What’s Wrong With Trojans? : Mistakes in Recruiting, Player Defections Show Their Effects

On the field, Beno Bryant, the Washington tailback from Dorsey High, was piling up yardage and touchdowns and showing USC why the Trojans should not have overlooked him as a recruit.

On the USC sideline, Mazio Royster, the Trojan tailback who rushed for 1,168 yards last year, was stewing, relegated to the bench in the middle of his junior season.

A study in contrast two weeks ago at the Coliseum, Bryant and Royster illustrated the state of USC football in 1991.

Haunted by their recruiting mistakes, faced with patches of player unrest, the Trojans enter Saturday’s game with UCLA at 3-7, assured of only their second losing season in 30 years.

For a program only two years removed from its third consecutive Rose Bowl appearance under Coach Larry Smith, it has been a hard fall.

In Berkeley, as California was beating the Trojans, 52-30, Cal students derided the USC band. In Tucson, as the Trojans were being beaten, 31-14, Arizona fans directed chants of “Lar-ry! Lar-ry!” at Smith, who coached the Wildcats for seven seasons before coming to USC in 1987.

How has it come to this?

At his weekly news conference Tuesday, Smith spoke of his team’s youth, of injuries and of the thin line between winning and losing.

Holding his thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart, Smith said: “As I stand here today, there’s that much difference between being 3-7 and 7-3. If I could take six plays in our season and change them--a call by a coach or an official--we’d be sitting here 7-3. . . . That’s how finite things are.”

Other factors may be at work as well.

With the NCAA making scholarships more precious and the NFL making it easier for underclassmen to enter the draft, prominence in college football is no longer guaranteed, even at USC.

Calling USC boosters “spoiled,” Cal Athletic Director Bob Bockrath said: “They need to refocus on issues and understand that they aren’t going to reign supreme year after year. Georgia Tech, Virginia, us--there are going to be more schools like that. It is not going to be a situation where Notre Dame, USC, Alabama, Michigan and some others will be the top four or five teams every year. Those days are gone.”

Yet it is clear, too, that the Trojans have problems of their own making.

Said Oliver Lucas, a former Colorado assistant coach who recruited against USC in Southern California: “In the process of winning, you start living on the mystique. You get sloppy. You’re not as aggressive as you once were. USC has to get back to the basics. They’ve got to say (to recruits), ‘Hey, we’re USC. We care about you. And you’re going to stay home.’ ”

The Trojans took a major hit in 1990, when linebacker Junior Seau and safety Mark Carrier entered the NFL draft after their junior seasons. USC was stung again last spring when quarterback Todd Marinovich, who was indefinitely suspended from the team, entered the draft after his sophomore season.

“Seau, Carrier and Marinovich, those are three absolutely top talents,” Bockrath said. “Take them off your team, you can make yourself vulnerable in a hurry. People at SC need to take that fact into consideration and perhaps moderate their perspective accordingly.”

NCAA-mandated scholarship reductions, instituted to help schools cut costs, also have had a leveling effect on college football.

Three years ago, the number of football scholarships a school could give out per year was cut from 30 to 25. The total number of players a school can have on scholarship is due to be reduced gradually from 95 to 85 over the next three years.

“There is so much parity (in college football),” Baylor Coach Grant Teaff said. “On any Saturday, if you’re not ready physically, you can lose a game. I’m talking about any of the upper 30, 35 teams. Good coaches, good people, can easily get into a situation where they have a down season.”

In the case of the 1991 Trojans, the ball started rolling downhill with a stunning 24-10 loss to Memphis State in their opener.

“I have a funny feeling their loss to us might have hurt them more than people think, even though they did rebound and beat Penn State (21-10, in their next game),” said Memphis State Coach Chuck Stobart, a former USC assistant under Smith.

Still, a 3-7 season doesn’t materialize overnight.

When he took over at Arizona late in the spring of 1980, Smith inherited a program mired in scandal. But he also inherited a terrific recruiting class that had been signed by his predecessor, Tony Mason, earlier that year.

