A SORRY CHAPTER

“Names and logos don’t mean anything. You don’t beat someone just because of your name and logo.”

--USC Coach Larry Smith

Dec. 29, 1992

*

Could Larry Smith have been right?

Five years later, John Robinson is teetering on the verge of resignation after a Freedom Bowl, a Cotton Bowl, a Rose Bowl, a 6-6 season and a shaky 2-3 start that seems destined to get worse.

He has not brought back the 1970s, even though he understands that when you lose to Arizona State, 35-7, you say something about embarrassing everyone who has ever worn the uniform.

Smith assured his demise in 1992 with his words as much as his Freedom Bowl loss to Fresno State, even though he had taken the Trojans to the Rose Bowl three times in six seasons. Today, he sits in the football coach’s office at the University of Missouri and takes none of it back.

“That’s my perspective. I haven’t changed my thinking,” Smith said. “College football is not the way it was 20 years or 30 years ago. Far too many people, alumni and administrators, think everything can continue to be like it was 20 years ago. It can’t.”

Could the struggles of Robinson, a man once so thoroughly embraced by Trojans, make anyone reconsider that mind-set, if, indeed, that is the mind-set?

“I doubt it,” Smith said. “I think they’re hung up on what happened in the ‘60s and ‘70s. I don’t think anything will change.

“John’s a great coach. He has worked very hard. You ask the players to do that too, and that’s all we can ask.”

Well, there is a bit more you can ask. Even teams with far less talent than USC are able to play with some precision, up to whatever potential they have. USC’s coaches haven’t coaxed those abilities out of the Trojans with any consistency this season.

But the point that domination doesn’t continue simply because of who you are--well, isn’t that obvious? When the USC-Notre Dame game is a matchup of losing teams, Oklahoma is easily dismissed and even recent power Miami has flamed out? When a couple of the best players in the country are at Marshall and Central Florida?

Obviously, the 85-scholarship limit and varying academic standards have contributed greatly to leveling the playing field in college football. Alabama no longer recruits players for the third or fourth string simply so they can’t play for anyone else.

So Florida and Florida State have been dominant in recent years. Compared to USC and Notre Dame, they’re neophytes. And as Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden points out, California supplies a good portion of the Pacific 10 and a lot of other schools with players, while Florida divides its bounty among only three schools--Florida, Florida State and Miami, which has been brought low by NCAA sanctions.

Nebraska and Penn State have been consistent longer, but they’ve also had Tom Osborne and Joe Paterno for a quarter-century or more, maintaining the same programs.

The world USC once lived in is gone. Some people understand that.

“I was there in the gilded age,” said former USC and Ram quarterback Pat Haden, a Robinson backer who says he was not embarrassed by the loss to Arizona State.

“I don’t know what the problems are, but I don’t feel embarrassed at all. No doubt, they can play better. I’d be disappointed and embarrassed if guys were not trying hard. I don’t think that’s what happened.

“When I was there, there was no scholarship limit. The admission requirements were less. I’d guess about a third to a half of the guys I played with couldn’t get into USC today. And we were 8-0 before the start of the season. Only three games meant anything. Guys sitting on the bench when I was there are now starting at Cal, Oregon and Washington State.

“But this is not a cop-out. USC should always be in the hunt for a major bowl bid, and always be in the hunt for the Rose Bowl.”

One of the confounding things is that USC has struggled despite annual highly rated recruiting classes. But recruiting assessments, like preseason polls, are influenced by the names and reputations of the traditional powers. If Notre Dame and USC are both recruiting someone, doesn’t that mean he must be great? And that doesn’t take into account the player the big names miss or realize they can’t get into school.

Robinson acknowledged this week that recruiting has changed significantly since his first stint at USC, 1976-82.

“I think more kids are more willing to consider schools from all over the United States,” he said. “If you grow up in . . . Southern California, kids are not as provincial as they used to be. They don’t grow up and go to the school Mom or Dad went to, or the local school.

“Recruiting information has been accelerated by the information on the web, plus magazines that publish information on all the juniors so early. Just about everybody is involved a year ahead with anybody who has talent. I think that’s broadened the selection a player has.”

And with the potential bounty of the NFL available whether you play at a traditional power or not, players are making different choices, as well as leaving college early.

“Players are going where they have a chance to play, where they can get an opportunity to play as a freshman or sophomore,” Robinson said. “In the old days, if they could just go to that one school, they didn’t even know who was on the team. It was, ‘Just let me go to that school and be on the team.’ ”

Many believe USC is underachieving, considering its talent, but Robinson questioned this week whether USC has the overall talent it needs.

“I don’t think we have what we would like to have,” he said. “It seems to be showing up in various places. But when we’ve had a bad loss, I think it’s self-serving to say, ‘I don’t have the players.’ We’ve got the players we’ve got. What I’m disturbed about is that the players didn’t play to the potential we have.

“I think we need to evaluate what level player we have, compared to those at the top level of college football, but right now, my problem is to get them playing to their potential.”

When the name of the school alone is no longer enough, it takes more to succeed. Maybe more fervor in ferreting out the absolute best players--players whose abilities suit the evolving game of football. More veteran assistant coaches instead of unproven ones and former players who carry on the tradition but haven’t taught before. More willingness to change an increasingly outmoded running game instead of struggling to meld it with the West Coast offense. More hunger--the kind the people at the schools without a tradition have.

While USC wonders what’s gone wrong, Smith is half a continent away with his own 3-3 team. If this week’s events make him feel vindicated, he’s not saying so.

“I’m not here for that. You say what you believe and move on,” he said. “We’re fighting the same battle, and it’s a lot tougher here when they haven’t had a winning season in 13 years.”

As for that suicidal quote he left at USC, Smith only laughs.

What was it he said? Logos don’t mean anything?

“They don’t,” he said. “They do to the sportswriters in the preseason polls. But the proof is in the pudding--the record.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

NEXT FOR USC

Who: Notre Dame

Where: Notre Dame Stadium

When: Saturday, 12:30 p.m.

TV: Channel 4

Radio: KLSX-FM (97.1)