Trojans Have to Beat UCLA and Notre Dame

Moving east from Westwood, there is trouble in Troy today. USC football is looking at the possibility of its third losing season in 35 years. The nationally unranked Trojans must defeat either UCLA or Notre Dame, simply to be a .500 team.

This would not be an earth-shaking development, except that USC’s season began with a Penn State game having possible “national championship implications” (for both sides), while Coach John Robinson entertained us during commercial breaks, plugging Whoppers. It turned out to be the Trojans who got grilled, losing five times, defeating five opponents that currently have a combined record of 18-28.

SC couldn’t even beat Northern Cal.

So now, while band director Art Bartner leads another stirring rendition of “Conquest,” and while USC song leader January Poulsen calls for continued school spirit, the football team must win on either Nov. 23 in Pasadena, against UCLA, or on Nov. 30 at the Coliseum, against U Know Who, to salvage a record of 6-6 with a squad that had hoped to go 10-2, if not 12-0.

This puts the Trojans in the strange, strange position of beating UCLA and Notre Dame to save a bad season, rather than losing to UCLA and Notre Dame to spoil a good season.

I gather the Sunday morning quarterbacks are already calling for Robinson’s head and headset, which is typical. USC’s last two teams went 9-2-1 and 8-3-1 and won the Rose Bowl and Cotton Bowl games, but I guess these players must have been self-coached.

Robinson did bring some of this on himself, naturally, by emphasizing right from the beginning the gravity of the UCLA and Notre Dame grudge games. If he made certain “promises” of victory, the coach might have intended them as little more than collegiate bravado, designed to make rivalries more fun and to motivate his Trojans for battle. “We will beat UCLA and Notre Dame” was not supposed to mean, “or else we stink.”

Painted into a corner, Robinson now must be as curious as the next guy what the reaction will be from boosters or boo birds, should USC go out now and kick a little Bruin-Irish butt.

He will not be fired, 7-5 or 5-7. You can forget that right now. Robinson’s contract runs through the 2001 season, and the man is three for three in bowl games, so get real. You don’t defeat a pumped-to-the-max Northwestern team on New Year’s Day, then lose the No. 1 player in the NFL draft, Keyshawn Johnson, then get tarred and feathered 11 months later, because your team loses five games.

On the other hand, this was not some rebuilding season. USC has been a serious disappointment this season, and not because of the offensive coordinator or some such aide, because the buck stops with the big cheese. This team is Robinson’s responsibility, win or lose. There was no inexperience at quarterback, or serious injury to a Heisman Trophy candidate, to blame for this team falling flat.

The biggest mistake USC made was made long before the opening kickoff, and that was scheduling Penn State as a season-opening opponent, 3,000 miles from home in East Rutherford, N.J., at a date so early (Aug. 25) that the Trojan players had to be ready a full 15 days sooner than they were for the previous season’s opener against San Jose State. (A game USC won, 45-7.)

Penn State pushed these guys all over the Meadowlands, winning, 24-7, in a game that just as easily could have been 44-7. If you want to build up a team’s confidence, you shouldn’t schedule a road game with Penn State on opening day, although perhaps it will come as even more horrifying news to many that USC’s 1997 schedule will open against--brace yourself--Florida State.

UCLA learned this same lesson the hard way, opening this season at Tennessee, then playing a couple of weeks later at Michigan, two difficult opponents in college football’s two largest stadiums.

If it gave USC hope that Illinois and Oregon State were easy pickings, that was soon counter-balanced with the knowledge that these were two truly terrible teams, now 3-15, with the Illini coach having just been shown the door. Houston, the next victim, does have a winning record, but plays in Conference USA, rarely confused with the Pac-10 or Big Ten.

Little went right for the Trojans after that. Losing at home to Cal was embarrassing. Scoring only 14 points against an eighth-place Arizona team was frustrating. Blowing a chance to win in overtime at Arizona State was a killer, because that game could have saved the season.

There was also the one-game suspension of four starting football players, which “was as disturbing and upsetting to us as it was to Trojans everywhere,” observes Athletic Director Mike Garrett in the latest issue of Trojan Talk, the athletic department’s newsletter. As with his counterpart at UCLA, Garrett is still taking pains to assure alumni that only the highest standards of moral conduct will be tolerated at his school.

Garrett will monitor how much impact a 5-7 season would have on Robinson’s long-range future. USC had losing records in 1991 and 1983, but then you have to go all the way back to 1961.

I don’t know who installed this revolving door here in In ‘n’ Out burg, but I am getting dizzy, having just seen the Dodger manager, Angel manager, USC basketball and UCLA basketball coaches relieved, on the heels of the UCLA football coach’s exit. In these five exalted positions, the Dodgers’ Bill Russell now ranks first in seniority, with half a season, followed by USC hoops’ Henry Bibby, with nine games.

Meanwhile, USC’s football team might go 5-7, but the coach is safe. Weird days here in L.A.