Winners on the Field, They Found Life Harder to Tackle

On New Year’s Day 1990, the young men of the USC football team won the biggest game of their lives.

Led by first-year quarterback Todd Marinovich, the Trojans fought their way past the University of Michigan Wolverines in the Rose Bowl. The score had been tied until the final two minutes, when Ricky Ervins, the diminutive tailback from Pasadena, ran in the final touchdown for a 17-10 victory and was named the Rose Bowl’s most valuable player in his hometown.

After the victory, senior cornerback Ernest Spears reflected to a Times reporter on what the game might mean for the players.

“A game like this gives you confidence to go out into the world,” said Spears, who made four tackles in the game. “You go out a winner, and hopefully you will be a winner in life.”

Up to then, the players had been hailed as winners in life because they were winners in football.

But whether they realized it on that day or not, most of them were soon to face life without the game and its glory. Football might have been what they did best, but most would quickly have to learn how to win in life without it.

There were 119 men on USC’s 1990 Rose Bowl roster. Twenty-seven of them were later drafted by National Football League teams. Ten played five years or more in the league. Eight were still in the NFL at age 30. Today, only two remain in the NFL -- Junior Seau of the Miami Dolphins and Johnnie Morton of the San Francisco 49ers. Two others, Pat O’Hara and Mark Tucker, play for teams in the indoor Arena Football League.

What happened to the rest? And can the lessons of their lives offer anything to this year’s USC players, as they face Wednesday’s national championship game and, inevitably, life after college football?

The Times sought out members of the 1989 USC team and found 86 of them. The players now are in their mid-to-late 30s. Enough time has passed for them to reflect soberly on their football experiences and to take stock of how their time in the game shaped, inspired or hampered them.

Their life experiences form a mosaic of expectations fulfilled and frustrated.

Most followed the same paths as other successful young men from their communities or backgrounds: Those from well-off suburban families now are mostly well-off suburbanites themselves. The two who became doctors were the sons of medical professionals -- a doctor and a pharmacist. Many who came from more modest, blue-collar backgrounds used USC as a path to the kinds of decent-paying jobs common among first-generation college graduates.

Twelve of the former players are coaches or teachers, the most popular career choice. Others own their own businesses, such as private coaching services, catering and printing companies, and health clubs. There are police officers, mortgage bankers, insurance salesmen, and real estate and securities brokers. Also a minister, a bus driver and several felons, including one who is serving a life sentence for robbery and kidnapping. Another player, investment analyst Alan Wilson, died in 2002 of diabetes.

A few are well-known, like Seau, a perennial All-Pro linebacker. A few others, like Marinovich -- who has struggled with drug addiction -- are more famous for their personal trials than their football performances.

Many of the team’s stars never made it in the pros, but some who were overshadowed at USC went on to successful football careers. Matt Willig, a lineman who was a backup at USC, played in the NFL until this season.

Some players surprised their teammates in other ways. Spears made it to the pros, but no longer has any interest in even watching football. He instead is devoted to studying Tibetan Buddhism.

Race -- a hot-button topic in sports -- seems to have had little influence in determining the players’ post-USC careers. The team was almost evenly split between black and white players, with a smattering of Latinos, Samoans and Asians.

Unlike many Division 1 football teams, where a disproportionate number of black players do not graduate, there was little difference in the graduation rates of black and white players on USC’s 1989 team.

The same equality applied to their career paths. Five players, for example, became police officers -- two of them white, two black and one Samoan. There is one black lawyer, one white; one black actor, one white.

Many of the happiest former players are those who never expected to play in the NFL. Eddy Chavez, a backup fullback on the team, transformed the T-shirt business he started at USC into a multinational firm, something he said might not have happened if he had made it in football.

“Some of the guys who went big-time have a hard time in the real world,” he said. “They’re always trying to find something comparable to what they were doing, which is not reality.”

Nearly every player who saw significant action on the field was injured in some way. Some have undergone arthroscopic surgery seemingly as often as other people have had cavities filled. Several have had pins, screws or rods implanted in them.

A few players say they cannot play ball with their children; many say running is too painful. Even many of those able to engage in vigorous activities say they have limits.

Travis Hannah, a wide receiver who played in the NFL and Arena Football League, said he has “12 metal clamps holding my shoulder together” to correct pro football injuries. Hannah works as a private coach for NFL and college players, but “I can’t swim, my shoulder will still pop out.”

Players responded differently -- sometimes dramatically so -- to the physical and mental tolls of competing at the highest level, and their often sudden withdrawal from the game. Some thrived; others suffered. Ultimately, they said, their values and character meant more than their athletic talents.

The great variety of paths taken by the players after they left USC tests a truth that many Americans hold to be self-evident: Sports builds character and prepares one for life.

College football programs are often criticized for luring athletes from poor backgrounds who are unable to do college work into an effectively foreign environment in which they will fail.

The 1990 Rose Bowl team was part of an intense struggle over such values at USC. The university had long made its name as a football school -- by then it had produced four Heisman trophy winners but no Nobel laureates.

The team’s coach, Larry Smith, had come to the Trojans three years earlier to take over a team in academic distress. Only a quarter of the football players who entered USC in 1984 had graduated by 1989.

