearon reached out to her, she was already abreast of the situation when a friend of hers pointed out the missing Trojan after seeing a photograph of the mural.

To add to the rivalry, it also turns out that Barry Bettger, owner of Murals for Schools, the company responsible for the murals along Dorothy Cooley Lane, also has a distaste for USC. He found the omission hilarious.

The question still remains: was this intentional by a principal defending her alma mater’s honor, or was it just a coincidental accident? All we can do is speculate.