USC was always the right side.
I guess the Utah steam was due to frigid temperatures and someone thinking the SoCal soyboys might be off their game because of it.
You are operating under the assumption that any line movement that you saw was a reaction to bets or money or "steam" that you want to call it. That's a false assumption, at least how you are applying it.
Where you are focusing it was the other way around and was a general theme for the weekend, particularly with certain subsets of the market. I've written about this many times and even posted the subset of plays that were affected this weekend. It's a teach by example theme maybe you can catch it next time around.
To say USC was the "right side" also sounds like a guess. Market forecasts from all types of levels would disagree and those guys would scoff at you for determining the "right side" after the game.
The books, and the market, have your head spinning. Just like both intended. It's a nature of the beast and played out for you last night, along with many others.
I hope you had Hawaii +13.5, because one of the reasons the market wanted to spin out the bettors was to divert attention from the actual "right" side. The diversion to mitigate some of the Utah pressure was earlier in the week. Not sure if you can pick up what I'm putting down, only those watching the examples real time would begin to understand.
It's just the nature, and treeeememdous difficulty, of the beast the bettors are up against. It's not just the other bettors, it's the books too.