Smith raised graduation rates substantially, in part by recruiting players with more academic potential. Of the 119 Rose Bowl team members, 77% graduated from USC, better than the overall USC rate at the time. USC’s most recent graduation rate for football players, as reported to the NCAA, was 58%.

But even after Smith arrived, players clustered in a few academic departments. Forty-eight majored in the same subject -- public administration. Most said they chose the major on the advice of athletic department advisors, or went along with what teammates were studying.

“I majored in football,” said tight end Yonnie Jackson, who added that his public administration major placed a distant second in his life. “All the guys were in public administration. We had the same classes. You could study by committee.”

Jackson, now a lawyer in Galt, Calif., is dismissive of his college studies: “Public administration -- I still don’t know what that is, I really don’t.”

According to USC, the major “trains leaders ... [for] the challenging and complex issues of governing, managing and building contemporary urban communities.”

Only one of the team’s public administration majors actually became a government official -- Len Gorecki, parks and recreation manager for the city of Paramount.

Communications was the second most popular major, followed by business.

Smith’s success with players in the classroom mattered little when his team declined on the field. In 1992, after USC went 6-5-1 and lost to Fresno State in a bowl game, Smith was fired.

Many of the players on the 1989 team said they chose USC partly because of its heavily touted alumni network. But only three said they were hired by alumni, though several others said they were involved in business deals or partnerships with teammates.

Aaron Emanuel, a top running back, said he did not know how to take advantage of encounters with alumni when he was on the team.

“Back then, when I was so busy going to functions and acting like a hotshot in front of alumni, I was not thinking about getting their card, or asking them to tell me about what they did,” he said.

Emanuel, a substitute teacher in Culver City, now advises his young relatives in college football to talk with alumni as much about their professions as about football.

“You need to come out right away and let them know you’re not just a jock on the field,” he said.

Though many players did not get jobs from USC alumni, they formed bonds with one another that have remained strong over the years.

“You spend five years with guys in the same place. You come in together, win together, lose together and leave together,” said center Brad Leggett, who played for the NFL’s New Orleans Saints. “In the NFL the roster changes every year, guys are married and have families. It’s totally different.”

Center Tom Dabasinskas, now a Presbyterian minister in Moraga, Calif., performed the wedding of linebacker Craig Hartsuyker.

In college, linebacker Brian Tuliau carried his injured roommate, quarterback Pat O’Hara, to classes. They later were best man at each other’s wedding.

Spears has lost all interest in football, but keeps in regular contact with his teammates.

In May, when Marinovich was arrested for drug possession in Newport Beach, his fifth drug arrest, his college teammates stood by him. Twenty-three of them put up $4,600 to help pay for drug treatment, allowing Marinovich to avoid jail time.

Then Marinovich walked out of his residential treatment program in September, violating his probation and sentence. He disappeared for three weeks before he surrendered to authorities and was returned to jail.

Craig Gibson, the teammate who led the fundraising effort, said that before he raised the money, he pleaded with Marinovich not to “burn this bridge.” Now, Gibson said, “I guess he’s burned it.”

During the 16 years after their glorious New Year’s Day football game, Marinovich and his teammates encountered challenges in life for which football had not prepared them.

But most believe that they have achieved the goal of becoming “winners in life,” as Spears hoped for in 1990. Figuring out just what that meant without football, and finding a way to get there, was for many as tough -- and rewarding -- an experience as beating Michigan that day in the Rose Bowl.

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Pat O’Hara | Quarterback

Injury Sacked USC Star, but Not Gridiron Future

Pat O’Hara watched his team win the 1990 Rose Bowl without him.

A severe knee injury just before the start of the season prevented the quarterback from playing and made every step forward a physical struggle.

“My goal was not, ‘I need to get on the field.’ It was, ‘I need to be able to walk.’ Then maybe I’ll be able to run,” he recalled.

Before the season began, O’Hara had beaten out Todd Marinovich for the starting quarterback job. But O’Hara’s injury gave the position to Marinovich, who then led the Trojans to the Pac-10 conference championship and the Rose Bowl.

O’Hara began the season confined to bed with a morphine drip. He underwent surgery and took more pain medications. He lost 50 pounds -- a quarter of his body weight -- and sank into depression.

Sportswriters praised the way O’Hara suffered nobly, never complaining, never quitting. But their praise had a subtext: He was a great person who was through as a player. “I was 20 years old and I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘This is it, this is my identity. I’m a football player. I’m supposed to be the quarterback at USC. What do I do now ?’ ”

O’Hara did not suit up for the Rose Bowl. He stood on the sidelines, his baggy white suit, mullet haircut and gold neck chain making him look like a cast member from the then-popular “Miami Vice” TV show. He felt as out of place as he appeared.

He spent the next season -- his last -- as the holder on kicks. He threw only nine passes in his college career.

But O’Hara quietly and intensely worked on his rehabilitation. He also focused on his schoolwork and graduated with a public administration degree.

Then a funny thing happened.

Gary Wellman and other receivers on the team asked him to throw to them as they auditioned for NFL scouts. The scouts saw that O’Hara had a bazooka-like arm. “All of a sudden I started getting phone calls,” he said.

Then a former teammate, Buffalo Bills defensive back Chris Hale, happened to sit next to former NFL quarterback James Harris on a plane flight. Harris, an NFL scout, asked Hale if he knew about any good players under the radar. Hale mentioned O’Hara.