Blending Mason’s players with some who slipped through the nets of more prominent programs, Smith was able to keep Arizona afloat when high-profile recruits would not consider the school because of Mason’s other legacy--the threat of NCAA sanctions.

Smith’s recruiting at Arizona picked up after probation, which included a ban on bowl games for the Wildcats in 1983 and ’84.

But his 1986 recruiting class proved to be a washout. Of the 27 players signed by Arizona, only eight were with the program at the beginning of the 1987 season.

By then, Smith was in Los Angeles.

The timing of Smith’s hiring by USC--January of 1987, the middle of the recruiting crunch--put him at an immediate disadvantage. As a result, his first USC recruiting class was unspectacular by USC standards.

Also, because the Trojans needed a quick fix of talent, Smith did not have the luxury of giving several key members of that class red-shirt years as freshmen, thereby leaving the current Trojans without the expected complement of fifth-year seniors.

Smith refused a request through the USC sports information department to be interviewed by The Times this week, citing the demands of preparing for Saturday’s game against UCLA at the Coliseum.

At his news conference Tuesday, however, he traced some of this year’s trouble back to his first recruiting class at USC.

“We got some pretty doggone good people,” he said of that class. “ . . . (Pat) Harlow. I mean, under normal circumstances, you should be able to redshirt a kid like that his first year. He plays four straight years, and he’s in the NFL. (Ricky) Ervins is another one. (Scott) Ross, another one. Those are three all-conference players. If we had had even two of them back for a fifth year, it would have made a tremendous difference.

“I think we had 16 (recruits) or something in our first year’s class. And there were a number of guys we had to play that first year because of pure numbers of people who have left the program.”

Smith’s subsequent recruiting classes at USC have been better, but they have been marked by some critical failures, particularly with running backs.

In the case of Bryant, the former Dorsey standout starting at tailback for Washington, the Trojans simply failed to see the potential of a player in their own back yard.

“I don’t know what (USC) was thinking in not recruiting him,” said Larry Slade, the Washington assistant coach who signed Bryant. “We liked him--liked him a lot. We liked his ability to make the big play.”

In other cases, Tailback U. has simply been unable to sign high-profile running backs such as Russell White of Encino Crespi High, now at Cal, and Napoleon Kaufman of Lompoc, now at Washington.

USC also was spurned by Robert Strait of Cuero, Tex., who was considered by many to be the country’s top running back recruit in 1989, and Robert Smith, a two-time state “Mr. Football” in Euclid, Ohio. Strait signed with Baylor. Smith chose Ohio State, but has expressed an interest in transferring to USC.

“You would think SC would attract the top running back in the country,” Stobart said. “When I was there, I tried to recruit Emmitt Smith (the tailback who went to Florida and is now with the Dallas Cowboys). I couldn’t get him to come out on an official visit.”

An obvious drawback for USC in recruiting is the school’s stance regarding the NCAA’s Proposition 48, which bases freshman eligibility on standardized test scores and high school grade-point average.

Under NCAA rules, an athlete who is ineligible under Prop 48 can still be admitted to a university, although he cannot practice or receive athletic scholarship aid as a freshman. USC policy, however, denies admission to such an athlete.

Because USC has a policy that is more restrictive than the NCAA’s, Trojan coaches, unlike their counterparts at the other schools, cannot guarantee a recruit who hasn’t met Prop 48 requirements on the signing date that he will have a place at USC.

The stance does not prevent a recruit who fails to meet the Prop 48 test requirement from staying out of a school for a year and attempting to improve his score--the route by which Curtis Conway, the Trojans’ sophomore flanker from Hawthorne High, became eligible. But such a route is a tough sell to a recruit seeking some assurance about the future.

Conceded Washington’s Slade: “How many guys have done what Curtis Conway did? Very few.”

