‘Conquest’ to Conquered: Never Thought He’d See It

“USC, 7, Fresno State, 24.”

There are headlines I never expected to see in my lifetime: “Grenada Repels Marines,” “Channel Swimmer Drowns,” “Massachusetts Votes Republican.”

USC’s Trojans would lose to Fresno State about the time the Berlin Wall fell. Or the Soviet Union went democratic.

It’s an ignominy they might never live down. I mean, what was USC doing in a Freedom Bowl to begin with?!

Howard Jones would be mortified. How can they ever explain this to Marshall Duffield, Mort Kaer, Morley Drury, Amby Schindler, Orv Mohler, Gus Shaver, Cotton Warburton, Grenny Landsdell or Frank Gifford?! How can they explain it to Mike Garrett, O.J. Simpson, Marcus Allen, Charles White? How do you go from Heisman to ha-ha in a few easy lessons?

What ever happened to Student Body Rights, Thundering Herds, “We’re No. 1!” When did USC become, “We’re No. 54!”

Remember when USC was the only game in town? Only major league game. Its only link with the big time this side of the sound stages. Hey! John Wayne was an SC Trojan. Ward Bond. Tom Selleck. General Schwarzkopf. Art Buchwald. Tom Seaver. Parry O’Brien.

Hollywood loved them, some, such as Clara Bow, quite literally. Eastern teams feared them. They were big, tough, mean and fast. Lord, were they fast! The Olympic team was 30% or more Californian and of those, about half came from, or seemed to come from, USC. They owned the Rose Bowl. They beat the Eastern champions, 47-14, 35-0. They were so haughty, they declined the bid to play in the 1929 Rose Bowl. Their coach, an austere, aloof, driven man who went through life with a frown, had the best football players on the planet and he threw them at the weak point of his opposition, which he could pick out unerringly. He didn’t have teams, he had stampedes.

When they beat Notre Dame in 1931, half the town lined the streets for a ticker-tape parade. They played Notre Dame at a time when most teams would rather play the Red Army. The idea for the film “The Spirit Of Notre Dame” germinated in the USC-Notre Dame encounters.

How do you go from that to Fresno State? How do you go from “Fight On For Old S.C.” to “Fall Down For Old S.C.”? How do you go from “Conquest” to “Conquered” to “Help”?

Well, Trojan Coach Larry Smith thought he spotted a trend when he showed up at the ballpark for the Freedom Bowl on Tuesday night. I mean, there were all those people in a nice, gaudy, traffic light, Fresno State red. A crowd like this, he explained after the game, “creates success and emotion.” He added: “Let’s face it, that was a Fresno State crowd.”

So, then, the Trojans got beat by a lot of yahoos waving red pom-poms and swigging beer?

No, Coach. That dog won’t hunt. You think Howard Jones would give one flip to the makeup of the lineup in the seats? No way. Howard is the coach who went into Soldier Field in Chicago in 1927 and, before the largest crowd in the annals of college football, 120,000, many of them carrying rosary beads, played one of Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame teams to a standstill. He lost, but by 7-6, not by 24-7.

This Fresno State team was hardly the 1927 Fighting Irish. The nearest thing to a fighting Irish was their hard-nosed coach, Jim Sweeney. They were beaten this year by Oregon State, Washington State, Brigham Young and Hawaii. They gave up 46 points in one game, 47 in another, 41 and 39 and had yielded an average of 29.7 points per game.

USC got 7.

Well, suggested Coach Smith, it was just that we knights of the keyboard didn’t understand the situation. Well, that’s always a distinct possibility, given as we are to limited access to the situation in the first place.

“You people just don’t understand it,” Coach Smith said. He went on to explain the scholarship limits imposed by the NCAA has changed college football. “You don’t beat someone just because of your name and your logo anymore.”

When did you?

The 1992 USC football brochure lists 102 players on this year’s squad. Eleven of them are listed as “walk-ons” (i.e., uninvited). That gives you 91 hand-picked players, most of whom can run the 40 in 4.6. You ought to be able to handle Fresno State with that. You ought to be able to take some countries with that. Don’t bet one-third of them won’t be Green Bay Packers or Detroit Lions in a year or so.

If keeping up with the Joneses is a little hard to do, that would be one thing. Keeping up with Fresno State would not seem to be all that challenging.

When you say we don’t understand the situation, Coach, I have to admit you’re absolutely right. Neither would Howard Jones.