USC’s Salisbury Has Unfinished Business

Sean Salisbury says he has prepared himself both physically and mentally for his final season at USC.

A fifth-year senior making his second comeback from knee surgery, Salisbury is ostensibly USC’s No. 1 quarterback.

But he doesn’t have job security because Coach Ted Tollner has said that the position is Salisbury’s only if he is productive in practice leading up to the season opener against Illinois at Champaign, Ill., Sept. 7.

Salisbury has accepted the challenge. He has worked out on campus this summer and weighs only 208 pounds. His reporting weight last year was 231.

He said that his right knee, crisscrossed with scars from two operations, is strong, but he will still wear a brace during the season.

So much for the physical aspect of Salisbury’s crusade to have an injury-free year and to convince doubters that he is the quarterback capable of leading USC to a winning season and, possibly, another Pacific 10 championship.

An excitable athlete, one who talks so rapidly that his sentences flow like a rushing river, Salisbury is now seeking inner calm and perspective.

“I’ve been seeing a sports psychologist, Dr. Muriel Fuller at UCLA, to help myself with creative imagery and to stay mentally focused,” Salisbury said. “I’m usually thinking about 2,000 things at once and I need to relax. I think (the therapy) is going to work wonders.”

Salisbury said that he had gone through too many mental peaks and valleys in other years.

“There are always going to be people who don’t like Sean Salisbury, but you have to keep an even keel,” he said. “I can’t get too excited or too down on myself as I have in the past. I’ve always been a perfectionist and I grew up in that type of atmosphere. So I demand a lot of myself. But, hey, I have to remember it’s just a game and have some fun.

“I’m going to keep a smile on my face and be easier on myself and realize that if something goes wrong, there is always another play.”

Salisbury came to USC in 1981 with glowing credentials. He was a multisports star at Orange Glen High in Escondido and was heavily recruited by major universities, especially those that emphasized passing.

Stanford wanted him. So did San Diego State and Brigham Young, where Tollner was the offensive coordinator.

Salisbury marked time as a freshman, playing behind John Mazur. Then, he won the job from Mazur the following spring, prompting Mazur to transfer to Texas A & M.

Salisbury was performing more than adequately as USC’s starting quarterback in 1982 before he injured his right knee in the seventh game against Arizona State at Tempe. Surgery followed and the rest of his season was scratched.

He came back in 1983, Tollner’s first season as head coach, to quarterback a team that went 4-6-1, the school’s first losing season in 22 years.

As a losing quarterback, he was criticized for being relatively immobile and inconsistent.

Salisbury’s performances were no worse nor better than the rest of the team but it’s the nature of the position that quarterbacks often get too much credit, or too much blame.

He had no chance to redeem himself in 1984. He went down with still another knee injury in the second game of the season, again at Tempe.

Salisbury declared 1984 as a redshirt season, then had to watch from the sidelines while the Trojans, with junior college transfer Tim Green at quarterback, won the conference championship and beat Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.

Tollner said: “He has had to overcome two major injuries in his career and he has overcome them through sheer effort and fight and now he is ready to battle under the conditions I’ve set for the job.

“In the only season he was healthy, he was on a football team that was poor on offense and defense. But he took the brunt of the criticism. He was inconsistent but so was the rest of the team.

“For him to go through that adversity and know that the job still isn’t his and that he’ll have to win it on performance and nothing else is a real credit to him.”

Salisbury’s competition will come from sophomore Kevin McLean and redshirt freshman Rodney Peete.

“McLean has a little more experience than Peete and probably has a stronger arm,” Tollner said. “But Rodney compensates for that with his quick feet and overall ability. He has great mobility which could give us an ingredient that we haven’t had at the position since I’ve been here, the ability to make a big play out of a broken play.”

Salisbury said he isn’t resentful that his status is still in doubt despite his experience.

“I don’t know any quarterback other than, perhaps, Joe Montana or Dan Marino, that doesn’t have to come in and perform,” he said. “I’ve competed every year I’ve been here and no matter what anyone says, I have to play my best even if I don’t have anyone to push me. I plan on having a great season. I’ve busted my butt and I’m going to continue to earn it.”

USC has traditionally been a run-oriented team and in recent years, with the exception of the 1983 season when neither the running or passing game was effective, the Trojans have mainly relied on the pounding runs of tailbacks to set the offensive tempo.

But Tollner wants more production out of the passing game this season, and Salisbury predicts that USC won’t be a one-dimensional team.

Salisbury, despite his injury-marred career, needs to complete only 52 passes to move ahead of Jimmy Jones and Paul McDonald to No. 1 on the school’s all-time passing list.

Salisbury will be opposed by a skilled passer, Illinois’ Jack Trudeau, in the opener and it will be a friendly rivalry.

“Jack and I both taught at Jack Lambert’s football camp in Ohio this summer,” Salisbury said. “He’s a heck of a guy and we had a lot of fun.”

Trudeau also visits a sports psychologist, but so does the entire Illinois team.

Salisbury is USC’s representative in that realm and has put a sticker on his locker that reads: “Tough times never last, but tough people do.”

Salisbury intends to do whatever he can to make his final college season a positive experience.

“It takes a person who is mentally tough to come back from two surgeries instead of just saying, ‘Forget it. I don’t need it any more,’ ” Salisbury said. “I feel more confident now than ever and I believe that the injuries have made more of a man out of me--and I’m going to show it this time around.”