Goal-Line Stand : Despite Off-Field Problems, Smith Says USC Football Program Is Digging In

A series of unrelated off-the-field incidents have sullied its image, but the USC football program is still standing, Coach Larry Smith said.

It might not look as sturdy from the outside, Smith said, but the structure remains strong.

“I don’t feel that my program has any cracks in it,” he said. “I’m not going to sit back and say we’re OK. I’m going to take a look at all these things. But I feel very confident that we’re fine.

“I don’t feel we have thugs in this program. I don’t feel that we have criminals running around here. I don’t feel our football team is a threat to society.

“I do feel that all of our players have to use extreme caution. We’ve got to work very hard to clean up our image.”

Often in the last 12 months, it seems, the Trojans were bent on destroying USC’s reputation.

Smith’s program, by far the most successful in the Pacific 10 Conference during his four seasons at USC, has taken several significant blows in the last year:

--Last July, three incoming freshman players--tailback Michael Jones, linebacker Willie McGinest and defensive back Jason Oliver--were accused of sexually assaulting a USC graduate student during a Summer College in which she was a peer counselor.

The three later were charged with misdemeanor counts and are standing trial in Los Angeles Municipal Court. After the trial, they will face a student-conduct hearing at USC that could affect their status for next season, when McGinest and Oliver are expected to be starters.

--In December, six days before the Trojans played Michigan State in the John Hancock Bowl, backup quarterback Shane Foley was arrested on a charge of public intoxication in Newport Beach.

--In January, less than two weeks after he had been suspended indefinitely by Smith for missing a mandatory team meeting and failing to register for the spring semester, quarterback Todd Marinovich was arrested and charged with possessing cocaine in Newport Beach. At the time of his arrest, Marinovich was with two teammates, one of them defensive tackle Adam Swaney, who was cited for possession of marijuana.

Marinovich, suspended by Smith last season for failing to attend class, later renounced his final two years of college eligibility to make himself available for the NFL draft. He was chosen by the Raiders in the first round.

--In February, after a two-week investigation, The Times reported that some USC football players had learned how to beat drug testing by devising elaborate schemes to substitute “clean” urine for their own and also by using masking agents.

--In March, a survey of graduation rates among NCAA Division I schools by the Chronicle of Higher Education showed that of the 24 players signed by USC in 1984, only six graduated within five years, a figure that ranked among the bottom 20 in Division I.

--In April, two Trojan defensive backs, Marcel Brown and Howard McCowan, were arrested with another man in connection with a series of robberies and beatings in Westwood and Redondo Beach. It was later revealed that, at the time of the robberies, Brown was free on bail after being accused of similar crimes in San Diego.

Brown and McCowan were suspended indefinitely by Smith, who called their actions deplorable and characterized their chances of returning to the team as unlikely.

“You can’t predict injuries, you can’t predict how your team is going to play and you can’t predict that things like this are going to occur,” Smith said. “There just aren’t any telltale signs.

“But to say we’ve fallen apart is a bunch of baloney.

“I’m not going to question the structure of our football program, or myself. And I’m not questioning the people we’ve recruited. We check our people out very thoroughly. I get letters(that ask), ‘Do you check them out?’ Hell, yes, we check them out.

“We practically live with these kids. We don’t take players just because they’re great athletes. I think, on the contrary, we’ve sent many people home from (recruiting) visits because of things they’ve done. But we’re dealing with young people, 18- to 22-year-olds. They’re growing up and we’re not going to shield them or shelter them. They’re going to make mistakes.”

And when they do, Smith said, they will be dealt with fairly.

His refusal to suspend McGinest, Oliver and Jones, all of whom played last season, was questioned by some, but Smith said his decision was based on his review of police reports of the incident.

It was reported last month that, if the incident occurred today, he would suspend the players.

“I can’t say that I would,” Smith said. “I’d get a hell of a lot of pressure to do it because people are more concerned about image. But I can’t go running scared every time something happens. I have to be firm and strong with the players, but I have to be fair.”

