On the Field or Off, Jeremy Hogue Is One Quick Study : Standout USC Lineman Has a Shot at Capturing a Rhodes Scholarship

USC offensive lineman Jeremy Hogue is one of the reasons the Trojans appear on most experts’ college football preseason Top 10 lists for the 1995 campaign . But even his football prowess pales in comparison to his classroom performance and his community service work. Hogue, who carries a 3.9 grade point average, is an Academic All-American honors candidate and could become USC’s first Rhodes Scholar athlete since quarterback Pat Haden.

Hogue has worked and spoken at local elementary schools throughout South-Central Los Angeles, where his message is always the same: Stay in school and away from drugs.

While he has planted new roots in Southern California, Hogue still visits his parents who live in Oklahoma City, not far from where the bomb explosion killed at least 167 people. Hogue was interviewed by Sean Waters.

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My father is the pastor of a church in downtown Oklahoma City, five blocks away from where the bombing happened.

I’ve been active back at that church helping my dad set up the breakfast kitchen. There are some pretty poor areas near the church. They feed about 100 people a day, most of them homeless. A lot of mothers will bring their kids in for breakfast before they take them to school. Anyone who shows up, whether they are the mayor or a homeless person, will get fed.

The bombing happened at 5th and Robinson. The church is on 10th and Robinson, and they are little-bitty blocks. It’s probably a quarter of a mile away.

When the bomb went off, it blew out all the windows of the church. I wanted to be back there right after the bomb went off. They were feeding close to 1,000 people a day, and more than 100 people slept in the church facilities. I couldn’t go because the timing with school was bad. If it were any other time, I probably would have gone for at least a week. My brother, Israel, was incredibly active. He was driving around in a little golf cart that the FBI gave him, shuttling food back and forth to rescue workers at the church. Israel was there every day, 12 hours a day. That’s the type of stuff I could have seen myself doing, but at the same time, it was right around finals, and I really needed to take care of stuff here.

The church can take pride that everyone pitched in and made the worst situation imaginable as bearable as it could be. I didn’t talk to my father for three days because he simply wasn’t home. He was always down at the church.

I tried to call my mother immediately [after hearing about the bombing], but I was unable to get through right away. She had been trying to call me, but couldn’t get through, either. I finally reached her about an hour after it happened.

My mother is a wise lady. I could tell that she’d probably had answered dozens upon dozens of phone calls. She made me feel at ease that things were all right, at least with the family. She was the calm voice in the storm.

I was born in Houston, where i lived for two years. I grew up in Oklahoma City and stayed there until I was about 14. My dad, as well as being a pastor, also had made a lot of money until some of his investments went bad. Like everyone else in the mid-1980s, we moved because there were more opportunities in California. We lived in Orange County for 4 1/2 years. I went to El Toro High. My parents moved back [to Oklahoma] during my senior year.

I had phone calls from Oklahoma schools at least once a week. I was one of their top recruits. Oklahoma Coach Barry Switzer would call me up. I had narrowed my choices to three schools: USC, Notre Dame and Oklahoma. I decided to stay here and go to USC to get a better education. A degree from USC means a lot.

I was very fortunate in high school to be around a group of people who did very well in school. Rob Johnson, Brian Haas and I were all better than 3.5 [grade point average] students in high school and we all played here at USC. And the girls we hung out with were all good students and honor-class type of people.

Once I got to USC, it was a little different. I became known for doing well in school before I was known for being a good football player. I didn’t start playing until two years ago.

I think that people have this conception that I’m a geek who probably studies 24 hours day, doesn’t care about going out and having a social life. But I do more than sit and study. I think now people have come to know that, and they realize I’m like everyone else.

In order to be considered for the Rhodes Scholarship, you have to either be an athlete or active in student government. They also like to see a lot of community service, and of course they’re looking for people who excel in the classroom.

If a person doesn’t have a 3.9 GPA or higher, they’re probably not going to be a candidate. If they aren’t involved in some community activities, there’s no reason to even apply, even if you’re an athlete.

The first thing I did when I got to USC was volunteer for the Joint Educational Project House. JEP is where USC students work at schools in the community.

PE instructor [at West Vernon Elementary] was on the job list, so I grabbed it and thought, “I’m going to be helping kids play, or teach a little class or something.” On the first day, the guy who was the PE teacher transferred, and I got stuck supervising recess. There were two 30-minute recesses back-to-back, they’d have half the school out at one time, 300 kids out there in one recess, and then they’d leave and the other half would come out.

So I had 600 kids within an hour that were running around asking me for stuff, I’d be playing basketball with them, throwing the football, breaking up little fights or arguments and just making sure everyone had a good time. It was really fun. I got to know a group of about 15 kids that was my “gang.” I invited them and one of the teachers to a spring football practice at USC. They got autographs from everyone.

It’s very satisfying for me. Hopefully we can be better role models. When they came to practice, they looked at the other athletes, looked at the people who were from South-Central Los Angeles and saw that they can set their goals high and achieve too.

I think it’s a fact of society that people look up to athletes. When they give us a good introduction, we’ve immediately got the students’ attention and they want to hear what we have to say.