LOS ANGELES — Monte Kiffin’s face filled with anticipation and disbelief. His eyes gleamed like marbles, reflecting the late afternoon sun.

Have you not heard, he said, how Southern California landed Silas Redd?

That was an addendum to a larger feat: how U.S.C. could endure a two-year bowl ban to be voted No. 1 in the preseason rankings, how Matt Barkley and T. J. McDonald stayed to see the team’s revitalization through to the end, and how Kiffin’s son Lane, the U.S.C. coach, had meticulously planned it all.

Two years ago, the fallout from the Reggie Bush scandal — four years of probation, three years of limited scholarships and the two-year bowl ban — seemed crippling.

But there was no doubting the enthusiasm of Monte Kiffin, a U.S.C. assistant. It was not simply for Redd, a former Penn State running back. It was for how U.S.C. presented Redd with the idea of coming west, convinced him, “in true S.C. fashion,” as Lane Kiffin described it, and how that had embodied the vigor in U.S.C.’s resurgence. If U.S.C.’s dip — going 8-5 and then 10-2 in the past two seasons with no bowl games — was ever more than a hiccup, landing Redd offered some reprieve. And quite a tale.