Trojans Show Smith the Door : ANALYSIS : Explanation Only Made Freedom Defeat Worse

What exactly was the last straw for Larry Smith: Was it that he lost to Fresno State, or was it what he said after that loss?

The 24-7 Fresno debacle was bad enough. It created a situation where USC, the proudest of football traditions, became a laughingstock. UCLA fans jammed the phone lines, trying to get on the sports talk shows. The gutty Bruins became the giggling Bruins.

Ironically, they were fighting for air time with exasperated Trojan fans and alums, who had much too recently suffered through the twin humiliation of losing to a UCLA team quarterbacked by a walk-on from UC Santa Barbara and then losing for a 10th consecutive time to Notre Dame.

So Fresno State was clearly the Smith Trifecta.

For the cardinal and gold faithful, it was stunning, shocking, almost unforgivable. USC doesn’t play Fresno State. It has earned the right to that arrogance over the years with national championships and Rose Bowl victories and top-10 finishes by the dozens. But if it must play a Fresno State because of a conference contract with the Freedom Bowl, then it must dominate, not languish.

So, most likely, the loss itself was the end of Smith.

But maybe, just maybe, he could have saved his job had he been a bit more perceptive about what needed to be said after the Fresno State mess. Just maybe, if he had said that he understood that this defeat flew right in the face of the proud USC tradition, that he was angered and disappointed by his team’s lack of effort, and that he would now dedicate himself to never, ever letting anything like that happen again, he might have saved himself.

Instead, he talked that silly coach’s talk about scholarship cutbacks bringing parity and school logos meaning nothing anymore because team caliber is so equal across the country. Many of us in the press at the Freedom Bowl shook our heads in disbelief when he said it. It was the equivalent of a coaching death wish.

If you are at USC or Notre Dame or Alabama or Michigan or Ohio State or Miami or UCLA or any number of schools with proud football traditions, the logo makes a huge difference. In many cases, it is the difference. Smith came to coach here because it was USC. The best high school players in the country consider coming to USC because it is USC.

So when the same coach who wanted to coach at this special school makes remarks that lump his school into the same category as other schools, you can reach only one conclusion: Larry Smith might have coached at USC, but he never quite understood what that meant.

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Friday was a strange day at the Rose Bowl. There were empty seats, for the first time in memory. Michigan was playing, but Bo Schembechler was in the press box, rather than flinging headsets along the sidelines. And Washington, a program heretofore seemingly above reproach, was trying to play a game while fending off question after question about the newly discovered tilt in its halo.

Three years ago to the day, Larry Smith was coaching USC to a 17-10 victory over Michigan right here.

So, it is interesting to ponder how this slipped away so quickly from Smith, a man who clearly had the coaching credentials to be at USC.

Maybe it was the six losses to Notre Dame, maybe the apparent increase in hotdogging and needless taunting by players wearing cardinal and gold. USC backers demand victory, but with class.

Maybe it was just flat-out bad luck, such as losing Mark Carrier and Junior Seau and Todd Marinovich to the pros. Or ending up in the Freedom Bowl against Fresno State, a situation which, to stretch things a bit, could be blamed on the University of Wisconsin.

One of the Freedom Bowl’s plans, once USC appeared bound for the game by conference contract, was to bring Wisconsin in as the opponent. The Badgers, who have been terrible for years, simply had to beat Minnesota in their finale for a 6-5 record, thereby allowing Freedom Bowl officials to promote a nostalgia rematch of the famous 1963 Rose Bowl, won by the Trojans when they held off a furious rally by Wisconsin. For USC fans, a Trojan-Wisconsin rematch would have been much more palatable, and the heat on Smith much reduced. But the Badgers lost to Minnesota and, with a 5-6 record, were not eligible for a bowl bid.

So poor Larry Smith got Fresno State and lost his job.

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At first, the timing of the firing/forced resignation seemed a bit strange. USC has Mike McGee as athletic director, but only until Steven B. Sample, university president, releases him to take his new job at South Carolina.

That meant that, realistically, one person could pull the trigger on Smith. And that person, Sample, did just that, according to a source close to the USC athletic department. The source said that Sample told McGee to get it done, and that McGee did so, although reluctantly.

The conclusion there is that, while Sample hasn’t been around USC long, not even as long as Smith, he clearly understood what needed to be done in the wake of Fresno State. It would be nice if lots of USC alums gave bundles of money to their school based on the success of research in the physics lab, but Sample knows better and reacted realistically.

Unlike Smith, Sample already understands what this logo stuff is all about.

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Wednesday night, a reporter sat with three USC athletic department officials in a booth at Julie’s Restaurant, a longtime haven for USC coaches and officials. One of the officials mentioned that the booth the group was sitting in was John McKay’s special place for years while he coached the Trojans to Rose Bowl after Rose Bowl.

“It was John Robinson’s, too,” said another in the group.

To which the reporter asked, “Did it then become Larry Smith’s booth?”

All three members of the USC athletic department smiled, kind of sadly, and shook their heads.

In retrospect, it all seems to come down to that one thing. Larry Smith might have coached USC, but when it came down to understanding what that meant, he never quite got it.