On USC campus, a will to fight on through the gloom

The news that USC’s football team faces severe NCAA penalties, including a two-year ban on bowl games, spread across the campus Thursday like word of a death in the family.

But as with many days of mourning, there was also a sense that life somehow would continue in Troy.

USC film student Tyrone Edmond, who recently bought football season tickets, likened the sanctions and their impact on the school to “cutting the nervous system out of the USC body.”

“I think it will hamper the lifestyle and spirit of the campus when football season comes around because every college wants that promise of the bowl game,” he said outside a campus library. “It’s the ultimate culmination when you win a trophy and bring it back home.”

Ken Sulcer, who works as a human resources technician in the campus ROTC program, also predicted that the penalties, if upheld, would reduce the typical excitement toward the end of football season.

“It’s like you celebrate Christmas but there’s no Santa Claus,” he said during a lunch break at the communications school. If USC’s team does well in the regular season, he said, “people will be asking: ‘Aren’t we supposed to be going somewhere?’ Things are going to be a little different around here.”

With the spring semester over and graduation past, the campus was relatively quiet Thursday. One of the few points of activity was an orientation program for incoming freshmen. Among those visiting USC was Jorge Adler, a new business student from San Diego, who said he was disappointed to learn about the penalties but looking forward to attending Trojan football games.

“It’s still college football and it’s still USC,” he said. And if there is no chance of a bowl game for two years, Adler said: “We will just have to look forward to our junior year.”

Several students and staffers expressed anger at the NCAA and said the penalties for former players accepting improper gifts from sports marketers and agents, among other allegations, were much too severe. Some also said they were upset at USC’s administrators and former and current coaches for not cracking down on the infractions years ago.

“Were they negligent? Absolutely. Do they deserve this? I’m not sure about that,” Patrick Wyman, a history graduate student, said of the athletic department leaders. Wyman also said he was saddened that new undergraduates won’t get the chance to experience bowl game fever this fall.

But another USC graduate student in a different department acknowledged some private glee, a rare sentiment at the otherwise gloomy school. The student attended UC Berkeley as an undergraduate and still roots for that school’s teams. So, if USC is kept out of football bowl games, “As a Cal fan, I’m very excited,” said the young man, who asked not to be identified to avoid the ire of Trojan boosters.

larry.gordon@latimes.com