At the same time, USC’s best recruiting tools--its tradition and the bright lights and exposure offered by Los Angeles--have been blunted by negatives associated with its location between downtown and South-Central L.A.

“The times are changing for Los Angeles schools,” said Allen Wallace, publisher of Super Prep, a Costa Mesa-based football recruiting publication. “ John Robinson, John McKay--I don’t think those guys had to worry about gang violence.”

Mark Vander Poel, an offensive tackle from Chino who attended Colorado and is now in his rookie season with the Indianapolis Colts, remembers giving the Trojans serious consideration as a recruit--until his luggage was stolen during his official visit to the USC campus.

“When I went to a player’s apartment, somebody broke into my car and stole the luggage,” he said. “I thought, ‘I don’t know if I want to deal with that every day.’ . . .

“Then I went out to Colorado (for a recruiting visit). I had a great time. It’s beautiful country. I didn’t have to deal with traffic or smog or a bunch of people ripping my stuff off. For somebody who grew up in Southern California, it was kind of nice to get away for a little while.”

Perhaps the greatest failing of USC’s recent recruiting efforts is the Trojans’ inability to sign top Southern California players.

“Eric Bieniemy, that was a great one SC shouldn’t have lost,” said Lucas, the former Colorado assistant coach, referring to the former Colorado tailback who came out of Bishop Amat High in 1987. “Hell, when you go to Bishop Amat, you are supposed to be hand-fed right to (USC). But (the Trojans) got sloppy.

“I said to Eric, ‘You can stay (in Southern California), and if you win a Heisman at SC, all you do is become another statue. You’re just another on the long list of great running backs. Be brave. Step out and do something different.’ And what was the end result of that? He came to Colorado, was a star, got all the honors he wanted and set a trend. At SC? Just another great guy. Just one more.

“The bottom line is (USC) took Eric for granted. . . . A couple of years ago, I knew (USC) would not be the same.”

In Lucas’ view, USC coaches have not worked hard enough in building relationships with Southern California high school coaches.

“You’ve got high school coaches now who don’t necessarily have the allegiance to SC anymore,” he said. “(USC coaches) haven’t cultivated it. It’s ‘We’re SC. We’re coming in. And it doesn’t matter if you are going to help us or not.’ You’ve got to recruit the coaches as well as the players.”

The arrogance factor apparently had a lot to do with USC losing White, who has rushed for 1,088 yards--including 229 against the Trojans--as a junior this year at Cal.

White’s mother, Helen, said her son became upset when Trojan assistant coach Gary Bernardi contacted him during class at Crespi to tell him that he was one of three players in line for two remaining USC scholarships, and that he had to make a decision immediately.

“I told Russell, ‘If they put pressure on you now, they probably will put pressure on you when you get in there,’ ” Helen White said. “Russell said to me, ‘Why are they pressuring me, mom?’ I was very shocked that they did that.”

She added that she found Bernardi, who came to USC from Arizona with Smith, to be unprepared when he visited her at her home during the recruitment process.

“How long had Bernardi been with SC at that point? Two years? What do they know about thetradition of SC?” she said. “He came into my home saying, ‘It is the SC tradition. It is this. It is that.’

“That was not my concern. My concern was ‘I know what Russell is going to do for your school. What are you going to do for Russell academically?’ I wanted to see a support system. (Bernardi) didn’t bring any paperwork. When we asked him questions, he said, ‘Well, I’ll have to get back to you.’ When you come to recruit a blue-chip player, wouldn’t you come a little more prepared?

“The impression I got is they took Russell for granted.”

Bernardi declined a request to be interviewed.

As for those players who do come to USC, some have chafed under Smith, who has a tendency to get involved in just about every aspect of a player’s life.

Recalling the coaching change from Ted Tollner to Smith, former USC defensive lineman Joe Walshe said: “It went from fun times to a military camp. You either do what (Smith) says or you’re not going to be around. . . . He wasn’t a guy you could relate to. His rule was you had to do everything his way. There wasn’t any letup. It wasn’t any fun. It was like going to work every day.