Harris met O’Hara and had him throw a few balls on a field at West Los Angeles College. He was impressed enough to persuade the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to take a chance. The Bucs drafted O’Hara in the 10th round.

Written off in college, O’Hara played three years with Tampa Bay and the San Diego Chargers. Since then he has played for the Orlando, Tampa Bay and Toronto teams in the Arena Football League and has quarterbacked in five championship games.

Now 37, he plays with and against some men who were in elementary school when he was at USC. O’Hara expects to play at least another year with the Tampa Bay Storm and hopes to become an Arena League coach.

Some NFL players scoff at the indoor league, which typically pays its players less than $100,000 a year. But, O’Hara said, he has appreciated being part of the league’s progress over the years, as he and other players formed a union and won health insurance and other benefits.

O’Hara lives in Orlando with his wife, Billie, and their sons Tyler, 6, and Trace, 3.

In the off-season, he coaches high school football and works as a movie consultant.

He was an advisor for football scenes in “The Longest Yard” and for the upcoming film “Invincible,” the story of a man who succeeds as a pro football player in his 30s, despite not having played in college.

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Ernest Spears | Cornerback

Football Couldn’t Answer His Questions

At the New York Port Authority bus station on a winter Sunday two years ago, Ernest Spears noticed a football game showing on a television set.

Mildly curious, he approached a young man who was watching the game and asked him who was playing. The man seemed astounded. “It’s the Super Bowl!” he said.

“He gave me a disgusted look, like I was crazy,” Spears recalled. “I was thinking ‘Man, you don’t know the half of it.’ ”

In fact, Spears had been a star cornerback for USC and had started in the 1990 Rose Bowl. He then went on to play with the NFL’s New Orleans Saints.

But today, he said, football is no longer part of his life.

“I just don’t think about it anymore,” he said.

A devout Buddhist, he is repelled by football’s violence. But mostly the sport bores him. He prefers seeking answers to what he sees as deeper questions. Spears lives in Howell, N.J., where he moved to study with a Tibetan lama.

At USC, Spears turned his 6-foot, 1-inch frame into a 200-pound weapon. He was graceful at picking off passes, and brutal when flattening opposing ballcarriers.

Spears’ body now is a trim shadow of his football days. At his current size, with his mixed Filipino and African American features, he looks a bit like Tiger Woods.

Spears starts most mornings with a stroll through the thick woods surrounding the Manasquan Reservoir near his house. Hardly a bookworm in college, he reads as he paces. Aloud. In Tibetan.

Buddhism “is not about winning or losing. It’s about doing a good job, being a good person and producing good people. Maybe that’s what I was missing as an athlete,” Spears said.

He is so detached from sports now that he even passed up playing in the temple softball game, which pitted the vegetarians against his fellow meat-eaters.

Spears’ disillusionment with football accelerated when he reached the NFL.

“In a couple of weeks I caught myself saying, ‘Is this it?’ I’m at the top of the food chain. I’m in the NFL. I’m supposed to be happy. I wasn’t happy.”

Even as he wrestled with his growing ambivalence, Spears was devastated when the Saints cut him after his first year.

“You’re asking yourself: My whole life was dedicated to this, now it’s gone. What do I do?” Spears said.

A fraternity brother helped Spears, who had a degree in communications from USC, get a mortgage banking job in Newport Beach. He earned a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix. But, Spears said, he began to “feel like a dummy in social settings,” when others would refer to unfamiliar books or ideas.

He began reading on his own, and one day found a book on Buddhism. Spears identified immediately with the life of Buddha.

“He had my problems. He had everything and shunned it all,” he said.

When he moved to New York for a minority executive training position, Spears got rid of most of his possessions, even giving away his USC helmet, jersey and rings from three Rose Bowls. In New York, he discovered the Howell, N.J., Buddhist community, about 90 minutes away.

Spears said he quit his job rather than take a transfer to Los Angeles, not wanting to interrupt his Buddhist studies. He had met Michael Roche, a Buddhist monk whose work applied Buddhist ideals to business management.

With Roche, Spears founded the Enlightened Business Institute, a group that conducts workshops for business executives. In 2003, with the institute up and running, Spears returned to the full-time study of Buddhism. In the last year, Spears, who has never married and has no children, supported himself by working in a Subway sandwich shop, then a Barnes and Noble bookstore. He also does business consulting for an interior design firm, and would like to either expand that job into a career or work in the fashion industry.

After the 1990 Rose Bowl, Spears said he hoped that winning the game would make him a “winner in life.” He no longer thinks of winning and losing, he said, and if he had it to do over again, he would not have played college football.

But he keeps in touch with teammates and says the challenge of playing at USC taught him some key lessons.

“You can push yourself past your breaking point,” Spears said. “You’ve got to get through ... then there’s euphoria, and you see other thresholds.... Most people never experience that. They never break through that first threshold. They don’t realize how much ability they really have.”

*

Cleveland Colter | Defensive Back

His Son Brought Him Back to Football

All-American Cleveland Colter stood out even on USC’s talent-packed 1990 Rose Bowl team. But when a knee injury kept him from being drafted by the NFL, he faded out of sight.

Teammates began to wonder whether he was another sports superstar who lacked the skills to survive as a mere mortal.

After Colter did not respond to calls and letters, a reporter found him at home in Phoenix, fit and cheerful, looking just like his picture in the 1989 USC media guide. And football was back in his life.

