New Guy Has Better Than Outside Chance

Paul Hackett is a perfect choice for football coach at the University of Southern California, which is lucky to get him. Any high school football recruit thinking of going to SC who changes his mind because of who’s not coaching SC will be making a real SC--stupid choice.

OK, so the guillotining of John Robinson did not go smoothly. Mike Garrett gets rid of the help with all the tact of Leona Helmsley. The USC athletic director dismisses and disses his coaches simultaneously, whether a young basketball coach such as Charlie Parker is shown the door in midseason or an old football coach such as Robinson is fired by phone, which is a step above being notified by carrier pigeon.

I saw a movie once in which Robin Williams was summoned to his employer’s empty office and got fired by a pet parrot. This wasn’t that, but it was close.

Yet the fact remains, Hackett has the job and has the qualifications. He knows the SC system, the city, the history and the way Trojans like to play. (Whatever that is. Every time I hear that “Tailback U.” talk, I look up and somebody is passing a football to Johnnie Morton or Keyshawn Johnson or R. Jay Soward.)

Hackett is no outsider. And what if he were? Bo Schembechler did not go to Michigan; he went to Miami of Ohio. Bobby Knight did not go to Indiana; he went to Ohio State. I can’t believe this malarkey about Lou Holtz and how he shouldn’t coach USC because he slept with the enemy. Grow up. What do you think Holtz would do if he coached here . . . change the Trojan mascot from a horse to a leprechaun?

USC basketball is coached by a former UCLA Bruin, for heaven’s sake.

A couple of NFL guys from Notre Dame, eighth-year center Tim Grunhard and fourth-year wide receiver Lake Dawson, have been giving Hackett the business at Kansas City Chief camp. As a put-on, neither of them has smiled at their offensive coordinator at practice, because of his unforgivable sin of becoming coach at “Southern Cal.”

Ha, ha. You Notre Dame guys, you haven’t had much to smile about lately, have you?

Other players whistle the school’s fight song at the USC coach before practice, Hackett says. When he knocks off five minutes early, they joke that he must be off calling up USC’s recruits. If he is, I hope Marcus Allen helps him. USC needs Marcus now as much as when he played here. If somebody could have found him a running back, John Robinson would still be coach.

Instead, we have Hackett . . . from long distance. Fifteen hundred miles and a cloud of dust.

On a telephone conference call Thursday--which crackled with static, as if Hackett was using a phone from Missouri with a rotary dial and a crank--the new Trojan coach told everybody not to worry, “I am not hiding in Tahiti on a beach,” and that he is getting a work furlough from Marty Schottenheimer and the Chiefs so that he can visit Los Angeles, which is always a good thing for a USC football coach to do, whenever he has a free moment.

“Fortunately, San Francisco won, so we have the bye week [in the NFL playoffs],” Hackett said of a break in his busy schedule.

Northern California helps Southern California. Film at 11.

I am baffled by this turn of events, that SC’s coaching flip-flop could be handled so clumsily. Just getting the coach to meet the media has been about as easy as getting George Clooney to pose for the paparazzi. One of these days, USC’s coach might even get to meet his assistants, or his returning players. You know, the little things.

It would have been sweet, if John Robinson had gone out the way Eddie Robinson did at Grambling, carried off on somebody’s shoulders, not on a shield. Who shot J.R.? The athletic director did, in the back. But the coach’s successor is a Robinson disciple, which is good, plus more in touch with today’s offensive football, which is better. If I were a running back, I would want to play for a Paul Hackett team.

Things have been hectic for Hackett.

“I’ve had to put in a full game plan for New Orleans,” he said of Sunday’s opponent, as well as take over the USC program. “That may sound crazy to everyone.”

It does. Who needs a game plan to play New Orleans?

But seriously, USC’s team is in good hands. I do not hate what was done to John Robinson, only the way it was done. I haven’t seen a send-off that rude since the United Nations’ weapons inspectors were told to leave Iraq.