Once upon a time, the Fresno State football program was defined by a victory in a forgotten bowl game over a middling USC team, but no longer. After Saturday night’s remarkable 50-42 loss to no. 1 USC at a packed L.A. Coliseum, the Bulldog program will be known more for a vigorous defeat to the Trojans than for that stunning win in the 1992 Freedom Bowl.

Most observers figured if Fresno played well, it could give the Trojans a game for a half before succumbing to USC’s athletic superiority. Instead, USC and coach Pete Carroll were engaged by the Bulldogs in a 60-minute street fight that the Trojans were only able to pull out thanks to the Heisman-clinching heroics of Reggie Bush (a Pac-10 record 513 all-purpose yards) and five Fresno turnovers.

But don’t think Fresno coach Pat Hill wants to be known as the David that almost slew Goliath. He schedules these type of games according to his motto – “Anybody, Anytime, Anywhere” – because he knows it’s the best way to put his little-engine-that-could program on the college football map.

Many of the players on that 1992 Freedom Bowl team were recruited by Hill, who served as the school’s offensive-line coach and recruiting coordinator from 1984-89 before leaving for stints at the University of Arizona, and then with the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens of the NFL. In Cleveland, he served as an assistant under another coach who knows a thing or two about program-building: Bill Belichick.

When the Fresno St. job came open in 1997,Hill returned to California and immediately set out to extend the reach of his program beyond the lush agricultural valley in which it plays. Perhaps he foresaw the deepening of the divide between the “have” schools – those from the six power conference with automatic berths into the Bowl Championship Series – and the “have-nots”- those from league’s like Fresno’s Western Athletic Conference that are left to fight for college football’s table scraps.

Hill had no desire to simply dominate the WAC and fatten his non-conference record against other “mid-major” programs. To do so might lead to a 10-1 season and little or no national attention – as schools like Tulane and TCU can attest. Instead, Hill refused to allow his program to be limited by its membership in the WAC and began taking on all comers, usually on the road. During his eight years as the top Bulldog, he has taken his team to play in some of college football’s most hostile environments, and they’ve come away with several wins, improving year to year. The Bulldogs were 26-22 in Hill’s first four seasons and 46-17 in the last five.

Hill even got a shot at a top-ranked team, losing at no. 1 Oklahoma early in the 2003 season, to go along with wins at places like Wisconsin, Kansas State, and Colorado. But the game he really wanted was in Los Angeles with USC. Fresno had been lobbying to force its way onto the Trojans’ schedule for years. The work paid off in February when USC agreed to add the Bulldogs in place of Temple, which had pulled out of the game.

Fresno was granted a late-November matchup primarily because USC didn’t want two idle Saturdays leading up to their season-ending grudge match with UCLA. As is commonplace when a smaller-conference school plays a BCS league school on the road, Fresno State also picked up a $500,000 guarantee for making the trip.

Hill got exactly what he wanted out of the deal – a chance to showcase his team against the bullies down the freeway, some funds for the program, and the opportunity to bring a huge caravan of fans to help fill the cavernous Coliseum. Some estimates put the number as high as 20,000 in the sold-out crowd of 90,000-plus.

In a typical David vs. Goliath match up, the mid-major school shows up, a few hundred fans in tow, picks up its appearance fee, and promptly gets steamrolled by the home favorite.

Of course, Carroll and USC knew they weren’t getting a pushover when they added Fresno State to a non-conference slate that already featured Arkansas, Notre Dame, and an always-tricky trip to Hawaii. Not only is Fresno an experienced team with many a road war against BCS schools under its belt, but it is backed by an entire swatch of the state. Hill has embraced the fans throughout the region, adding a green “V” to the back of his team’s helmets to represent the entire San Joaquin Valley. In Hill’s logic, his team plays for a population of five million, not just the 500,000 residents of Fresno.

That this game even occurred owes as much to Carroll’s riverboat-gambler nature as it does to Hill’s macho annual call-outs of USC. So while the L.A. media spent Sunday questioning why exactly USC needed to take this game, perhaps we should just revel in the fact that Carroll was willing to do it, just as he was willing to go for the touchdown and the win rather than a chip-shot field goal and overtime against Notre Dame.

The win over Fresno goes into the book as USC’s 33rd straight, but this one was every bit as difficult as the miracle win at South Bend five weeks ago. USC’s triumph wasn’t sealed until safety Darnell Bing intercepted a Paul Pinegar pass in the USC end zone in the final minute.

Most East Coast viewers were asleep by the time the final whistle blew, but the endless replays and discussion on the Sunday sports shows should guarantee that Fresno benefits from its effort. The voters in the AP Poll seemed to recognize as much, leaving Fresno at no. 16 following the loss, the same rank the Bulldogs took into the Coliseum.

It’s hard to imagine that Hill’s success and the near-win over USC haven’t opened the eyes of the administration at some down-on-its-luck BCS league school. And given that putting a major scare into the best team in the nation will only make it harder to convince other top schools to give his team a game, might Hill be lured away from Fresno?

Don’t bet on it. There’s another significance to that “V” on the helmets – it’s color, green. As Hill told the Pasadena Quarterbacks Club at its luncheon last Friday, “They say the grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but my philosophy is, make your grass greener.”

Hill would never admit it, but Saturday night’s loss has done more to fertilize that San Joaquin Valley grass than any of his wins.

Mr. Levine is a writer for the statistical Web site FootballOutsiders.com.