As Colter apologized for being out of touch, his 12-year-old son, Cleveland III, sought his father’s help in pulling his football jersey over shoulder pads for a practice on his youth team.

“I’m happy as heck right now,” the elder Colter said.

But his journey since USC had been tough. “I know a lot of people are depressed in the world. I’ve been there, man. It ain’t a good place,” he said.

He runs a catering business with his wife, Anita, whom he met at USC. Along with Cleveland III, known as “Trey,” they have a daughter, Zoe, 9.

Colter’s childhood was traumatic. His father, a former Arizona high school football player of the year, died when Colter was 8. After dropping Cleveland off at football practice, the elder Colter had a pulmonary seizure while under anesthesia at the dentist.

“Football, and sports in general, became my escape,” said Colter, who later was an Arizona player of the year in high school.

Colter continued to shine at USC, winning the starting strong safety job as a sophomore. When he hurt his knee in his junior year, however, he rejected surgery because he feared that anesthesia would kill him as it had his father.

“They wanted to put me under the knife, but at age 20, my mind was playing tricks,” he said. His father’s death “still haunts me to this day.” Even now, he won’t step into a dentist’s office.

Despite his injury, his senior year he was again a starting player in the 1990 Rose Bowl.

USC coach Larry Smith said his bad knee “could have been corrected, and he could possibly have gone on to an NFL career.”

With his NFL dreams gone and no USC degree, a depressed Colter spent his post-college days holed-up in the Redondo Beach apartment he shared with Anita, while she worked as a secretary. Colter shied away from former teammates -- “I abandoned them.”

After two failed tryouts with the NFL’s Houston Oilers, he agreed to surgery. Then, four years after USC, Colter played for a Canadian Football League expansion team in Birmingham, Ala. But the team folded after one season.

Colter, who had been distraught about his lack of football success, put those dreams behind him for good after his son’s birth. He began cleaning construction sites as a contractor and found that he was a capable entrepreneur. He started his catering firm with proceeds from the cleaning business.

Colter, who had not watched football for years, was drawn back to the gridiron when Trey asked to play. He even coached Trey’s youth teams, despite some ambivalence about his son’s playing the game.

If Trey were to become a pro athlete, Colter said, he would prefer that he be a golfer.

Trey skipped football for two seasons, telling his father that he did not want to be injured like him.

But Trey got the bug again this season. He now would like to “beat my dad’s records” at USC and play in the NFL.

Golf? “After I retire from football,” Trey said.

*

Marcus Hopkins | Safety

His Game Plan Was by the Numbers

“You must have a plan.”

That’s Marcus Hopkins’ message to college athletes.

“If you do not have a plan, the system will come up with a plan for you, and the system will fail you,” he said.

Hopkins was a star running back at Lincoln High School in San Diego, the alma mater of former Trojan tailback and Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Allen.

He was expected to follow Allen’s path at USC and into the NFL. But Hopkins, who played safety during the 1990 Rose Bowl and then made it to the NFL, didn’t believe the hype about big-time football.

He was as ambitious academically as he was athletically.

Hopkins initially planned to major in architecture. Then academic advisors and coaches warned him that the time demands of architecture courses would conflict with football. Determined to pursue something demanding, Hopkins settled on math.

He was the only math major on the football team and the only football player in the math department. Hopkins recalls his college years as perhaps the toughest period of his life.

“It was lonely. Lonely in more than one way,” he said. As a math major, “I was isolated from other athletes.”

Hopkins said he believed that other math students were suspicious of his academic ability because he was an athlete.

“Just the way I looked -- a black male on campus with big shoulders -- it would be understood I was an athlete,” he said.

After graduation, Hopkins went to the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And when injuries ended his pro career after two years, he was grateful for his math degree.

He got a master’s degree in mathematics at Northern Arizona University and now works in San Diego as an engineer at Raytheon.

Today, he appreciates his college experience for what it was -- the chance to play football at the highest levels and earn a degree. He said high school students should be ready to pay the price if they want to use football, rather than be used by it.

“The system is leveraging you for its profit and gain ... so you must go in with a purpose. You must use whatever services they offer to your benefit -- [not theirs].

“Their purpose is to keep athletes eligible to play. They need to win games. If you come in just taking classes, spinning your wheels, after four or five years you will not be close to a degree.”

During his two years with Tampa Bay, he said, he made less than $150,000. It was enough to buy an Acura Legend, pay off a home improvement loan on his grandparents’ house and save a little.

Today, Hopkins lives in an affluent part of San Diego, is divorced and shares custody of his 11-year-old daughter.

He returns to the old neighborhood nearly every week to check on his grandmother, now in her 90s.

Some of the people he grew up with ended up on the wrong side of the law.

“I don’t sever my friendships,” he said. “I may limit my contact, or the timing, and I won’t let others jeopardize me, but my friendships are not based on status.”

One of those childhood friends is USC teammate Marcel Brown. Their friendship continued through Brown’s incarceration for robbery, and today Hopkins is helping Brown as he tries to return to college.

When he retires, Hopkins would like to return more often to his old neighborhood. He hopes to teach math at Lincoln High School.

*

Marcel Brown, Howard McCowan | Defensive Backs

A Crime Spree Derailed Their Lives and Hopes

Howard McCowan knows where he will die.