Of the case against the three football players, Smith said: “It’s a very gray issue.”

How was it that McCowan and Brown were suspended immediately, when McGinest, Oliver and Jones were not?

“To me, the Howard McCowan-Marcel Brown incident was cut and dried,” Smith said. “You talk to the police, and (the players) were caught in the act. And that kind of thing cannot be condoned. I don’t want to sit here and be judge and jury, but I have to go with the advice that’s given to me.”

Smith also was criticized for not suspending Foley, who played in relief of Marinovich in the Hancock Bowl and directed a fourth-quarter scoring drive.

Other than to attend practice, Foley was not allowed to leave the Trojans’ hotel or to participate in bowl activities in the week before the game at El Paso.

“To me, that was plenty of punishment,” Smith said. “Shane Foley is a great young man. He graduated with honors. He got postgraduate scholarships. That (one incident) doesn’t make him a bum.”

Of Marinovich, Smith said that the player who returned last season was a “different person” from the Marinovich of 1989 who, as a redshirt freshman, led the Trojans to the 1990 Rose Bowl game.

Asked if, given another chance, he would change anything about the way he dealt with Marinovich, Smith said: “Probably not.”

The image of their last public meeting remains vivid--a shouting match on the sideline at the Hancock Bowl that was shown on national television.

Something Marinovich said to him obviously enraged Smith, who made his way through several players to confront his quarterback face to face.

“I’m not like that on the sidelines all the time, but if something occurs . . . I think I was more than justified in doing what I did and saying what I did,” Smith said.

Of the charges that USC athletes cheated on drug tests, Smith said: “If that was being allowed to happen, then our system of drug testing was pretty bad.”

However, a review committee appointed by Mike McGee, USC athletic director, said that it found no evidence of regular or systematic cheating in the school’s drug-testing program.

The graduation rates produced by the Chronicle of Higher Education, Smith said, are “tremendously misleading” because they represent only a five-year period--”What difference does it make when a person graduates?” Smith said--and, in USC’s case, represent a class whose enrollment preceded both McGee and Smith.

By the end of this summer, USC officials said, five more members of the Trojans’ recruiting class of 1984 will have graduated. And of the 17 players signed by USC in 1986, an athletic department official said, 12 will have graduated by the end of this summer, with three more on schedule to graduate by the end of next summer.

“I don’t think it’s fair to judge this football program’s graduation rate on the (‘84) class,” Smith said. “You should check the class of (‘87, which was the first signed by Smith’s staff).”

Smith is aware that, at least for the time being, detractors will be reluctant to give his program the benefit of the doubt.

It will take some time for the Trojans’ image to recover.

“We’re going back to what we did in our first year or two (at USC),” said Smith, whose teams reached the Rose Bowl in each of his first three seasons, losing only one conference game in that time. “We’re going to teach the players about the heritage and the tradition of SC football. If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right.”

While saying that he was no less strict last season than he had been in his first three seasons at USC, Smith said that he will keep a closer watch on all aspects of the program in the future.

“I can’t be with the players all of the time,” he said. “There comes a time when they’ve got to make decisions. But we’ve told them that if these types of things continue, they are not going to get any second chances. We are going to look at things even tougher because of the current climate.”

Smith is confident his players will respond favorably.

“If anything, this will make us stronger,” Smith said. “To a lot of people, our image has been tarnished. And because of those incidents, all of us--coaches and players--have been branded. We’ve been indicted, tried and convicted of being bad people, a bad program, bad everything.

“It’s up to us to prove to people that that’s not right. We can’t be involved in these things. We have to make decisions in that light because if it goes on and on, it could bury us all. We don’t want that.

“It’s like in the third or fourth quarter, when you’re on the one-yard line and you’ve got to find a way to get the ball into the end zone. It’s no different. It’s the tough part of the game and we’ve got to fight through it.”