COLLEGE FOOTBALL : He’s Not 100% on Cotton

“Man, it sure feels great to finally get out of L.A.,” senior linebacker Brian Williams was quoted Thursday by a Ft. Worth newspaper, a very peculiar thing for a University of Southern California football player to say. “This is where we belong--where I belong--in a New Year’s bowl game. Now I can look back on my career at Southern Cal and be happy.”

He can? Brian, Brian, Brian. I suppose that coming back home to Texas, where he once played gospel music in an all-saxophone band, must have put the 230-pound Williams in a sentimental mood, or something. Because one would have assumed that the Rose Bowl was the bowl where a true Trojan would have felt he belonged, where he could look back and be happy.

Brian’s song is strangely upbeat. Had someone before the fall school term tipped off a typical USC student (or booster) that this season’s team would not defeat Penn State, Oregon, Notre Dame or UCLA, that the defense would be shredded for 229 points in 11 games and get its coordinator ushered out the door, I would have suspected that there would have been hell to pay in Troy.

Instead, the players seem happy as puppies while practicing here for the Cotton Bowl, and after a rainy-day session, Coach John Robinson actually said: “Life couldn’t be better for us.”

Well, might as well let a smile be your umbrella. Trojan football, which has given the world everything from All-American heroes to accused killers, has seen harder times. Their record was 3-8 back when Williams wandered westward from Texas, and a year later came the Fresno State farce and the hasty exit of Coach Larry Smith.

No wonder these seem like heady days, by comparison. Consider the sentiments of offensive guard Kris Pollack, also a senior, who doesn’t sound so eager to get on with the rest of his life as certain classmates do. Pollack says: “Of course I wish I had some more years to play. I love playing college football. I had a good time playing under Coach Smith--he was a great coach. I feel lucky playing two years under Coach Robinson.”

Satisfaction is by degree, see. The disappointment anyone naturally feels with USC’s failures this season can be tempered by recollection of how bad things used to be, not so very long ago.

And then there is the Cotton Bowl, which might not be the granddaddy of ‘em all but is surely one of the uncles. Being here is not so bad, not bad at all. Imagine the frustration a player from, say, Michigan must suppress, pretending that the Holiday Bowl was a dream vacation trip. Or an athlete from Alabama, making all kinds of polite noises about what a cool place this big Citrus Bowl really is.

I keep telling myself that the USC season we just witnessed was pretty much a drag. Being pummeled at Penn State and then beaten at home by Oregon must have been humbling experiences at the time, no matter how soothing it became in the weeks thereafter when the nation discovered that Penn State was not so much good as great, or that Oregon was not a bunch of lucky Ducks but a hard- hitting squad.

By that point, the Trojans had a record of 2-2 and didn’t feel any luckier than Texas Tech did a couple of weeks later, when the Red Raiders found themselves 2-4 and caused their loquacious coach, Spike Dykes, to say that they were approaching something he called, “ ‘Molly Get the Mop’ time.”

I don’t know if John Robinson was reaching for a mop by then, but he did at least know where the broom was and would use it later on his defense. Coaches and players won’t be the only ones gone by next autumn, Robinson is promising here this week. USC’s entire defensive system is about to undergo some upheaval. “Some big changes in our scheme,” Robinson put it.

The season wore on many individuals. Williams, the fine outside linebacker who called this Dallas homecoming “the answer to a prayer,” remembers vividly how he felt flying home from Penn State, leaving the field after the Oregon game, looking forward to Notre Dame and UCLA games that, ultimately, produced no moment of triumph for a senior to enjoy forever.

Losing to Oregon, he says, actually woke up the team--”a little too late, as it turned out.” And that so-called moral victory of not actually losing to Notre Dame this time, that did little to lift Williams’ spirits because, he said, “It still felt like a wasted day.

“And I can’t believe we’ve lost four straight to UCLA. This school used to beat them all the time, so that shows you how bad things had gotten.

“When I got here, there were problems. Some of it was hard to put your finger on, but things just weren’t working. But this group has turned it around, and pretty soon these guys will be beating UCLA and Notre Dame. And after that, they’re going to win a national championship.”

Not at a Cotton Bowl, they won’t.