STILL IN CHARGE : McGee Shook Up USC at First, but Winning Settles It Down

It’s been nearly four years since Mike McGee came to USC to cure an athletic program that some people didn’t even think was ill.

But some Trojans weren’t sure whether they’d hired an athletic director or a hit man. Within two years, McGee had fired basketball coach Stan Morrison and football coach Ted Tollner and eased Rod Dedeaux, an institutional fixture, into retirement.

After McGee arrived, Morrison won a Pac-10 title in 1984-1985, Tollner a Rose Bowl in the 1984 season, while Dedeaux had won 11 national titles in 45 years.

But it wasn’t enough. McGee cut a wide swath. Nobody was sacred.

Since the shakeup, the foundations have settled down at Heritage Hall, which houses the USC Athletic Department, four Heisman trophies and all the other Trojan ghosts. New football Coach Larry Smith got the horse back into the Rose Bowl and new baseball Coach Mike Gillespie opened with 15 consecutive wins this season to re-establish the team as a conference contender.

The basketball is still flat. Over two seasons of 9-19 and 7-21, new Coach George Raveling is stuck in the starting gate.

McGee was under a lot of scrutiny by the press. McGee now laughingly refers to one story that appeared in The Times as the “Father’s Day Massacre.”

But what was written two years ago were various evaluations of McGee’s methods and persona by people who knew him not only from his conspicuous presence at USC but from his past at Duke University and the University of Cincinnati.

“Everybody has his own opinion,” McGee said. “But I’m sure some don’t quite understand the scope of what this job entails. Organizationally, it was considerably different than it had been. We now run a $13-million-plus business here, and we’ve got to be good stewards.”

By comparison, people close to the department say, before McGee arrived it was something of a “mom and pop” operation, with expense accounts running amok.

“I don’t want to get into that,” McGee responded. “But you need to set up responsibilities and define jobs and not let it be run ad hoc.”

While McGee is cautious not to criticize his predecessor, Dick Perry, his boss is less so.

USC President James Zumberge said this past week: “I just thought our department of athletics was being managed poorly. When the programs were running gung ho and winning championships and making a big splash, nobody paid much attention to the management. But when I came in 1980, we had the mess of the whole football program in deep trouble--we got probation--and I felt it was time we made a change and brought somebody in who would, besides understanding intercollegiate athletics, also have some management skills. McGee had that record.”

When McGee’s career as a football coach soured at Duke (37-47-4 in 8 seasons), he collected a Master’s degree in physical education and a Ph.D. in higher education, with a minor in business administration, from the University of North Carolina.

“The moves that McGee was making were not universally accepted or applauded or approved,” Zumberge conceded, understating the fact. “Mike is, uh--once he decides the way he wants to go or should go, he goes at it.

“In order to set the program right, there were things that had to be done. Whenever an alien comes onto the scene in a place that is family-oriented--the Trojan family--there is an element of suspicion. I knew that because I was an alien myself.”

McGee acknowledged, “There are gonna be toes stepped on, but we have a responsibility to those young people and this university first. There are a lot of ways to organize a department. I may be a little more formal than some.”

Some of those toes still sting. Several alumni, including prominent former football players, declined to comment for this story on McGee’s impact.

In fact, last November Zumberge rolled over McGee’s original five-year contract--a solid stamp of the president’s approval. Within the past year McGee is known to have turned down similar jobs with at least two other major universities--one in the South and another in the Southwest.

“He is very much committed to USC and has gone through the critical time for him personally, because he was under serious attack,” Zumberge said.

The signs are that with everyone feeling secure in their jobs again, morale is better around Heritage Hall.

Athletically, seven teams are rated in the top 10 nationally.

Also, USC has beaten UCLA in 18 of 23 cross-town contests in all sports during the school year starting last fall--no small point to Trojan die-hards.

Overall, the scholarship athletes’ grade-point average is now virtually equal to that of the general student body. Prominent at the entry to the football offices is a list of the top 10--teams? No, the top 10 USC academic players.

Economically, the budget is balanced, with 1986-1987 fund-raising up 30% to a record $5.8 million and total revenues up to $13.6 million in 1987-1988, compared to $9.1 million in 1982-1983, the last year with television revenue before McGee arrived.

The NCAA has declared the Trojans clean and off probation, facts formally noted last month in a letter to Zumberge from Dave Berst, director of enforcement.

There have been many significant achievements--but at what cost?

Tradition dies hard, but in USC’s case some of it has been cast adrift.

A lot of the good old boys aren’t around anymore. John McKay might wander into Julie’s restaurant a block off the southeast corner of the campus one of these days and wonder where everybody went. His booth is still there, close to the illuminated photo of him standing on the Coliseum sideline, with trusted assistant Marv Goux alongside.

