Smith Begins Battle With Agents at USC : Trojans: Coach bars representatives from practice in an attempt to limit their opportunities to lure players to enter NFL.

There was a time when USC’s Larry Smith was concerned only with coaching his football team. Now he has to be concerned with keeping it intact.

With the NFL’s new policy of allowing juniors to be drafted, Smith and other coaches have to look to the future--and he doesn’t necessarily like what he sees.

Can he count on quarterback Todd Marinovich, a redshirt freshman last season, remaining at USC for three more years? Or, for that matter, any other player who emerges as a pro prospect?

“If Marinovich has a great year next year, he’ll be approached very strongly about coming out,” Smith said. “Not by the NFL, but by agents.”

So far the NFL, fearing lawsuits by college players, has opened its door only to juniors. However, if a sophomore or even a freshman decides to make himself available for the draft, it’s believed that the NFL can’t prevent his applying.

The exodus of college juniors into the draft this year--28 and counting--is not an isolated circumstance, according to Smith.

“There is another pending threat (to colleges),” Smith said. “The draft pool for next year has been basically shrunk. Where are the extra 30 or 40 players going to come from? I think they’ll come from the juniors and sophomores.

“There is also another major factor that may be significant in a year or two. Who is going to stop the two new spring leagues from recruiting sophomores and freshmen for a year or two?

“The NFL has already acknowledged that they’ll be used as minor leagues. Nobody is panicking, but we have to get our head out of the sand. The NCAA and American Football Coaches Assn. must come up with some sort of legislation to make sure it isn’t an open-floodgate type of thing.”

So what can colleges do to keep their players from becoming pros prematurely?

“I think one thing you can do is make the letter of intent a four-year binding scholarship for both parties,” Smith said. “Right now the letter of intent and scholarship is only renewable once every year through five years.”

Such an arrangement, Smith said, would be a contract, presumably preventing an undergraduate from turning pro.

With spring practice ending Friday, Smith has things on his mind other than finding replacements for linebacker Junior Seau and strong safety Mark Carrier, who plan to go through the NFL draft next month as juniors.

“We’re going to have a workshop this spring for our whole football team,” Smith said. “It will be sponsored by the athletic department concerning professional football, agents, contracts, salary structures and the whole bit.

“I know now that a lot of decisions (by players) are being made out of indecision and fear,” he said. “I know I have to tighten controls on who watches my practices, who is on our campus and who is talking to my players.

“It has been an open-door policy before, but not anymore. The door is being controlled.”

Smith already has limited the days that NFL scouts can evaluate his players with expired eligibility and has literally shut the practice field door to agents.

“The first Wednesday of the workout for the pros about five agents came to the gate and I threw them out,” Smith said. “The next Wednesday a couple showed up again and I said, ‘If you want me to, I’ll escort you off campus.’ ”

Smith said he has no quarrel with NFL personnel, but he has declared his own war, of sorts, on agents.

The USC coach said it bothers him that a player, such as Seau, is leaving before he can get his degree, or at least work substantially toward it.

“I really believe in a college education, even though a lot of people say I’m just blowing smoke,” Smith said.

Smith said that Carrier, who would have been a five-year player, is only two or three classes short of getting his degree.

“But I feel badly about Junior Seau,” he said. “Physically, he may be ready (for the NFL), but I question whether he’s ready mentally, and I question the fact that he is leaving school a year early while working toward a degree.

“Those are two big negatives. The other negative is that he was sold a bad bill of goods.”

Smith contends that agents tend to paint pictures of money and conditions that aren’t necessarily accurate.

“Agents are playing both ends against the middle--the NFL and us,” he said. “And they’re not being taken to task for any of this.”

In a curious development, Smith said that he may become an agent in deed, if not name.

“There’s an NCAA rule that says coaches can’t act as agents for the players, and I think it’s a good rule,” Smith said. “But what they’re forcing us to do is to be an agent of some sort when the players are sophomores and juniors to make sure they’re getting the right information.”

A possible NFL salary cap on rookies has been cited as the main reason so many underclassmen declared for the draft this year.

Smith discounts that suggestion, saying, “My sources say that’s another year or two away. It’s a ploy by agents to try to scare kids into signing.”

So Smith is conceiving other game plans nowadays, not for UCLA or Notre Dame, but for agents, who are perceived as raiding his team.

Trojan Notes

Defensive lineman Don Gibson had surgery to repair a broken left ankle that he suffered Saturday in a game-type scrimmage at the Coliseum. . . . Coach Larry Smith said that free safety Lamont Hollinquest, who was expected to contend for a starting position, has been suspended from the team because of academic deficiencies.