No Magic for Saladin : McCullough’s Top Wish Is to Play for USC, but It’s Been No Carpet Ride

It was a crisp October Saturday, perfect for football, yet it was obvious the best player on the field at Santa Ana Stadium would rather have been elsewhere.

Saladin McCullough, No. 4, stood detached from events on the sideline, his Pasadena City College helmet tucked between his right arm and rib cage.

Among the most heralded football prospects in recent years, a runner likened in hushed tones by some to Gale Sayers, McCullough had to wait out a one-quarter suspension for missing a practice without permission before PCC’s game against Rancho Santiago.

Once in the backfield, in his fluid, almost ho-hum manner, McCullough flashed the skills that have been dropping jaws since the runner’s days at Pasadena Muir High. Although he missed a quarter on offense--he was allowed to return kicks--McCullough gained 128 yards in 17 carries in an otherwise dreary and error-plagued PCC loss to Rancho Santiago.

What was a player with such gifts doing in this game, in this half-empty stadium, in this conference, in these circumstances?

McCullough asks himself often.

In his mind, Oct. 29 should have been spent relaxing in a dormitory across town during USC’s bye weekend as the Trojans awaited their next game against Washington State.

McCullough is so disappointed not to be a USC tailback he says he found it difficult to watch his favorite team play.

“Because,” McCullough explained, “that’s supposed to be me.”

That McCullough is not a sophomore at USC has to do with his 1992 Scholastic Aptitude Test score while he was at Muir. After McCullough had committed to attend USC, anonymous Muir teachers challenged his SAT score of 1,200, a dramatic improvement--too dramatic, the skeptics claimed--from his earlier score in the preliminary SAT.

The Educational Testing Service (ETS) invalidated McCullough’s result, offering him a chance to retake the test.

McCullough refused, and steadfastly maintains his innocence.

“I just think there were some jealous people who were jealous of me because I was going (to USC),” McCullough, 19, said. “I guess they just didn’t want to see me do something with my life. They’d rather see me stuck here with them.”

After taking a year off from school, McCullough resurfaced at PCC with a new game plan: to obtain his associate of arts degree in three semesters and transfer to a four-year university.

His heart is still set on USC.

“Just trying to get to university, really,” McCullough said when asked of his goals.

McCullough’s foray into community college football was, not surprisingly, a spectacular success. In seven games, he scored nine touchdowns and led the Mission Conference, averaging 231 all-purpose yards a game. He finished as the team’s leading rusher with 725 yards in 128 carries.

Unlike football defenders, however, McCullough couldn’t shake the cloud of controversy that follows him off the field.

“Everyone’s walking light because of Saladin,” one PCC administrator said.

Maybe not for long. According to Robert Lewis, the school’s sports information director, McCullough quit the football team with two games remaining, citing “personal reasons.”

McCullough is still believed to be enrolled in classes at PCC, but there is talk that he will transfer, possibly to El Camino College in Torrance, before next season.

“The rumor mill is flying on that one,” Lewis said.

To date, McCullough has not behaved like one eager to tidy up his academic or personal standing.

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McCullough was twice suspended from the team for disciplinary reasons. Coach Dennis Gossard benched McCullough on Oct. 8 for PCC’s game against Mt. San Antonio College for fighting at practice.

According to the campus police report, the fight on Oct. 3 pitted Saladin and Hassan, his older brother and teammate, against a sophomore defensive back from the San Fernando Valley.

In the report, a PCC assistant coach said that another player, not involved in the fight, “was bragging that players from the Valley had better watch out because they are in the Pasadena area, where local Pasadena-Altadena gangs dominate.”

All three players were suspended for a game.

Gossard said it was an isolated incident and Pasadena police said McCullough was not involved in gangs.

“He got in a fight,” the coach said of McCullough. “I don’t like people fighting.”

McCullough offered his version:

“I felt we shouldn’t have got suspended,” he said. “It was a team thing. It should stay on the field. The coaches should have handled it. But things happen for a reason, so you won’t make that mistake again. I won’t do nothing stupid like that again.”

Michael Harrison, McCullough’s uncle and former legal guardian, said the fight involving his nephews was “blown out of proportion” and is angered by innuendoes about Saladin.