There’s still a Trojan Salad and the Trojan Sandwich on the menu. The pool still sparkles in the patio. Stan Morrison once dived off the roof to fulfill a vow if his team qualified for the NCAA tournament in 1982. But Julie’s doesn’t make a splash as a Trojan hangout anymore. The expense accounts have been tightened up.

“Julie’s is no longer a tradition,” says Jim Obradovich, who with brother Steve played football at USC and have helped their father Bob run the place since they bought it from Julie Kohl in 1979.

The USC coaching staff used to unwind at Julie’s and take recruits there for dinner when they visited the campus.

“It was all legal,” Bob Obradovich said. “They’d bring the kids in for their weekend stay, and they usually came to Julie’s one night, and they went to Taylor’s the other night. All the football players were recruited here.”

“I was recruited here,” Jim said.

Bob: “Five national (football) championships have been recruited at Julie’s. McKay had four, (John) Robinson had one. What’s wrong with that?”

Steve: “Things have definitely changed. How much it has to do with McGee I don’t know.”

Bob: “(Since) McGee came aboard, we have totally lost all the recruiting business, and we seldom see the coaches anymore. The last two years: nothing. We don’t know the reasons. We’re dumbfounded. We’re SC people--a tradition.”

McGee, who visits Julie’s infrequently, says it wasn’t all his doing. Larry Smith has simply moved football away from Julie’s.

“The coach decides where his athletes are gonna be recruited,” McGee said. “Do you know where we feed ‘em? On campus--lunch at the student union and dinner at the faculty center. That’s Coach Smith’s choice.”

If the absence of coaches dried up some bistro business, certain boosters and alumni weren’t as much in evidence at football practices and games last season, either. Smith, not McGee, clamped down on that.

“Yeah, I did,” the coach said. “I was very disturbed when we began spring practice last year. It was like an open-door policy. People were wandering around on the field in areas where they were gonna get hurt or players get hurt running into them--plus the fact that the football practice field is my classroom, and it took away some of the attentiveness of the players.

“I don’t mind if alums or donors come out to practice. But they need a proper place to sit or stand, and Howard Jones Field was not constructed with that in mind. I felt it kind of became a social thing. When I go out to practice I go out there to coach football. It’s not a time for me to be socializing or fund-raising.”

Smith started issuing colored tags for press, scouts and recruits attending practice.

“This is a big city with a high-profile football program,” he said. “There have to be certain security measures taken.”

The Trojan sideline at the Coliseum became an even tighter ship.

“The games, I’m gonna control between the 25-yard lines--what coaches, what players, what managers, what trainers,” Smith said. “The only outside people that should be inside there are my son, who runs my headphones for me, and the president of the university and the athletic director. The same goes for my locker room.”

McGee and Zumberge are seldom on the sideline but always in the locker room after a game, “win or lose,” Smith said, “which I like. That’s good support.”

But Smith isn’t oblivious to Trojan tradition. He realizes this will be the 100th year of Trojan football. He recognizes O.J. Simpson or Mike Garrett on sight, and when they drop by he stops practice so they can talk to the team.

“Those guys serve as role models,” Smith said.

It’s 11:50 a.m. and McGee is in his office talking to a reporter. His Outland Trophy plaque as the nation’s best college lineman (Duke, ‘59) is on a shelf, next to a game ball from USC’s victory--Smith’s first--over Boston College last season. A portrait of Howard Jones, the Trojans’ legendary coach, looks over his shoulder from the wall behind his desk. His secretary, Beth Woodin, knocks on the door and steps in to remind him it’s time to go to his monthly “Round Table” luncheon.

McGee meets once a month with about a dozen different major financial supporters to brief them on current events. Two-and-a-half years ago he also formed an athletic council to advise him. He says he doesn’t want to offend Trojan traditions.

“I’m a very traditional guy,” he said. “One of the things that attracted me to the opportunity to work here was, ‘I work in Heritage Hall.’ Some of the most important opinions I get (are from) those who have the history. Hilton Green, Paul Salata. A couple former coaches I have sought counsel from in football.”

Green, a former producer at Universal Studios, is chairman of the council. Salata, an Orange County businessman, is an active member. Green was a third-generation football manager at USC, Salata a player.

“When you look at the Cardinal and Gold and the Trojan boards, there are a lot of people who have invested a tremendous amount in this program,” McGee said. “That’s where I start. Coming in with a non-SC background, it’s been important to develop close relationships, on campus and off campus. One advantage to being on this campus for going on four years now, I know where to go to get helpful input.