At 34, he is a three-strikes felon who is serving life without parole at High Desert State Prison in northeast California.

“Basically, I’ll be looking at this the rest of my days,” McCowan said calmly in a prison visiting room.

Former teammate Marcel Brown knows that McCowan’s fate could have been his too.

As freshmen defensive backs, McCowan and Brown mostly watched the 1990 Rose Bowl from the sidelines. But both were on track for starting positions on the team and seemed probable NFL prospects.

Then, a little more than a year after the big game, they veered terribly off course.

After Brown’s car was impounded for unpaid parking tickets, they went on a one-night crime spree, tackling pedestrians and stealing wallets to get money to reclaim the auto. They forced one victim into the car they were driving to look for an ATM, which added kidnapping to their charges.

They both served seven years in prison.

After prison, they seemed to be headed for recovery. Brown worked as a plumber, a trade he had learned in prison. McCowan spent a semester at El Camino College and then returned to USC.

But McCowan was confused by life outside.

“When I was incarcerated, I adapted,” he said. “When I got out, I didn’t know who I was or what I was supposed to do. Being a football player had been such a big part of my identity, and I did not have that anymore.”

Seeing USC teammates on NFL teams reinforced that feeling. “What I went through mentally on the street,” he said, “was way worse than anything I experienced in prison.”

Then, only weeks before completing his degree and a month after his parole had ended, McCowan robbed a liquor store. With his prior offenses, the robbery with a handgun was his third strike and meant a life sentence.

McCowan has no answer for why he threw away his second chance. “I really want to give you a reason, but there’s no good explanation,” he said.

McCowan’s family was devastated. His mother, Thelma McCowan, had worked double shifts as a nurse to support her children after the death of Howard’s father, a Grambling football star who played briefly in the pros.

She put Howard’s two older sisters through college, and when Howard was approaching high school age, she bought a house in Carson, partly so he could play for the powerful Carson High football team. She sold that house and another over the years to pay her son’s legal bills.

Today, McCowan is “going through the motions of an appeal,” but he is not hopeful.

He exercises, reads the Bible and Anne Rice novels, and has followed USC games on a TV in his cell. “I’ll always be an SC fan,” he said.

As McCowan languishes behind bars, Brown is working hard to turn his life around.

Brown, 34, grew up in a crime-ridden section of San Diego and was all too familiar with the criminal justice system.

His father, Clarence Brown, had been a legendary high school basketball player in San Diego. But the elder Brown went to jail for robbing a gas station just before he was to enroll in college on a basketball scholarship. Marcel’s brother is in prison for murder.

An All-American high school player, Brown expected football to be his ticket out. USC wanted him badly enough, he recalled, that it kept the door open as he took the SAT three times to attain the required minimum combined score of 700 out of a possible 1,600.

After his 1998 release from prison, he played a season of football at Grossmont College, where he earned an associate’s degree.

Today, he is divorced with one daughter and lives with his girlfriend, a registered nurse. An on-the-job injury ended his plumbing career. He gets by on workers’ compensation payments and part-time jobs, and is busy as a volunteer.

On weekday afternoons, he takes four middle-school boys to parks, leading them in exercises and homework sessions based on the rules of his USC coach, Larry Smith. He hopes to run a full-fledged nonprofit youth program someday. He also is an assistant coach for his former Pop Warner team and a San Diego women’s professional football squad.

Brown’s next goal is to re-enroll at USC. He plans to start writing to school officials this year, he said.

But he could have ended up back in prison instead of college. He narrowly escaped a third strike after he was pulled over on a traffic stop in 2004. An officer found a small amount of cocaine in his car. Brown said that the drug had been left by a relative.

Citing his exemplary conduct since prison, a judge sentenced Brown to probation.

Brown said he hopes USC will give him another chance. USC recruiters had once won him over with their promise that “Trojans will take care of each other all over the world.”

Brown has not been in touch with McCowan since they were in Los Angeles County Jail together 15 years ago.

He was saddened to hear that McCowan was back in prison. He regrets McCowan still suffers for that night when they threw away so much.

“We were kids. It was a long time ago. Kids do stupid stuff sometimes,” he said.

*

Ricky Ervins | Tailback

Hero of Rose Bowl Achieved the Dream

Ricky Ervins’ first Rose Bowl uniform was the red T-shirt he wore as a stadium parking lot attendant during high school.

While he directed traffic, he heard the crowd roar and hoped one day crowds would roar for him as a player in the Rose Bowl.

Three years later, his dream came true, when his touchdown run won the 1990 game for USC. Ervins was named the Rose Bowl’s most valuable player.

The dream continued for Ervins. The young man who grew up in a rough neighborhood near the Rose Bowl was one of the few Trojans to achieve what many of them had sought. After starring as a college football player, he graduated from USC and played five years in the NFL, where he was the leading rusher in the 1992 Super Bowl. He runs a successful business, Xtreme Xplosion, that trains high school athletes in Northern Virginia.

But Ervins made his luck.

“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and I was always prepared,” Ervins said.

He had to be.

Ervins stands 5 feet 7, hardly an advantage for a would-be football star. At 14, amid family troubles, he left the home he shared with his mother and two sisters and stayed with a teammate’s family through high school.

