COLLEGE FOOTBALL: THE BOWLS : COTTON : Dykes Working Behind Strong Lines

Spike Dykes, the slow-talking, homespun Texas Tech coach, has a big edge over USC’s John Robinson so far in pre-Cotton Bowl laugh lines.

Some samples:

On long coaching tenures: “No matter where he is, a coach’s popularity drops about 10% per year. Well, I’ve been in Lubbock 10 years now, and I’m down to my wife and my dog.”

When asked if his team has played an offensive line as big as USC’s: “Sure, we played Nebraska. They’re as big as Russia.”

On Nebraska’s 42-16 victory: “They ground our corn pretty good.”

On his All-American linebacker, Zach Thomas: “Zach is a throwback to the 1950s. He wears high-tops and looks like he just crawled out of a coal mine.”

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Craig Fertig, the USC football broadcaster and Trojan quarterback in the early 1960s, talked recently of his 1960 recruiting trip to USC.

“The SC assistant coach assigned to recruit me was Al Davis,” Fertig said.

“He took me on a walking tour of the campus. The first structure we came to was an old barracks, from World War II.

“Davis said to me: ‘This thing is being torn down next month, and we’re going to build a modern athletic department building right here.’ ”

That was 35 years ago . . . and the wartime barracks, next door to Heritage Hall, still stands.

It houses USC’s Safety and Systems Management department.

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The Cotton Bowl game will be played on grass. The stadium’s artificial turf had to be removed in order to qualify for last summer’s World Cup. . . . Going home: Trojans John Herpin, Cedric Jefferson, Micah Phillips, Shawn Walters, Delon Washington and Brian Williams are Texans, and Washington and Williams are from Dallas. . . . USC sold nearly 5,000 of its allotted 11,000 Cotton Bowl tickets and turned the remainder over to the Cotton Bowl and Texas Tech. Texas Tech, which averaged only 32,032 at its home games this season, nonetheless sold all its 20,000 tickets in two days.