Milestone Nothing Special to Robinson

One week, USC Coach John Robinson is wondering where on earth the next win will come from.

The next week, the 100th victory of his college career is right in front of him, close enough to touch.

“You’re always trying to win this week, then win the next week,” Robinson said. “It’s kind of a funny deal. You’re right in the middle of trying to get win No. 1 of the season, and now . . .”

Now if USC beats Nevada Las Vegas on Saturday night--a game in which the Trojans are 25-point favorites--Robinson will get his 100th victory faster than all but six college coaches in history, even though USC has won only two of its last seven games.

“The records, the numbers, mean very little. You think back, and it’s the people you enjoy the most,” said Robinson, 62, who is 99-32-4 in two stints at USC and was 79-74 in nine NFL seasons with the Rams.

“If 100 wins is a milestone, when I get there, I’d like to say thanks to a whole bunch of guys. The record goes on me, but I never thought that the assistant coaches deserved the win less than I did.

“Coaching is very special. You take abuse--someone told me a week ago, ‘I wouldn’t want your job for anything’--but I think I’ve got a pretty good job.”

It has been a pretty closely scrutinized job much of the past year, and the wins have come painfully slowly.

No. 98 came in overtime against Notre Dame last November, halting a three-game losing streak and a maelstrom of speculation about Robinson’s future.

“Last year was last year--100 never crossed my mind,” Robinson said.

No. 99 came last week after USC took a winless team against an unbeaten California team for only the second time and won, 27-17.

“It was Coach Robinson’s 99th, and it’ll be nice to be able to get that 100th at home,” quarterback John Fox said.

It has been 21 years since Robinson’s first victory at USC, a 53-0 defeat of his alma mater, Oregon, in the second game of his first season in 1976.

“I always considered it a privilege to coach here, and one of the most exciting and happiest times of my life was when I ran out for the first time as a head coach,” Robinson said.

“When I ran off after the game, I wasn’t quite as excited or happy.”

The Trojans, ranked eighth in the preseason poll, had been upset by Missouri, 46-25.

“I should have kept that one headline, ‘How can one man ruin a program so fast?’ ” Robinson said.

The next week at Oregon, he got his first win--the first of 15 consecutive victories. Later that season, No. 3 USC defeated No. 2 UCLA to reach the Rose Bowl, where a victory over second-ranked Michigan capped a 10-1 record in Robinson’s first season as coach.

Charles White and Dennis Thurman, both assistant coaches at USC now, played on Robinson’s first team.

“I was just trying to grow up then,” said White, 39. “This is awesome. For any coach, let alone someone you know personally, to accomplish that is quite a feat.”

There have been so many big wins, but 67 of them came in Robinson’s first stint, from 1976 to ‘82, when the Trojans were one game from being undefeated three times. There are four Rose Bowl victories, including the victory over Michigan that secured a national championship in the 1978 season.

Since Robinson returned in 1993, the biggest wins have been last year’s streak-killing victory over Notre Dame and the victory over No. 3 Northwestern in the 1996 Rose Bowl.

Picking the biggest wins from his first stint is more difficult--there were so many.

There was the Alabama game in 1978, when USC went to Birmingham and defeated Bear Bryant’s No. 1-ranked team, 24-14.

There was the ’78 Notre Dame game, which USC won, 27-25, on Frank Jordan’s field goal with two seconds left--a kick similar to his game-winner against UCLA the year before. Against Notre Dame, Jordan’s field goal killed a Joe Montana-led comeback after the Irish had taken a one-point lead with 46 seconds left but failed on the two-point conversion.

“It’s the greatest football game I’ve ever seen, but maybe every USC-Notre Dame game is,” Robinson said then, and he has made almost the same comment plenty of times since.

In Robinson’s last game in 1982 before going to the Rams, USC defeated Notre Dame, 17-13, on Michael Harper’s controversial one-yard touchdown with 48 seconds left.

“The big things you remember are not the major events, but the little things that are almost forgotten,” Robinson said. “Little moments with people you know that make a difference in their life, much like a relationship you have with a loved one.

“I could talk to you about Ronnie Lott for a half-hour, things he did, things we used to talk about. He was very angry about the state of racial relations at the time. He’d talk about that. . . . That was the human being. On the field, he was unbelievable.

“Brad Budde, an offensive lineman here, he’s a great individual, a real leader. So many guys. I think Keyshawn Johnson was great fun, and the guys like Charlie White, Marcus Allen, Ronnie Lott, those guys who are famous stick out because of the memories they bring.”

There are the great moments, and the moments of sheer slapstick, such as the time Robinson ran out the tunnel with the team for his first UCLA game.

“I was running right out with them, and some SOB got the back of my heel and the rest of those jerks ran right over me,” Robinson said, laughing. “I tried to get up so no one could see me. That night, John Madden called me. ‘I saw you fall. . . . You made a fool of yourself on TV.’ ”

Ninety-nine victories. Thirty-two losses. Four ties.

Robinson says the biggest one has to be the next one.

“It’s a sad state of life--and we probably all get there at some point--when you try to live in the past,” he said. “I’ve never seen a happy person who is living in the past.

“When you’re looking back, you can’t look forward. You can’t be putting plaques on the wall and thinking about the next game at the same time. If you’re thinking backward, you’re relinquishing the chance to be successful.”

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Reaching 100

If USC wins Saturday, Coach John Robinson will become only the 10th coach in Division I-A history to get 100 victories in 12 seasons. A look:

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Coach, Team W L T Pct. *George Woodruff, Carlisle 142 25 2 .846 Tom Osborne, Nebraska 118 27 2 .810 Barry Switzer, Oklahoma 115 23 4 .824 Bud Wilkinson, Oklahoma 114 10 3 .909 Joe Paterno, Penn State 112 24 1 .821 **Amos Alonzo Stagg, Chicago 107 44 12 .693 ***Dennis Erickson, Miami 103 38 1 .729 Bobby Dodd, Georgia Tech 101 28 3 .777 ****Fielding Yost, Michigan 100 12 4 .879 John Robinson, USC 99 32 4 .748

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* Also coached at Penn and Illinois.

** Also coached at Springfield.

*** Also coached at Idaho, Wyoming and Washington State.

**** Also coached at Ohio Wesleyan, Nebraska, Kansas and Stanford.