He said his work ethic was formed by his John Muir High School football coach, Jim Brownfield, who demanded year-round training and solid grades.

By the time he got to USC, “I was mature enough to handle things,” he said.

As a sprinter in college, Ervins said that to win in track he could not afford to drink and stay out late. That discipline helped keep him focused.

He still competes in amateur track meets, running 100 meters in 10.8 seconds.

Ervins, 37, lives in Ashburn, Va., with his wife, Shawnese, whom he met at USC, and their two children.

He shares his life lessons with his children and also the affluent teenage athletes he trains.

“There will always be barriers,” he said. “Kids need to know that.”

Ultimately, Ervins said, “talent can only take you so far. I’ve always believed it’s better to have heart than talent.”

*

Pat Harlow | Offensive Lineman

An NFL Career’s Painful Price

Pat Harlow missed the 1990 Rose Bowl.

The junior was one of the best offensive linemen in college football. But throughout the season, he had been playing in constant pain. Weeks before the big game, he learned the price of his success: He had a ruptured disc.

“I was in so much pain, my legs were just on fire. I told my wife this will be a good day if I can get my shorts on, it’ll be a good day if I can get dressed,” he remembers today. But his fierce drive kept him on the field.

The day after the Rose Bowl, when his teammates were basking in the afterglow of their win, Harlow was in surgery.

Harlow had mastered the devil’s bargain of the elite football player. He knew that he could coax his body to perform at the highest levels of the game, but that by doing so he could ruin it for life. It was an acceptable risk, he decided.

Harlow, an excellent student, said that it was on the field that he learned the lesson that would carry him through his career.

“You become friends with pain,” Harlow said. “You know it’s there, but you ignore it, because you can’t change it.”

Ambition, not abandon, was what drove him as he played for USC. He was a team leader -- his teammates still speak reverently of him. His college success led to an outstanding pro career of eight seasons with the New England Patriots and the Oakland Raiders.

Along the way, he had three major back surgeries. He got through his last three seasons in Oakland with regular epidural shots.

“On game day, you take those shots and let it roll,” he said.

Harlow decided to quit football when he was talking on the phone with USC teammate Matt Willig.

“My feet were numb,” he said. “I couldn’t straighten my legs for four weeks. I thought, ‘I’ve been lucky so far, my nerves regenerated, I can walk, I can do things, but one of these times it may not come back all the way.’ ”

Since leaving pro football seven years ago, he has had four major surgeries, including a knee operation in January that left him unable to run. His feet still go numb at times. His legs and back tingle.

“I call them my electrical shocks,” he said.

Today, he has no regrets that he played football, a game he still loves. He is married to his high school sweetheart and lives with her and their three sons on a golf course in Flagstaff, Ariz.

But Harlow doesn’t play golf.

“I can’t take a normal swing -- my back won’t let me,” he said.

Football paid him well enough so that he can live for now without working. He spends most of his time caring for his boys, ages 10, 8, and 4.

But the riches of the NFL did not include health coverage for long; it lasted just three years after he left the league.

Until last year, when the family moved to Arizona, Harlow had gotten health insurance through his wife Jennifer, a teacher at an Orange County elementary school. “I’m one of the 44 million uninsured Americans,” he said.

Harlow’s wife and sons now have private health insurance, “but no one will touch me,” he said.

Harlow would like to see the NFL devise a long-term health plan for veterans.

“We made a lot of money for the league, along with ourselves, but not being able to get coverage even if you’re able to pay for it is wrong. Almost nobody leaves that game unmarked,” he said.

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Larry Smith | Coach

He Pushed Academic Success, but the Wins Dwindled

Larry Smith came to USC in 1987 with orders to turn around a team that had been winning on the field but failing in the classroom.

Graduation rates for football players had dropped below 30% and, Smith said, the team’s overall grade-point average was below a 2.0, the equivalent of a C.

Then-USC President James Zumberge brought Smith in from the University of Arizona. “He said, ‘One, I want a clean program ... two, I want somebody to straighten out the graduation rate ... and three, I want to be competitive,’ ” Smith said.

Smith took those orders to heart. Players in academic trouble were required to attend study sessions and were provided with tutors. In recruiting, Smith paid more attention to a player’s academic and family background than his predecessors had.

“Don’t get me wrong. I recruited talent, but talent with character,” Smith said.

Most of Smith’s recruits came from comfortable, blue-collar families and several -- black and white -- were from affluent homes. With few exceptions, they came from families in which all the children would attend college.

Fullback Raoul Spears was a typical Smith recruit.

“I grew up in Compton, but it wasn’t a low-income community,” Spears said. “It was working-class. My mom was a social worker, my dad sold real estate and owned a small hamburger stand. We did fine.”

Smith’s efforts paid off: 77% of the players on the 1990 Rose Bowl team earned degrees. And, there was no disparity in graduation rates between black and white players -- a rare achievement in major college football where black graduation rates lag other groups.

Smith, now 66, said he believed that “if you had a hard-working person, a responsible person, he would be the same kind of football player.”

Others thought that he went overboard in trading brains for brawn.

The 1990 Rose Bowl team was split between players who had arrived before Smith and those he had recruited.

Gene Fruge, a nose guard who was recruited by Smith’s predecessor, Ted Tollner, said, “The bulk of my boys came in to play ball. Graduating would be great, but we came here to play ball.”

