Why Maroon and Gray Is Black and Blue : Compton Runs a Pattern in Which Victory and Reality Rarely Hook Up

The gophers were gone, which was a much-needed victory for Compton College, and now the players no longer had to worry about stepping in holes on the football field.

Such encouragement that a new, inviting image is developing here was tempered, however, by a glance last Saturday afternoon at the scoreboard, whose bulbs formed a dim reminder of the deeply burrowed reality: The gophers have been beaten, but no one else.

And even before the end of the first quarter of the Tartars’ game with Pasadena City College, the specter of defeat loomed again in the breeze.

A few hundred people sat in the stands, from whose upper rows could be seen the scoreboard (Visitors 21, Home 0), the Artesia Freeway, the pale yellow campus buildings and the reason why losing has been inevitable for the Tartars.

Below, along the home bench, Compton had barely 30 players in uniforms of maroon and gray, while more than 80 Pasadena players in gold pants--a junior-college football army--filled the opposite sideline.

‘Special Players’

The Compton players, however, were not viewed by themselves or by William Thomas, the sports information director and perhaps the college’s biggest booster, as losers.

“I call them special players because it takes a special player to come here and play,” said Thomas, 33, who wore maroon and gray too as he statistically charted the game. “They want to go up against the odds and they never give a thought of losing; it’s kind of a character builder. If you come here and go 0-10 and play every game knowing you’re against the odds all the time, you can make it in life.”

But although a fifth straight loss in a winless season was already imminent, the players did not offer the odds as an excuse.

“You only play 11 at a time,” said split end Roland White after Pasadena had scored a fourth touchdown.

And quarterback Lance Salters, whose long spiraling passes were not connecting with receivers, insisted: “It seems to me we’re always a better team. It’s just our mistakes that beat us.”

Large Realist

But the losses have not come unexpected to the team’s coach, Art Perkins, a realist with a forbidding musculature that leaves no doubt that he once played with the Rams.

“The size of our institution doesn’t merit our being in a conference of this size,” Perkins, also the athletic director, had said before a practice last week.

Compton, with 4,500 students, is the smallest school in the South Coast Conference, which has community colleges five to seven times larger, including Cerritos, Long Beach, El Camino and Pasadena. It was moved into the conference in 1983 in all sports but football. It began playing football in the South Coast Conference this year, but knew ahead of time that it would be overmatched. The Tartars asked to leave the conference last fall but the request was denied by state athletic officials because it came too late in the year. Now they must wait until 1988 to move into a conference with schools their size.

“It’s very difficult for our athletes to realize any success playing the caliber of athletes we do,” Perkins said. “So we try to make them realize that the No. 1 priority of being here is to get an education and that football is a subsidiary. We try to make the game fun. But some form of success is needed. You’ve got to win two or three games a year (the Tartars are 4-31 since 1983) because the kids need to feel there’s an opportunity to win.”

The best high school players do not go to Compton College as they did in the 1940s and ‘50s, when the team accumulated trophies that sit tarnishing in a glass case in the lobby of the gymnasium. Among the great Compton players were Joe Perry and Hugh McElhenny, who later became pro stars.

‘Herculean Coaching’

“We do not have the same type athletes as the other (South Coast) schools,” Perkins said. “The athletes that started at our high schools (Compton, Dominguez and Lynwood and others in their area) go to Cerritos, Pasadena, El Camino or Long Beach because they feel those schools are more prestigious. That leaves us with athletes who were second- or third-string in high school. So we have to do a Herculean-type coaching job.”

Among the players Perkins was left with is Arnold Minninger, a 25-year-old center who hadn’t played football since 1978, when he was at Poly High School. “I thought I better get back to school and get an education,” said Minninger, the team’s only white player. Looking down at his belly, he admitted that he also needed to get back in shape.

But the Compton players are far from being a laughingstock.

After the Tartars lost by only 24-13 to Cerritos recently, Cerritos Coach Frank Mazzotta said: “They are one hell of a team. They have some real talent. The only thing they really lack is depth.”

Salters may be the most talented Tartar. The quarterback was lured from Dallas by Perkins, who himself was a Texas college football star. Salters ranks second in the state among community college players in total offense.

Perkins spoke hopefully of an effort, initiated by the new college president, Edison O. Jackson, to improve Compton’s prestige and attract more players of Salters’ ability.

“This year, for the first time, we’ve started to get our athletic grounds together,” he said, noting that the gopher-control people come out once a week and that the grass on campus lawns is even being cut.

sh Nice Lockers Needed

“At one time I did not want to bring an athlete (here) during the day because the grass was almost knee-high,” Perkins said. “You knew you lost a player as soon as you brought him over. Before he got out of his car, he’d say, ‘Oh, no, this is awful.’ ”

Perkins said Jackson is aware of what needs to be done.

“When an athlete goes to a Cerritos or a Long Beach, they walk into a locker room and they see painted walls and nice lockers,” Perkins said. “Those are the kinds of things that are impressive to young men. Those things are a must.”

At half time it was 34-0. The Tartars trudged to their locker room, which had peeling paint and ancient lockers, and slumped against its walls as Perkins told them: “We are not aggressive, we’ve got to go out and act like it’s 0-0, it’s the only way to do it. Play with enthusiasm. What happens in the game is irrelevant as long as we play with enthusiasm.”

But in the second half, spirit was still not in the air, which caused Empry Young, a broad-backed man in an undershirt, to roam the sidelines in a fury, yelling at a defense that has given up almost 37 points a game. A star defensive back for the Tartars last season and now a volunteer coach, Young tried desperately to impart his aggressiveness to the players.

‘Be Muggers!’

“Get his butt!” he roared to a player who had missed a tackle. “You guys are too nice! You should be mean, be muggers! Come on now, baby, get going--damn!”

The game, now 41-0, was beyond even character building as the grass-stained Tartars sat beaten down by the the sun, wind and Pasadena.

“Erwin, don’t worry about it, you can’t be frustrated and play no ball,” Willie Brown said to fellow offensive lineman Erwin O’Bryant.

“You ain’t played a great game either,” O’Bryant snapped.

“Don’t be criticizing,” another player said.

Brown explained: “We’re talkin’ against each other ‘cause everybody’s frustrated. Just ain’t our day, I guess.”

Tears seeped from the eyes of Mack Scott, a linebacker whose injured right ankle--iced, wrapped and awaiting an X-ray--was propped on his helmet. A teammate helped him out of his jersey.

“Hospitals scare me,” Scott said.

‘Help That Brother’

After Pasadena intercepted a pass, another Compton player, fullback Anthony Perkins, lay on the field, and the four Compton cheerleaders broke into, “Clap your hands, stomp your feet, help that brother get on his feet.”

Anthony, who had been knocked out, got up and was helped to the bench, where he sat with a blood pressure cuff on his arm until an ambulance came.

Late in the game, Compton scored to make the final tally 41-7, and renew some lost faith. “We’re going to end the season with a bam,” Roland White said.

And Salters said how wonderful it would be to win a game as he walked off the field where gophers no longer roam, into a shabby locker where a sign read, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”