Plenty of college football teams have been...

Plenty of college football teams have been caught up in eligibility controversies. But a marching band?

That’s the case at USC, where the Daily Trojan newspaper recently found that some musicians not only were not students, but were paid as much as $5,000 per year.

Band officials told reporter Michael Utley that the professional members were “teaching assistants” and compared them to aides of head football coach Larry Smith. But they admitted there was one difference: Smith’s staff stays off the field, while the band’s staff plays along with the band.

The controversy is similar, in some respects, to one that enveloped USC’s band in 1966.

The Daily Trojan discovered that year that at least 10 instrument-carrying members were non-musicians who had been recruited to fill out the ranks because of a poor turnout. (The 1966 “Library Band,” so-dubbed because it was so quiet, later hanged the Daily Trojan writer in effigy.)

No word yet if there will be any roster changes for the current band. But the Trojan musicians will be in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day, make no mistake about that. After all, the NCAA has never declared a school band ineligible.

Man was not his best friend:

A transient was arrested Monday for putting his dog in a dryer along with his wet clothes at a West Hollywood coin laundry, sheriff’s deputies said.

Fortunately, the beige mutt was uninjured because other laundry patrons intervened, turned off the dryer and called authorities.

Pride goeth before a tree:

Last year, Long Beach, whose motto is “Most on the Coast,” planned to drape a banner that said “Largest Christmas Tree” on the 80-footer in its downtown holiday celebration.

Then the city learned to its shock that the white fir at the Fashion Island display in Newport Beach was more than 20 feet taller.

This year, Long Beach isn’t taking any chances. The city has axed the tree concept, saying that it will concentrate on sprucing up street decorations.

Besides, the city still has the most offshore oil wells lit up with Christmas decorations.

The Battle of the Wrappers broke out Monday in Century City, where clerks from various specialty and department stores competed in a charity event to see who was the most nimble at tape-hiding, bow-making, and corner-tucking while working with such odd-shaped gifts as a cluster of helium-filled balloons and a bowl of granola.

No doubt about it. This is the place to have your bowl of granola wrapped.

When is the L.A.-bashing going to stop?

Just the other day, you may recall, residents of a Fresno suburb voiced fears of “runaway growth” in their area, explaining they did not want to become a “little Los Angeles.”

Now, reports writer Jay Berman, London is apparently getting in on the act.

While on vacation, Berman picked up a copy of the London Evening Standard, which carried a story on Mary Ellen Tracy, the Los Angeles prostitute who claims she is actually a high priestess in a sex church.

The article said that Tracy had been “sentenced to 360 days in Los Angeles.”

How cruel and unusual.