He Thinks New Coach Can Hack It at USC

If you want to see USC succeed in football, you’re going to like Paul Hackett.

If he could be objective at a time like this, I think John Robinson would agree.

In fact, when Robinson left USC the first time after the 1982 season, he recommended that either Ted Tollner or Hackett succeed him.

USC chose Tollner. The rest is tortured history.

The Trojans, who went to the Rose Bowl 10 times in the 15 years before 1982, have been only five times in the 15 years since. That would have been fine for UCLA during that period, exceptional for Stanford or Cal or any other Pacific 10 program south of Seattle, but USC has higher standards in football.

They were too high for Robinson the second time around. He had a 37-21-2 record since returning in 1993, but that wasn’t good enough considering he finished with two consecutive seasons without a bowl game and five consecutive losses to UCLA. It wasn’t what he promised.

No one was more aware of that than USC Athletic Director Mike Garrett. The regret is that he didn’t act on that conclusion sooner, allowing a loyal USC man like Robinson to twist in the wind for more than three weeks after the annual loss to UCLA and for more than a week after the Trojans were eliminated from bowl consideration.

That, however, didn’t seem to bother many within the power structure at USC. When I spoke to a member of the board of trustees Monday, he assured me that he and, as far as he knew, a majority of his colleagues had unwavering faith in Garrett.

“There is nobody in the world who wants USC to win more than Mike Garrett does,” he said. “He will make the right choice.”

Hackett was the right choice for USC.

He has been for some time.

Three times previously, it appeared as if Hackett, 50, might become USC’s coach.

The first was in 1981, when Hackett, an assistant with the Cleveland Browns after five years on Robinson’s original staff at USC, was considered the leading candidate to succeed Robinson if he had accepted an offer to coach the New England Patriots.

The second was in 1982, when Hackett was bypassed in favor of Tollner after Robinson did step aside.

The third was in 1987, when USC’s then-athletic director, Mike McGee, tried to make amends for USC’s previous mistake by asking Hackett to take over when Tollner was fired.

By then, Hackett had spent six years running pro offenses, including Joe Montana’s when the San Francisco 49ers won the 1985 Super Bowl. Even though 49er Coach Bill Walsh received, and deserved, much of the credit, Tom Landry was impressed enough with the young offensive coordinator that he coaxed Hackett to join the Dallas Cowboys in 1986.

He and Landry might not have always agreed on offensive philosophy, but Hackett had an admirer in Dallas General Manager Tex Schramm. He looked at the man who helped mold quarterbacks Steve Bartkowski and Joe Roth at California, Vince Evans at USC and Montana at San Francisco and saw something special. Schramm saw Landry’s successor.

Schramm shared that with Hackett, who turned down USC. McGee hired Larry Smith.

The Cowboy offer was one Hackett should have refused.

When Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys, Schramm couldn’t deliver on his promise. Jones hired Jimmy Johnson, who, because he owed a favor to Don Shula, hired David Shula as the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator.

Hackett joined the staff at the University of Pittsburgh, becoming a head coach for the first time less than one full season later when Mike Gottfried was fired.

Critics will emphasize Hackett’s three seasons in that job, his 13-20-1 record, as the reason they believe he will fail at USC.

They might not tell you that Pitt had become a pit of a college football program, sort of the anti-Penn State, and that the university president commanded Hackett, who comes from a family of academicians, to restore the team’s integrity. He did that, if not quite its winning tradition.

But let me add this. When Montana left the 49ers, one of the main reasons he accepted an offer to finish his career in Kansas City was because Hackett was the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator.

If he’s good enough for Joe Montana, he’s good enough for me.

And he should be good enough for recruits such as quarterback Jason Thomas of Compton Dominguez and running backs Justin Fargas of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame and Sultan McCullough of Pasadena Muir, who have been waiting to learn the identity of USC’s coach before signing.