At Least the Trojans Didn’t Have to Fly Home From Moscow

Moscow could have had this game, as far as Todd Marinovich and the rest of USC’s Trojans were concerned. The farther away it had been played the better, just as the more quickly it becomes forgotten, the better. Because USC lost this game of passing-and-rushing roulette.

There was only one consolation about USC’s succumbing to Illinois, 14-13, Monday night at the Coliseum: Imagine what a plane ride home from the Soviet Union would have been like after a loss like this.

Next year’s season opener, the one against Penn State? Give it to Kiev. Hold it in Chernobyl. Makes no difference. How could a USC season opener be much worse than this season’s opener?

Marinovich had never mapped it out this way, not in any of his 20 years, not in a million years. All he knew on the day he enrolled was that 1989’s first snap was scheduled to be made in the Soviet Union, and this very fresh freshman intended to take it, intended to be the starting quarterback in the first U.S. collegiate football game played in the USSR.

Long before the site was changed, even before teammate Pat O’Hara shattered his shinbone, Marinovich thought he could be first string. He was uniquely qualified: first high schooler to throw for more than 9,000 yards; son of Marv Marinovich, captain of USC’s 1962 national-championship squad, and nephew of Craig Fertig, former USC quarterback and assistant coach. Some pedigree.

Much had been made of the care and feeding of Todd Marinovich, of the way his father nurtured him and supervised his elaborate training regimen, of the way a California magazine had labeled him literally born and “bred” to be a quarterback, as though he were some sort of lab animal. Todd was hardly that. He was just a kid who was pleased to have qualified adults take an interest in him, a boy who couldn’t wait to be big, rather like Tom Hanks.

The first football date of his college life was eagerly anticipated. Marinovich was cool, collected, borderline cocky. Freshman quarterbacks ought to be borderline cocky. Who needs a scared kid running the offense of a major university that has designs on a national championship?

Trouble is, it wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Wasn’t supposed to end with 13 points accumulated on a couple of field goals and a blocked punt. Wasn’t supposed to end with nine first downs to show for 60 minutes of football. Wasn’t supposed to end with four sacks and a fairly grotesque one-of-16 conversion statistic on third down.

“We just couldn’t move the chains,” Marinovich said, meaning the first-down markers. “And that’ll kill you.”

That it did. This was not a great day in the life of Todd Marinovich. Four years from now, when he is a very fine senior or the next Ken Stabler or whatever he turns out to be, maybe he will chuckle and remind everybody of that lousy Labor Day back in ‘89, when everything went haywire. College football is a show, remember, that never closes on opening night.

USC Coach Larry Smith looked on the bright side and said: “I thought Todd played fine. I don’t think he did anything to hurt us.”

Coaches are not tigers; they do not eat their young. Smith knows that the kid knows that he could have done better. He also knows that the kid will do better, sooner or later, probably sooner. Even when seasons are only 11 games long and every defeat inflicts serious pain, there is no sense pointing fingers and losing faith.

Funny thing is, Marinovich’s childhood fantasies of winning the big college football games could have come true, with just a flip here and a tip there. The game was right there in his soft, safe hands, the Trojans holding a 13-point edge with only one quarter’s worth of football left to play. USC’s offense did not have the numbers, but at least it had the points. Marinovich was exactly where he wanted to be, at the helm and ahead. “All the pressure was over after the first snap,” he said.

If only he could have pulled a rabbit out of his helmet after Illinois startled the Trojans with two touchdowns. This was the time in the football game when the quarterbacks Marinovich idolized really went to work, made their miracles happen. This was the point in time that might bring out the Marino in Marinovich.

Alas, it did not. On the first play after USC lost its lead, Marinovich threw an interception. By the time he got the ball back, there were only 54 seconds remaining to do something with it, and all he could do was hurl too-short completions and last-gasp incompletions.

How had he played?

“We didn’t win,” he said. “That’s a sign of how well I played.”

Several million Soviets will never know or care what they missed. And several million Americans probably won’t remember a thing, when the day comes that Todd Marinovich puts his first college football game behind him.