“I don’t make decisions in a vacuum. Whatever has been done here has been done in consultation with what would probably be a surprising number of people. It’s not Mike McGee making a decision. There’s a process that goes on.”

But his advisers have been carefully selected. McGee has created his own inner circle.

Salata said, “Every head coach and athletic director has kind of a circle of buddies. Some of them just want to be able to say, ‘I sat on the bench at the Notre Dame game,’ or something. When they were replacing Tollner, these people surfaced. Many of those people were upset because they didn’t know if they were still gonna be in the inner circle. The ones that are earning the right are still there, and the rest of them are gone.

“The thing he’s done that is unprecedented is that he now has this advisory committee. It isn’t guys that are buying him drinks. It’s people that he sought out. (Former USC football coach) Don Clark is on it. Pat Haden. Four or five women. He uses them as a sounding board, and he listens.”

Salata also was active in the hiring of Smith from the University of Arizona. He recalled an initial clandestine meeting in a booster’s private plane on the tarmac at the Tucson airport.

“That’s the way we did it to hide from you guys,” Salata told a reporter.

Said McGee: “I think there were some people that liked the idea of more involvement in the game, and I think that’s probably diminished. I think it probably needed to.

“But (we want) to say to all those people who have been so important to this university, ‘We need your support. You provided the base on which we stand.’ ”

Around USC, people talk about being a “Trojan for life” and members of “the Trojan family.” Qualifying as neither, McGee was under suspicion from the moment he set foot on the campus.

Zumberge recalled, “Having to make coaching changes in football, basketball and baseball, it appeared to many that Mike was out to recast the whole department in his own view of things. The tendency of others who were not pro-McGee was to propagate the information, ‘Well, which one of us is going to be next?’ That anxiety builds on itself.”

Morale was at a low ebb.

“There’s no doubt about it,” Salata said.

And now?

“I don’t think the morale’s ever been better,” Salata said. “Previously, people were running around doing their thing without direction. It was like leaderless. I don’t think the morale’s ever been better in my time, and I go back to Willis Hunter in the 40s. I attribute that to the leader.”

Some employees objected to the way McGee conducted everyday business, using memos instead of personal contact. Some felt he was insensitive.

“There was that possibility because he was a no-nonsense guy (who) wanted a day’s work for a day’s pay,” Salata said. “He isn’t the buddy-buddy at Julie’s every day, and yet he’s a good old boy. He shows up at places where the media and alumni and others gather.”

Stan Stewart was one of Morrison’s assistant coaches and now holds a similar job at UC Santa Barbara, where Morrison is the athletic director.

Stewart recalled an incident at the press conference when Morrison announced he was “resigning” to become an associate athletic director at USC. Later, Morrison said McGee actually had fired him, and Morrison is now suing the school for $3.6 million for a wrongful firing that deprived him of two years’ salary and outside income, such as shoe contracts, basketball camps and television appearances.

At the time, Stewart was trying to recruit Chris Munk, a 6-9 center from San Francisco.

“Stan’s a good friend of mine and I’m in the back hurting for the guy,” Stewart said. “And the minute he’s finished McGee walks up to me and says, ‘Let’s go call Chris Munk.’ It was really no time for me to do it, but what do you say?”

Munk did go to USC, although three exceptional players eventually transferred out--Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble to Loyola Marymount and Tom Lewis to Pepperdine.

Others say the blizzard of memos was more expedient and efficient then taking time to explain things.

“I delegate a lot of authority,” McGee said. “And once that is engaged I don’t meddle, if I have trust in people.”

Jim Perry, former USC sports information director, agrees that McGee does solicit outside input. He brought Perry back to help in the search for a new football coach when many thought Tollner was adequate.

“The most telling statistic was that McKay had 4 losses by more than 20 points in 14 years, Robinson 2 in 7 years and Tollner 10 in 4 years,” Perry said. “I don’t think that can be related to (McGee’s) personality.

“Personally, I enjoyed working with him. He’s a strong person. You need a strong person.”

Jim Appleton, USC’s former athletic-minded vice president for development who a few months ago became president of Redlands University, said: “Part of it was a bad rap. Mike was faced with a situation when he needed strong leaders but maybe fewer people. Bureaucracies tend to develop willy-nilly.

“My opinion even back then was that even after some successful seasons, changes had to be made--an athletic budget out of control, coaching changes needing to be suggested. Most of the changes have been good changes. Mike is characterized as a new breed of athletic director.”

But is he a Trojan?

“I’m an SC person, not a Duke person,” McGee said. “My daughter (Kathy) graduated here and my son’s coming here to prove it.”