“He’s always been a kid who’s had a bad rap, for no reason.” Harrison said. “He does stay to himself, doesn’t talk much. When you don’t express yourself, people will assume a lot of things.”

McCullough’s suspension followed hard on the heels of his best performance of the season. He had just totaled 320 all-purpose yards in a 42-41 loss to Fullerton College.

But in the week before the Rancho Santiago game, McCullough was suspended again, this time for one quarter. An administration source said McCullough left practice, complaining of illness, but failed to get the necessary clearance from the team trainer.

Before the season, Pasadena Police Sgt. Phlunte Riddle, a member of the department’s Neighborhood Crime Task Force, had been asked by the PCC athletic department to speak to the football coaching staff about how increased gang tensions in the community might affect a team with players from vastly disparate neighborhoods.

The caution, it turns out, was warranted. On Oct. 19, an unconscious PCC student was dragged into the trainer’s room by a PCC football player. In the police report, a PCC coach said he had overheard talk among players that a PCC player “beat up the victim because he did not like the victim fraternizing with another gang.”

On Oct. 28, police investigated a fight between two players at the men’s gym with “one of the subjects brandishing a knife,” the police report stated.

Gossard said team tensions are merely reflective of the times.

“Society has a problem,” Gossard said. “We’re just like every other football team in the country.”

Although neither of the latter two incidents involved Saladin McCullough, his presence caused concern for PCC officials. Because McCullough was a star attraction, Riddle said, the athletic department feared that an increase in attendance at PCC home games might lead to problems in the stands.

“An individual player may or may not be a (gang) member, but the associates of that player could come and, what they call ‘See their homeboy play,’ that could be a problem,” Riddle said.

“He’s from the community, and he is an excellent player,” Riddle said. “So everyone has such heightened expectations of him, they may want to come and see him play. And those persons (might) create a problem.”

Indeed, the Oct. 1 home opener against Fullerton drew an estimated 2,000 fans, large by PCC standards. The team stadium holds 2,500 and the school does not keep attendance records.

Security was beefed up for the game, Riddle said, but there were no major problems in the stands.

Ernie Romine, PCC’s athletic director, said special precautions were taken, but not because of McCullough.

“Because (McCullough is) on our team is not the reason we had to take additional security measures,” Romine said. “We took additional security measures because it’s 1994, and society is the way it is.”

On the field, as usual, McCullough did not disappoint.

He scored four touchdowns.

*

McCullough the student has not fared as well.

Interviewed in late October, McCullough said he was taking 16 units, including a course in pre-algebra, Math 125. He said he hoped to complete the necessary 48 units to transfer in three semesters, which he said will require attending summer school.

Because his high school SAT test score was invalidated, McCullough entered college as a nonqualifier under NCAA rules and must obtain his associate’s degree to transfer to a four-year school.

“I’m doing good, attending all my classes,” he said at the time.

Actually, McCullough had been dropped from his Math 125 class earlier in the semester because of poor attendance, according to the teacher, who asked not to be identified.

McCullough was also dropped from the Program for Academic Support Services (PASS), a federal program designed to assist students who require special academic attention.

Charles Clay, director of PASS, said McCullough failed to comply with a study agreement reached by the player, Gossard and PASS.

“The agreement broke down,” Clay said. “We’re trying to work with Saladin, but I don’t know. . . . Maybe my program wasn’t the best program for him.”

Gossard, in his eighth season as PCC coach, said there is only so much a coach can do.

“He’s one of 80 guys I have to stay on,” Gossard said. “Every kid is told every day: Please go to class. Get your education. That’s why we’re here.”

Harrison, who became Saladin’s guardian when McCullough’s father died in 1986, says he is partly to blame for some of his nephew’s first-semester missteps.

A history teacher at Muir, Harrison said he has not been able to devote as much time to McCullough since being named interim football coach at Muir this fall.

“Some things just kind of got--not out of hand--but I was not able to keep the eye that he needs as a young man at his age,” Harrison said.

But Harrison also said the buck stops with McCullough.

“He is the person that is totally responsible for his future,” his uncle said. “He has all the backup that he needs, and he has the supporting cast. He has to make a conscious effort to do it himself.”

