USC’s Carroll Knows That Image Is Everything

Feeling stalked and sucker-punched, the USC football team has returned to the ring this summer with a decidedly different stance.

It’s not about fighting on.

It’s about keeping your guard up.

“Rule #1” reads the cryptic message across the front of their new team T-shirt.

And what is Rule No. 1?

The same rule Pete Carroll has been selling since he arrived six years ago, only now he’s screaming it.

Protect Your Team.

Protect it from embarrassment. Protect it from outsiders. Protect it from itself.

And, this year, a new mandate.

Protect it from the growing perception that a respected program has turned renegade.

USC has not reached those depths yet. But it’s sinking fast.

It’s one bar fight from being mentioned in the same alcohol-tinged breath as Miami

It’s one gun charge from being lumped with the rowdy likes of Florida State.

It’s one DUI from reaching the current rocky top inhabited by Tennessee.

In recent years, all three teams suffered from a national championship hangover that has made their reputations pale and queasy.

Since January, USC’s head has been pounding.

One Heisman Trophy winner’s parents apparently violate NCAA rules.

Another Heisman Trophy winner’s father definitely violates NCAA rules.

The heir to the quarterback throne is exonerated of sexual assault suspicions that arise after a night of alleged fake ID use and underage drinking.

A former defensive lineman is charged with two misdemeanor counts of spousal battery and two counts of vandalism for an alleged incident that allegedly occurred while he was a Trojan.

A defensive back tests positive for steroids, immediately quitting the team and taking his twin brother with him.

Taken separately, none of these incidents are any different than the sort of stuff that happens with every football team.

Lumped together, they are the beginnings of a trend.

Occurring at a school that was 19 seconds from winning a third consecutive national championship last year, they are a scarlet and gold letter.

In this era of phone cameras and chat rooms, sports greatness is achieved on a field, but sustained in a fish bowl.

Right now, from agents to ingenues, USC is everyone’s biggest potential catch.

Is the incredible scrutiny and hasty judgments fair? No.

Is it what every Trojan knowingly signs up for? Yes.

“Guys have to realize, with all the glory comes a lot of responsibility,” center Ryan Kalil said.

And it is the responsibility of the program, from the parents to the coaches to the kids, to stop this silliness, and stop it now.

If they don’t, it will soon seep into recruits’ living rooms and stadium broadcast booths and the national buzz.

Once that happens, Tommy Trojan might as well show up wearing an eye patch, and poor Traveler will need blinkers.

“The older guys around here who are used to doing things high class, we’re now taking criticism for stuff that happens off the field, and we’re tired of it,” senior linebacker Oscar Lua said.

“We want the controversy to end. We want to see it handled just like Coach Carroll’s handling it, with an iron fist.”

The veteran players indeed want it stopped.

Prominent alumni who spoke to me this summer want it stopped.

The parents who want nothing to stain their children’s unique experience under Coach Pete Carroll, they want it stopped.

And usually Carroll seems to be doing his best to stop it.

Last spring, he shouted and cursed at a roomful of agents, warning them to stay legal around his players.

Last week at his annual parents’ meeting, Carroll and his staff spent nearly an hour talking about NCAA rules and regulations, asking each set of parents to sign a statement that they have read them.

In every locker room meeting, every day, Carroll talks as much integrity as strategy.

“We’re cutting edge on this stuff, we’re working it and working it,” Carroll said.

“I’m disappointed we have to deal with these questions, but we’re working hard to do this better than anyone’s ever done it before.”

That has long been Carroll’s mantra here, doing it better than anyone’s done it before.

In five years, this has made him arguably the best coach in college football.

But, turns out, it also seems to be his biggest hurdle.

Because, in order to do it better than anyone, the Trojans have done it different from anyone.

In attitude and expectation, Carroll is essentially running an NFL team on a college campus.

This is wonderful on Saturday, but increasingly problematic the rest of the week.

When they are recruited, they are sold on using USC as a springboard to the NFL, witness Carroll’s public pro tryout day last spring.

When they show up for their first practice, they are told anybody -- even troubled freshmen -- can win a job just like in the NFL.

When they mess up off the field, it rarely has a big impact in their playing time, just like in the NFL.

“That’s what we tell the younger guys here, the best guys play, just like the NFL,” receiver Dwayne Jarrett said.

The players are treated like men, which is fine until those moments when they can’t help but act like the children they are.

Carroll and the Trojans need to apply a tighter grip to those moments, lest they become a pothole that swallows up a program that has traveled a hard road back to national admiration and community pride.

I was talking to David Baker, the respected commissioner of the Arena Football League and father of star tackle Sam.

He was telling me a story about how, on the night of last January’s Rose Bowl, his son showed up at the door of the Baker’s Orange County home at 3 a.m.

“He said he just wanted to stop by and tell me he was going to learn from the loss, and that he couldn’t wait for next year,” David Baker recalled. “That kind of maturity, that kind of attitude, I thought to myself, that’s Pete Carroll talking. And I couldn’t imagine any parent who wouldn’t want their son in that environment.”

USC football has become a special place indeed.

But everyone involved needs to fight on to keep it that way.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous Plaschke columns, go to latimes.com/plaschke.