“I remember one time talking to a secretary in Heritage Hall about a movie. Smith walks by and says, ‘No, that’s not a very good movie.’ I thought, ‘Shoot, is this guy a movie critic, too?’ Is it counselor Smith, Dr. Smith or Coach Smith? I wasn’t quite sure.”

Smith’s most dramatic confrontation with a player at USC occurred last year when he feuded with Marinovich.

Said Alfred Jenkins, the former Lynwood High star who had a tumultuous career as a quarterback for Smith at Arizona: “When I saw what happened with Todd, I thought, ‘Here it is again, a quarterback controversy.’ ”

This season, Smith and Royster, the junior tailback, have been at odds since late September, when Royster publicly stated that he wanted to carry the ball more.

After Royster’s comments appeared in print, Smith told reporters at a news conference: “Maybe he ought to move to the press box and call the plays.”

Once billed as an All-American candidate, Royster is now the Trojans’ third-string tailback. He has not played a down since the Cal game Nov. 2, when he carried the ball four times.

Royster said he was shocked when Smith criticized him for speaking out.

Said Royster: “I was reading all kinds of stuff (from Smith) after that. ‘You need to get a long run. You need to get more than five yards a carry.’ I was just offended. We haven’t really talked about it since then. I still feel I should be getting a couple of plays.”

As for his future, Royster said he is undecided.

“I know another year like this won’t help me,” he said.

For sure, another year like this won’t help Smith, who in August signed what was described as a “multiyear extension” of his original five-year USC contract.

But those who believe in Smith figure he will bring USC back.

“Larry is an excellent coach, an excellent person,” said Bockrath, the Cal athletic director, who worked with Smith as a coach and administrator at Arizona. “He is great with kids. There are problems sometimes because he gets so close to his players. He is getting a bum rap from people who don’t know what kind of program he runs.”

Said Stobart: “He didn’t get dumb all of a sudden. Here’s a coach everybody in the country wanted two years ago. People have got to have patience.”

In Los Angeles, however, that might be a lot to ask.

Times staff writer Jerry Crowe contributed to this story.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE TROJANS GONE?

THREE WHO LEFT

Junior Seau, linebacker--Bypassed senior season to enter NFL draft in 1990. First-round pick of the San Diego Chargers.

Mark Carrier, safety--Bypassed senior season to enter NFL draft in 1990. First-round pick of the Chicago Bears.

Todd Marinovich, quarterback--Bypassed junior and senior seasons to enter NFL draft in 1991 after his suspension by Coach Larry Smith and arrest on drug charges. First-round pick of the Raiders.

FIVE WHO GOT AWAY

Russell White, tailback--From Crespi High in Encino. Chose Cal over USC. Has rushed for 1,088 yards and 14 touchdowns this season for Citrus Bowl-bound Bears.

Beno Bryant, tailback--From Dorsey High. Overlooked by USC in recruiting. Signed with Washington. Has rushed for 816 yards and seven touchdowns in his first season as a starter for the Rose Bowl-bound Huskies.

Robert Strait, fullback--Considered by many to be the top running back recruit in the nation in 1989 when he came out of high school in Cuero, Tex. Chose Baylor over USC. Scored nine touchdowns as a redshirt freshman in 1990. Has rushed for 481 yards and five touchdowns this season for the Copper Bowl-bound Bears despite missing three games because of knee and ankle injuries.

Robert Smith, tailback--Two-time state “Mr. Football” as a high school player in Euclid, Ohio. Chose Ohio State over USC. Rushed for 1,126 yards and was named Big Ten freshman of the year in 1990. Left the Buckeye football program last summer in a dispute with coaches. Reportedly is considering transferring to USC.

Napoleon Kaufman, tailback--From Lompoc. One of top running back recruits in the nation. Chose Washington over USC, UCLA, Notre Dame and Nebraska. Has rushed for 297 yards and four touchdowns in a reserve role as a freshman.