*

In the decades-old office where Jackie Robinson, another talented prospect and PCC student, once sat with his coaches, Gossard wondered what course McCullough would choose to follow.

“The guy as an athlete cannot miss,” Gossard said after recent practice. “Can’t miss. That would be the tragedy, if he does.”

A Pasadena baseball scout once clocked McCullough from home to first base in 3.6 seconds--Rickey Henderson fast.

The scout recalled a game in which McCullough walked, stole second on the first pitch, third base on the second pitch and scored on a passed ball on the fourth pitch.

And never slid.

“Rocket Ismail speed,” the scout said.

Had McCullough shown interest in track, he probably could have rewritten records on Muir’s star-studded sprint team. For fun, McCullough used to race classmates in the corridors at lunchtime.

A baseball outfielder, McCullough was drafted by the Kansas City Royals, but his first love always has been football.

He is not a track man who plays football. Those who know say he possesses the instincts of a great back. Though smallish at 5 feet 9 and 173 pounds, McCullough is a tough enough inside runner who seems to melt into holes and emerge at full speed.

“I’ve been in this business 40 years, coaching football,” Jim Brownfield, McCullough’s high school coach, said. “I’ve never seen a kid, no less had one, who could do what this kid could do three yards past the line of scrimmage. When he gets three yards past the line of scrimmage, it’s unbelievable, like Gale Sayers. You can’t judge his speed.”

During his senior year at Muir, McCullough rushed for 2,142 yards and scored 36 touchdowns.

Against Fullerton on Oct. 1, McCullough gained 73 yards in 19 carries, had seven catches for 73 yards, returned three kickoffs for 128 yards, including a 98-yard return for touchdown, and returned three punts for 46 yards.

“We pounded the hell out of him, 42-41,” Fullerton College Coach Gene Murphy said facetiously. “We let him get all his yards and shut him down the last 41 seconds.”

Murphy says McCullough belongs in a higher league.

“He kind of reminds me of (Garrison) Hearst,” Murphy said, referring to the former University of Georgia All-American now with the Arizona Cardinals. “He’s not as big, but I’m talking about changing directions, stopping on a dime and leaving nine cents change, running east and west as fast as he runs north and south.”

Gossard said McCullough has not been difficult to coach but has been critical of the way he is being used in the offense, preferring to run from the I-formation rather than Gossard’s single-back set.

“I don’t think I would have went here if I knew they were going to be in this type of offense,” McCullough said.

Gossard said his offense was best utilizing the player’s all-around talents as a runner and receiver.

“It’s not like he’s not getting the ball!” Gossard exclaimed.

Gossard said he is not offended that McCullough appears to be biding his time at PCC.

“No kid has ever planned to be here,” Gossard said. “They all want to be at four-year schools.”

But will McCullough get there?

Some question whether the player will realize his potential. They see a young man at the crossroads.

It remains McCullough’s dream to play at USC, yet some privately believe he would be better off attending a university out of state, away from the scrutiny that would no doubt follow him to the USC campus.

“If he went to another school, I think he’d enjoy it,” Brownfield, his high school coach, said. “The experience of going somewhere else would be valuable.”

Gossard said, “I’d like to see him do anything he wants. I want to see him get his AA, get the hell out of here, I don’t care where he chooses.”

Harrison said his nephew is still “hell-bent” on USC but admits there’s a difference between wanting and being accepted.

“He has to take care of business academically,” Harrison said. “He’s aware of that, he knows that’s necessary for him to reach the next level.”

McCullough has not thought much beyond USC, but said he probably would leave the state if he couldn’t get his first wish.

“That’s where I want to be at, playing running back at SC,” McCullough said. “I just like it. I don’t know (why). I grew up liking it. I like (Coach) John Robinson.”

Robinson, of course, liked McCullough enough to offer him a scholarship out of high school.

What now?

The USC coach has been vague about McCullough, who would not be available to the Trojans until the 1996 season.

“We can’t even look at him until next year,” Robinson said.

Robinson added that he obviously would be interested in any quality player who qualified for admittance.

However, another in the USC athletic department, who asked not to be named, said he would “be shocked” if McCullough ended up at the school.

McCullough is more optimistic.

“I like SC,” he said. “I’m hoping they’ll want me.”