Whistle Blowers

Chicken entree after pasta dinner, Trojan Club after Trojan Club, USC’s new coach made the rounds last summer wearing the same jacket again and again.

A blue jacket. Light blue. Sort of a UCLA blue.

He did it again the other day, right there in the lobby of Heritage Hall guarded by USC’s four Heisman trophies. It’s UCLA Week, and Paul Hackett greeted the Monday Morning Quarterback Club boosters wearing . . . blue?

“I thought by wearing the blue jacket back in June, our fans would understand the UCLA game was always on our minds,” said Hackett, an assistant coach at USC when the Trojans dominated in the late 1970s who returned to find USC a loser of seven in a row. “Incomprehensible,” he said.

The jacket might be an awkward stunt--Hackett is like that--but if USC ends its seven-year drought against UCLA on Saturday, it won’t matter if everyone gets his gimmicks or not.

“Coach Hackett’s a crackup,” USC receiver Billy Miller said. “He’s got a different sense of humor. He might say a joke and everybody’s, ‘OK. . . .’ He might say something, and if anybody else said it, it would be the dumbest thing ever. But he’s so serious, it’s funny. Sometimes I don’t know if I should laugh, because it might not be a joke.”

It has been an interesting first season for the NFL tactician-turned-head coach, feeling his way through mini-minefields after suddenly becoming a very public figure whose every comment can ignite a firestorm.

When he said offhandedly in October that Oregon, USC’s next opponent, was the team to beat in the Pacific 10--despite an overtime loss to UCLA that weekend--he was oblivious to the uproar he would stir in Westwood. And many Trojan boosters didn’t think the Bruins needed any prodding.

But don’t say Hackett isn’t a quick study.

UCLA Week is here, and Sandbag Week has begun.

Best team in the Pac-10? Why, UCLA, why do you ask?

“I think they may be the best team in the country,” Hackett said.

The Trojans’ chances of beating the unbeaten and third-ranked Bruins?

“Slim,” Hackett said, as everyone in the room stifled guffaws.

Little old USC, the gutty little Trojans?

“We’re just crawling ourselves up the ladder and we’ve got a quarterback in his third start.

“Let’s put it this way, they’ve built for five years to be where they are today. They are absolutely at the top of their game. Everybody recognizes that. . . . Their offensive line has 30 starts, their quarterback has started 40 games. All you have to do is look at the statistics.”

And on being the underdog--not to try to make UCLA feel any pressure or anything:

“They get knocked into the Rose Bowl if they lose,” Hackett said. “Goodness, when has that ever happened? But they have a chance to win it all, and 1954 is a long time ago. They’ve got a lot at stake.”

So does he, of course. Hackett has arrived at the gantlet every USC coach must run--UCLA and Notre Dame, this time back to back.

“This is the gauge,” said Hackett, whose team is 7-3 and already has locked up its first bowl game in three years. “It can be, ‘Gee, 7-5,’ or ‘Oh, my God, they came on at the end.’ ”

There have been some rough spots, but with more Ws in the column than any season since the Trojans played in the Rose Bowl after the 1995 season, they have been smoothed over. A win in either of the next two will turn Hackett’s first season from modest success into a great debut.

There have been moments, though.

When Hackett suspended big-play receiver R. Jay Soward for the first game for academic shortcomings, he didn’t make a lot of friends.

“People were saying, ‘Are you crazy? Sitting R. Jay?’ ” Miller said. “But I think everybody understood then he is serious.”

USC’s turnaround can be pinned in part on Hackett’s move to freshman quarterback Carson Palmer as the starter: The only criticism he’ll get on that front is why he didn’t do it sooner, and Hackett admits caution is his instinct.

“Why do you wait? Because if you think one guy is better and put him in, then if he doesn’t do it, you second-guess yourself. Then do you switch back? I don’t want to be impulsive. People will find that I tend to be a little more deliberate.”

That kind of caution infuriated USC fans after the California game when Hackett opted for a field goal from the one-yard line at the end of the first half, with USC leading by 11. USC ended up losing by one.

He was thinking about the two-touchdown lead he could take into the half, not the affront to Trojan tradition.

The game ended in a wrenching loss, but Hackett stuck by his allegiance to the “chart.”

It got even worse when USC lost to Oregon after kicking a field goal in the final minutes trailing by seven--and never got the ball back.

That one, he took real heat for.

“I don’t think you can anticipate it,” he said. “People feel the need to lash out.”

Some of those same people weren’t happy when he answered questions about Palmer by asking which one of them had coached quarterbacks for 29 years, or responded to the field-goal second-guessing by saying, “I’m the coach and they’re not.”

If those comments landed rough on the ear, it’s partly because when it came to knowing what to say, Hackett follows a coach with perfect pitch: John Robinson.

Hackett?

“I am a little abrupt,” he acknowledged. “What happens with me is my gear starts shifting to a quarterback meeting.”

Miller smiled at that one.

“He’s just excited he can go watch a little more film.”

Tailback Petros Papadakis appreciates the fixation on football.

“His coaching is very black and white. Everyone knows Coach Robinson had a big personality, that’s a big part of him. There’s a lot less gray area with Coach Hackett. You know exactly what to expect, exactly what you have to do. It’s good for us.

“We know Coach Hackett will have us prepared for the game. He’s not going to leave any stone unturned. He’s that regimented.”

Hackett is still finding his emerging style. Nothing is harder than learning how to be the head coach, and not the offensive coach or the quarterback coach, he said.

“[Robinson] knew he had to be a head coach,” Hackett said. “He let me coach the offense and let Don Lindsey coach the defense. What I misinterpreted was that meaning he couldn’t coach, which is absurd. I had to be a lot older and go through a lot of things to understand John could have done it better than I did, but he knew he had to be the head coach of the whole thing.”

That’s Hackett’s job now, and if USC wins Saturday, who knows, Bob Toledo might be heading over to the Men’s Wearhouse. He’ll be looking for something in a nice shade of cardinal.