White Signs With Rams--and Robinson : Former USC Star and Coach Reunited; Crutchfield Placed on Waivers

John Robinson, who has never met a superlative he didn’t like, has always had plenty at hand when the subject was Charles White. Robinson isn’t one to hide the affection he feels for the running back he watched carry USC to days of goal lines and roses.

“He brought me some of the great memories that I have in football,” Robinson said. “I’ve always believed that he’s one of the toughest players that I’ve ever been around.”

So it should come as no great surprise that the Rams said Tuesday that they had signed White to a contract for the 1985 season.

They also said that running back Dwayne Crutchfield, their second-leading rusher behind Eric Dickerson last season with 337 yards, has been put on waivers. There would seem to be a connection between White’s signing and Crutchfield’s departure, but Robinson claims that wasn’t the case.

“We just didn’t think that Dwayne fit into the kind of style that we had,” he said. “He’s more of an inside runner. I think he needs to be in a fullback-oriented system, as opposed to one that’s tailback-oriented. He wanted a chance to carry the ball more and he knew he would fit in better somewhere else. That’s basically the thought process there.”

White was waived by the Cleveland Browns and became a free agent after four rather troublesome seasons. He never quite fit in with that club, which had made him their first-round draft pick in 1980, and he never approached the success as a pro that was expected of him after he had won the Heisman Trophy in 1979. The problems didn’t end there.

White was admitted to CareUnit Hospital in Orange in 1982 after acknowledging a long-standing cocaine dependency and has been involved with drug rehabilitation programs ever since. He missed the 1983 season with an ankle injury and spent most of last season playing on the Browns’ special teams.

When the Browns were preparing to meet the Rams in an interconference game last September, White was the guy on the scout team who donned jersey No. 29 and portrayed Eric Dickerson in practice. It wasn’t exactly the kind of work he had in mind.

After learning that he did not figure in the Browns’ plans for this fall, he returned to Southern California and found his former college coach eager to give him a chance. White had a brief tryout with the Rams on June 18, and it was apparent then that Robinson liked what he saw.

Robinson reiterated Tuesday what he had said after that tryout.

“I’m excited about having him around,” Robinson said. “I think the teams winning championships now are the teams that utilize every man on the squad to fill a role. We see Charlie as being an important part of our team. He’s going to run kickoffs back for us. He’s an excellent blocker and an excellent receiver, along with being the runner that I think he is . . . or was when he was at SC.”

At USC, Robinson gave White the ball as often as possible. White ended his college career with 5,598 yards in 1,023 carries and was the nation’s leading rusher as a senior. He carried 39 times for 247 yards in the Trojans’ comeback 17-16 victory over Ohio State in the 1980 Rose Bowl, then went on to comparative obscurity in Cleveland. In four seasons with the Browns, White rushed for 942 yards and caught 83 passes.

White is hoping that a return to familiar surroundings and his association with Robinson will help him realize at least some of the expectations he nurtured at USC.

“This is a golden opportunity to come back to where I grew up, and I feel great about coming here and playing for a coach who understands me,” he said. “He knows what my attributes are and hopefully he can use them to my advantage, and his.”

Robinson, not surprisingly, is confident that White can have a significant impact, and that the drug problems that surfaced in Cleveland are behind him.

“Charlie has done a marvelous job coming back from that,” Robinson said. “And like anybody who’s been through that, I think his life has to go on kind of a day-to-day basis. But I have no hesitation about having him on this team.”