Initial Response to USC Loss Has Fans Going for Throat

Only way to describe USC’s second-half collapse during the 32-31 humiliating loss to Cal:

Coach

Hackett’s

Offense

Keeps

Evaporating!

TOMMY CHENG, Torrance

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College is supposed to be a learning experience. So what did we all learn after USC’s debacle?

1. Mike Van Raaphorst has a JV arm; 2. Frank Strong can’t block and has hands of glass; 3. the offensive line is offensive; 4. no more need to ask why Billy Miller and Antoine Harris don’t have more receptions; 5. Larry Parker should play in a straitjacket; 6. brain-dead penalties will kill you every time; 7. a defensive game plan of leaving the middle of the field and the flats uncovered doesn’t work; 8. with seven seconds left on the clock and the ball on the one-yard line, it’s OK to run one more play; 9. the officiating can’t get any worse, and 10. you can lose at home to an inferior team even when leading by 21 points.

GENO M. APICELLA, Burbank

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The Ted Tollner legacy lives on at USC. Paul Hackett’s gutless decision to settle for a field goal from the one-foot line cost his team the game. More disturbing, it demonstrates his willingness to accept the continued mediocrity that has plagued the program in recent years.

DANE EURICH, Hermosa Beach

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The South was reconstructed faster than USC football. Coach Hackett has said the Trojans will probably be really special in about three years. Does this sound vaguely familiar?

JACK VON BULOW, Temple City

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Just as Bob Toledo begins to act more and more like John McKay, Paul Hackett begins to sound oddly like “the Nutty Professor.”

Though Larry Parker’s blockheaded penalty contributed greatly to the Cal fiasco, Hackett’s move, in substituting Carson Palmer just when Mike Van Raaphorst was finally having a decent game, proved equally disastrous. The coach then compounded this foolishness with what he generously termed “an adventurous play call.”

Hackett, as he has already made clear, considers any criticism of his handling of quarterbacks to be impertinence. Trojan fans have been put on notice to shut up and quit bothering him about the subject. Bruin fans certainly hope they will.

CHARLES CHICCOA, Reseda

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Regarding an article in which a campus newspaper referred to the exceptionally talented young man who has quarterbacked UCLA to 14 consecutive football wins as “Cade McNone”: Are you sure that it wasn’t the Daily Trojan?

BETTE and GORDON MASON, Brentwood