The pre-Smith recruits were sometimes contemptuous of the new group, who, Fruge said, “were splitting time between academics and football.” (Fruge, an academic late-bloomer, eventually earned a master’s degree.)

The team’s academic success was overlooked when things fell apart on the field. Two years after winning the 1990 Rose Bowl, a team made up entirely of Smith’s recruits posted a 3-8 won-lost record. They were 6-5-1 the next season, but Smith was fired after losing to Fresno State in the Freedom Bowl.

Smith coached at the University of Missouri from 1994 to 2000. Since then, he has been battling leukemia, but he remains active in his retirement. He lives on a golf course in Tucson and plays twice a week. He occasionally works as a TV sportscaster for college football games, and advises youth and high school football coaches for the National Football Foundation.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Team statistics

Graduation rates:

1990 Rose Bowl team: 77%

USC students who enrolled in 1984: 58%*

Football players who enrolled in 1984: 25%*

*Percent who graduated within six years

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Rose Bowl team majors:

Public administration: 40%

Communications: 19%

Business: 18%

Others: 23%

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USC undergraduate majors:

Based on degrees awarded in 1990

Other arts and sciences: 36%

Business: 34%

Engineering: 12%

Communications*: 11%

Cinema and television: 4%

Public administration: 3%

*Estimate

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Players’ current occupations

Top choices:

Coach/teacher: 12%

Sales: 10%

Business owner: 9%

Business management: 8%

Mortgage/real estate/insurance: 8%

Law enforcement: 4%

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Source: USC. Graphics reporting by Peter Hong

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Other members of the USC roster

The USC team that won the 1990 Rose Bowl had 119 players on the roster. Here are brief updates on many of the players. Some could not be located.

David Apolskis

Offensive line

A sales engineer for Nextel in Houston.

Bradford Banta

Tight end

Drafted by the Indianapolis Colts. Played 11 years in NFL.

Kurt Barber

Linebacker

Played four years for the New York Jets and is now an assistant football coach at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Rory Brown

Fullback

Changed his name to Rory Palazzo, his family’s original name. The mechanical engineer lives in the Denver area and works for a company that makes satellite equipment.

De Chon Burns

Defensive back

An assistant football coach at Texas Southern University.

Matt Butkus

Defensive line

The son of Chicago Bear legend Dick Butkus, he sells insurance in Chicago.

Mark Carrier

Defensive back

Played 11 years for the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions and Washington Redskins. He is an assistant football coach at Arizona State University.

Eddy Chavez

Fullback

Owns a garment manufacturing firm in Santa Ana.

Delmar Chesley

Linebacker

A pharmaceutical salesman in Upper Marlboro, Md.

J.R. Chesley

Linebacker

Owns an insurance agency in Maryland.

Bob Crane

Tight end

Runs his family’s construction supply business in Irvine.

Joel Crisman

Defensive line

A Denver-area telecommunications executive.

Tom Dabasinskas

Offensive line

A Presbyterian minister in Moraga, Calif.

Ron Dale

Punter

Lives in Henderson, Nev., and works in sales for Budweiser.

Aaron Emanuel

Tailback

Drafted by the New York Giants and played with the team for one season. He is a substitute teacher in Culver City.

Shane Foley

Quarterback

A mortgage banker in Newport Beach.

Scott Freier

Offensive line

Police officer in Antioch, Calif.

Scott Galbraith

Tight end

Drafted by the Cleveland Browns and played nine years in the NFL, including stints with the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins.

Darren Gallaway

Defensive line

An insurance broker in Irvine.

Dwayne Garner

Defensive back

Lives in Van Nuys and is a counselor for teenage boys at Camp Kilpatrick, a Malibu detention center. He also coaches freshman football at Taft High School in Woodland Hills.

Eric Gates

Linebacker

Teaches biology and coaches baseball at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles.

Michael Gaytan

Offensive line

LAPD detective in Van Nuys.

Matt Gee

Linebacker

Owns a Simi Valley insurance agency.

Craig Gibson

Offensive line

Mortgage banker in Santa Ana.

Don Gibson

Defensive line

A chiropractor in Orange County. Drafted by the Denver Broncos, Gibson was injured and out of football after one season.

Len Gorecki

Offensive line

Recreation and parks manager of the city of Paramount.

Travis Hannah

Wide receiver

Played seven years in the NFL and the Arena Football League. He is a private coach in Los Angeles who trains professional, college and high school football players in speed and agility.

Craig Hartsuyker

Linebacker

A lawyer in Thousand Oaks.

Zuri Hector

Defensive back

A Seattle real estate developer.

Curt Himebauch

Defensive back

Owns a financial printing company in Los Angeles.

Lamont Hollinquest

Defensive back

Left the Green Bay Packers after failing a required drug test in 1999. In 2002 he funded athletic facilities at the school that replaced his alma mater, St. Matthias girls’ school in Downey.

Calvin Holmes

Defensive back

A probation officer in Rancho Cucamonga. Drafted by the Washington Redskins, he was injured before his first season.

Leroy Holt

Fullback

A real estate developer in Moreno Valley. He was drafted by the Miami Dolphins, but an injury in his rookie year ended his football career.

Randy Hord

Defensive line

A Riverside stockbroker.

Matt Hurray

Wide receiver

Lives on Balboa Island and is president of CECO, a sink manufacturer in Huntington Park.

