Welcome to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood : Football Helped West L.A. College Lineman Escape Trouble in Pontiac, Mich. : Defense: He leads the Oilers in sacks with 12 and is a big reason team is off to 3-0 start.

Sam Rogers is on a mission for the West Los Angeles College football team.

The defensive lineman is not only eager to sack an opponent’s quarterback, but he is also bent on bringing back winning football to the school--and for some reasons that you might not expect.

Rogers, a 6-foot-3, 235-pound sophomore from Pontiac, Mich., is one of the reasons Coach Robert Hager’s Oilers were able to snap a 21-game losing streak and are 3-0 this year. The streak dated to 1985 and continued through 1989 after the school dropped football for two years.

In three games, Rogers, a transfer from West Hills College in Coalinga, leads the team in sacks with 12. He might have more sacks, but he was slowed by the flu on Saturday as the Oilers routed Compton, 40-14. Rogers had only two sacks.

He wants to win for some of the usual reasons: pride, enhancing his prospects as a college and professional player and because winning is more enjoyable than losing.

Rogers played for Hager last year when Hager was head coach at West Hills College. He also played for Hager at St. Mary’s Prep in Orchard Lake, Mich., near Detroit. So he also wants to win for Hager, who had two 1-9 seasons at West Hills after a four-year record of 29-9 at St. Mary’s.

On opening day of practice at WLAC, Rogers said: “Coach Hager talked about everybody who came out for football having a goal of changing this program around.”

The second goal Hager discussed was winning enough games to be chosen for a bowl game. “He also said that anybody who didn’t want to go to a bowl game should leave,” Rogers said. “Nobody left, and everybody on this team is committed to winning.”

Hager’s message to his players this year has been essentially what was scribbled on a blackboard in the football office recently. It read:

“We aren’t where we should be.

“We aren’t where we are going to be.

“We aren’t where we ought to be.

“But, thank God, we aren’t where we used to be.

“Watch what we’ll do next.”

What Rogers wants to do next is to run up his sack total when the Oilers play host to Santa Barbara City College at 1 p.m. Saturday. He will be playing with fervor not only for his coach, teammates and school, but for some people from his old neighborhood in Pontiac.

He said that he grew up in a tough section of Pontiac and that he was fortunate that he found football at an early age because it is providing him with an opportunity to get an education. Some of his friends from the old neighborhood have not been so lucky, and he said that he is dedicating the 1990 season to some of them:

* His 1-year-old son, Sam Jr., and his son’s mother, whom he plans to marry next year when he expects to be playing football for the University of Colorado.

* His fiancee’s brother, who, he said, was killed by gunmen when he stopped at a gas station during a holdup.

* A friend who is serving a prison sentence for a drug offense that, Rogers said, he did not commit.

Rogers said that he “could have gotten into trouble if I wanted to” in Pontiac, except that he dedicated himself to football, which he hopes will provide him with a ticket out of the ghetto.

He said that he is also fortunate that he was raised mostly by his grandmother, Sylvia Rogers, a God-fearing Baptist who kept him on the straight-and-narrow, not with threats and punishment but with love and respect.

Unfortunately, his grandmother, a receptionist in a medical office, couldn’t take his college entrance examination for him. He said that he failed to get a high enough score on the American College Test to be able to enroll as a freshman and play football for Colorado, which had offered him a scholarship. So he decided to go with Hager to West Hills, play football, improve his academic performance and try to play for Colorado next year. He said that he expects to sign a national letter of intent with Colorado in December.

Hager, for whom he has played at three different schools, is “a good coach and a good friend,” Rogers said. “He’s fun to be around. He’s like a big brother. He will try to help you get anywhere you want to get to. He knows a lot of college coaches and wants to do right by his players.”

Hager said that Rogers over the years has “improved in his development as a person and in leadership on and off the field. He is the best player I’ve had; he is totally team-oriented.”

Off the field, Rogers is working his way through school, training to be a police cadet. He said that he also gets financial help from his family. He said that he plans to major in criminal justice but that he does not expect to go into law enforcement when he graduates from a four-year university.

Not surprisingly, he would like to play professional football when he graduates, preferably for the Detroit Lions, his hometown team, or the New Orleans Saints.

But when his playing days are over, he plans to go back to his old neighborhood--the same dangerous, poverty area that he has been working so hard to get away from.

He said that he hopes to become a probation officer or a counselor for juvenile offenders and try and help those who have not been as fortunate as he.

He thinks that criminal offenders he might advise will feel that he is one of them and will therefore listen more willingly to him than to outsiders. “Since I grew up in that type of environment, I understand their problems.”

Meanwhile, he hopes that his attitude on the football field will spread to any of his teammates who might not be as committed to success. He said that his teammates “know I’m a quiet person. But every time I play, I let my pads do all the talking.”