Football fever is here

Good morning. Here are the five USC, Los Angeles and California stories you need to know for today.

Football fever is here. The Trojans take on Utah in the Pac-12 championship today at 5 p.m. hoping to punch a ticket to their first-ever College Football Playoff — and add the cherry on top of a stunning one-season turnaround.

Carson Dorais, Ben Cohen and Lorenzo Arce / Annenberg Media

Canvassers working on behalf of oil companies are blatantly lying to Californians, asking them to sign a petition that they say will ban new oil wells near homes and schools — when in fact the petition is meant to do the exact opposite: Put the landmark ban on hold.

Liza Gross / Inside Climate News

Los Angeles is contending with a dramatic surge in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, raising the possibility of a return to indoor mask mandates. Experts say that likely wouldn’t come for a while, though, if it does at all.

Rong-Gong Lin II / Los Angeles Times

Oakland teens fought — and won — the battle to lower the city’s voting age to 16. But Alameda County, which runs Oakland’s elections, never got around to implementing the measure during this year’s midterms.

Moriah Balingit / The Washington Post

The California Department of Justice mistakenly released the names, addresses, driver’s license numbers and criminal histories of 192,200 gun owners in June, a third-party investigation found. The data was downloaded by 507 unique IP addresses for the 12-hour period that it was public.

Adam Beam / Associated Press

You’re all caught up. Thanks for reading Morning, Trojan, and have a good day. Anna Hsu copy edited this newsletter.

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