John Jackson

Wide receiver

A radio and TV sports analyst. He lives in Diamond Bar.

Yonnie Jackson

Tight end

A lawyer in Galt, Calif.

David Kerr

Fullback

Teaches government and social studies at Temple City High School.

Tim Lavin

Fullback

The owner of a promotional products business, he lives in Huntington Beach.

Brad Leggett

Offensive line

Runs a nutrition consulting business in Atlanta gyms that are owned by teammate Dan Owens. He was drafted by the Denver Broncos and traded to the New Orleans Saints, where he played one year.

Scott Lockwood

Fullback

A Boulder, Colo., real estate developer. He was drafted by the New England Patriots and played two years.

Bruce Luizzi

Defensive back

Lives in the Dallas area and works in advertising.

Terry McDaniels

Defensive line

A Foothill Transit bus driver.

Michael Moody

Offensive line

A San Francisco police officer.

Michael Mooney

Fullback

Football coach at Temple City High School.

Johnnie Morton

Wide receiver

Drafted by the Detroit Lions. He later played for the Kansas City Chiefs and is a receiver for the San Francisco 49ers.

Gidion Murrell

Tight end

A middle school teacher and coach in Palm Springs.

Arthur Nash

Linebacker

A Denver-area physician.

Dan Owens

Defensive line

A 10-year NFL veteran who is the owner of two gyms in Atlanta.

Stephon Pace

Defensive back

An assistant football coach at Cal State Sacramento.

Brent Parkinson

Offensive line

A medical equipment sales representative who lives in Valencia.

Marvin Pollard

Defensive back

A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.

Marc Preston

Punter

A naval officer and pilot.

Kian Ramsay

Offensive line

Was general manager of a Bay Area auto dealership.

Marc Rodgers

Wide receiver

Works in sales for American Express. He lives in Lakewood.

Quin Rodriguez

Kicker

A vice president of Modus Link, a supply services company. He is a resident of Dallas.

Scott Ross

Linebacker

Drafted by the New Orleans Saints. He played one season. He lives in Houston and owns a construction supply firm.

Mazio Royster

Tailback

A Los Angeles actor. He was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and spent three years with the team.

Grant Runnerstrum

Kicker

A commercial real estate agent in Indianapolis.

Tim Ryan

Defensive line

Lives in San Jose and is a sports broadcaster. He was drafted by the Chicago Bears and played in the NFL for four years, all with the Bears.

Mike Salmon

Defensive back

A mortgage banker in Orange County.

Bill Schultz

Offensive line

Drafted by the Indianapolis Colts. He spent eight years with the Colts, Denver Broncos and Chicago Bears.

Junior Seau

Linebacker

Was a linebacker for the San Diego Chargers and is now with the Miami Dolphins. A perennial all-pro, he is widely regarded as one of the best players in football.

Keith Siscel

Offensive line

Lives in Del Ray Beach, Fla., where he works for Office Depot Inc. as manager of national distribution.

Michael Solum

Offensive line

Works at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, where he directs the John R. Wooden Award for the nation’s top college basketball player.

Raoul Spears

Running back

A senior project manager for Kaiser Permanente. He lives in Long Beach. Drafted by the Miami Dolphins, Spears did not complete a season.

J.P. Sullivan

Defensive line

Lives in Santa Monica, where he is a computer consultant for Edmunds.com, a car-buying website and publisher.

Cordell Sweeney

Linebacker

Chief financial officer for DirecTV in Cypress.

Josh Tobias

Fullback

A physician in Bakersfield.

Mark Tucker

Offensive line

Plays for the Arizona Rattlers of the Arena Football League. He was drafted by the Atlanta Falcons, traded to the Indianapolis Colts and then the Arizona Cardinals, where he played one year. Tucker was a star of the “American Gladiators” television show. He also teaches social studies and coaches football at a Phoenix high school.

Titus Tuiasosopo

Offensive line

An assistant football coach and teacher at Antelope Valley High School.

Brian Tuliau

Linebacker

A Long Beach police officer.

Brian Turk

Offensive line

An actor who recently was on the HBO series “Carnivale.”

Jason Uhl

Defensive line

Works for a company that provides furnishings for retail stores. He lives in Orange County.

Gary Wellman

Wide receiver

Drafted by the Houston Oilers and played there three years. He works in sales in Houston.

Michael Williams

Linebacker

Works for Citibank as a student loan specialist in Dallas.

Matt Willig

Defensive line

Was released in October by the St. Louis Rams. Willig was not drafted, but he played 14 years in the NFL for five teams.

Alan Wilson

Linebacker

Died in 2002 of diabetes.

Unable to locate or did not respond to interview requests: Al Aliipule, Dan Barnes, Steve Beckley, Tom Brown, Eric Dixon, Dale Evans, Frank Griffin, Fred Harris, Frank Hearst, Mike Hinz, Thomas Holland, William Howard, Shannon Jones, Kevin Lane, Junior Moi, Jason Moore, Andy Norrell, Austin Park, Reggie Perry, Marc Peterlin, Damien Pierre, Marc Raab, Joel Scott, Garret Skipper, Damion Smith, Adam Swaney, Larry Wallace, Marlon Washington, David Webb, James Wilson.

Sources: player interviews, public records, Total Football II: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League.

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