In the customary manner, almost everyone gets behind a small American university (2,5)
I believe the answer is:
as usual
'in the customary manner' is the definition.
'almost everyone gets behind a small american university' is the wordplay.
'almost' means to remove the last letter (most of the word but not all of it).
'everyone' becomes 'all' (I've seen this before).
'gets behind' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'small american university' becomes 'susu' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'all' with its final letter taken away is 'al'.
'a'+'susu'='asusu'
'al' put after 'asusu' is 'AS USUAL'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for as usual that I've seen before include "In the customary way" , "In the normal way, habitually" , "in typical fashion" , "Typically" , "In the normal course, routinely" .)