The sparse attendance at USC’s opener against San Jose State last weekend became quite a topic of conversation on social media, and I regret that one of my own posts on X may have started it.I happened to turn on NBC right at kickoff, and one of the first things I saw was the nearly empty lower sections behind the end zone. I admittedly didn’t put much thought into my “Didn’t realize USC’s spring game was today” joke when I posted the screenshot on X. It did not occur to me the entirety of college football — even Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire — would take endless shots at Trojans fans for not caring enough about sports.As I said after the fact, I personally had no problem with thousands of Trojans fans opting to stay home. Why? Because this was the wretched game USC added to its schedule late last year when Lincoln Riley begged out of the Trojans’ semiannual Thanksgiving weekend date with rival Notre Dame. (Which of those schools deserves the blame was a whole other war for another day.) If only some USC fans had actually come out and said they were staging some sort of protest, they might have garnered some support from afar.Alas, they all said it was because of the extreme heat, which only invited fans in Texas, Oklahoma and other scorching locales to call the folks in L.A. soft. But this reader sent me a mailbag question that made me wonder whether I’m onto something.