His youngest of three sons, Jerry, will walk on as a freshman defensive back and engineering student this fall. Kathy has married a USC engineering graduate, Tom McLain, who is an Air Force lieutenant.

Salata believes that if McGee wasn’t a Trojan four years ago, he is now.

“He has a grasp of what SC’s about . . . (the) Trojan forever.

“One of the tests is how’s he doing with the budget and funding and stuff. They’re hitting unprecedented heights in slow times--slow meaning they haven’t won a national championship in (a while). I think he’s a serious person, which is something they’ve needed--serious, meaning serious about the department--and I don’t see him having any ego trip.”

If there are fewer complaints these days, Salata doesn’t think it’s because McGee has mellowed.

“I think when he got here, if the job was in one setting and his style was in another, they didn’t mesh very well,” Salata said. “Now they do.”

McGee is perhaps most proud of an upgrade in academics that he hopes will one day break down another Trojan tradition: The reputation as a football factory.

“He’s a fanatic on them being scholar-athletes,” Salata said. “A fanatic. He’s not gonna bend for any of them. (He believes) smart guys can win just as well as dumb guys.”

The graduation rate of football players has doubled since McGee arrived. Tailback Ryan Knight is among three non-graduating seniors who are expected to pursue their degrees in a post-eligibility scholarship work program.

Michael B. McGee, 49, is known best by Ginger McGee, the woman to whom he has been married for 25 years, mother of his four children.

Biased? Certainly.

“I think he’s been unfairly labeled,” says Ginger, who has had her own career in nursing. “All of us, from time to time, come across as insensitive in certain situations. On the whole, he’s just a caring and committed individual.

“But I know when you’re in a position such as an athletic director, you’re going to have to make decisions that are unpopular. If you happen to be affected adversely, the person who makes them is going to seem insensitive.”

Occasionally, she said, McGee will discuss a job problem at home, “if it’s a major thing, like a coaching change. We discuss it.”

Ginger said firing coaches is not one of her husband’s favorite pastimes.

“He tries to do what he believes is right, not what is popular,” she said.

McGee, son of a retired Coast Guard commander, was born in Washington but has Southern roots from growing up in Elizabeth City, N.C., where his more laid-back (according to Ginger) twin brother Jerry is athletic director at Northeastern High School.

Another brother, Jim, just became an Episcopal priest. A third brother, Edward, was a Coast Guard flier who was killed on active duty in 1957.

The McGees’ oldest son, Michael, is an Air Force Academy graduate in fighter pilot training, while a younger son, Matthew, is a freshman at the academy.

Most of the family spent a few days of Easter week together at their house in Colorado, 40 miles from Aspen.

“But the place they enjoyed the most was six miles from the nearest telephone,” McGee said. “This one has a telephone.”

He likes to stay in touch now. Smith has no objections.

“We basically have the kind of relationship that any football coach would want with his athletic director,” Smith said. “He doesn’t try to run our show. He just wants to know what’s going on.

“We kid him because Mike was an offensive line coach. He likes to sit in the offensive line meetings, and every time he comes out on the field the first place he heads for is the offensive line. Sometimes I’ll come in here at 6:15 on a Monday morning and he and (offensive line coach) John (Matsko) are over there looking at (Saturday’s) game film.

“Mike is still a pretty knowledgeable person, but I don’t consider that he’s an athletic director who’s hovering over us. I like having him around.”

McGee: “I feel a real sense of responsibility. That came from my parents, to try to make the best of the abilities you’ve been given. It’s not been hard to get up and go to work, whatever that work (has been).”

Zumberge: “There may be a period of transition, which I believe we’re going through now, but ultimately we’re going to see the results of a good athletic program in line with a solid academic program.

“It’s not a change I perceive in him but a change that I’ve perceived in the department. I do not hear the anguish and anxiety flowing from there. I’m very pleased with Mike’s record so far and glad that he has the stamina and ability to persist even in the face of a lot of negatives that were flowing quite freely.”

McGee: “Once you become aware of the traditions and the environment, there are certain accommodations one makes. But I don’t believe I’ve changed. I feel philosophically as strongly about certain things as I did when I came here.

“We’re going to (operate) with integrity, first and foremost, and we’re going to do it with a reminder that we have an academic responsibility to (the athletes). And we’re going to go full guns within that context to win national championships.

“I haven’t been in a place where you could do that before--not like this place. I want to be in this kind of place. I’ve been in places where there was a lot of apathy. Duke was one of them.”

He will never find athletic apathy at USC, and his critics will never stop sniping. But there was one particular slur he brought up himself.

“The attire here is a good deal more informal,” McGee said. “An article one time said, ‘McGee in his three-piece suit.’ I don’t own a three-piece suit.”