USC’s Hackett Is Still Feeling Effects From Severe Case of Preparation Ache

He spoke not in a courtroom, but a courtyard. He was not under public pressure, but a baseball cap.

It was an interesting occurrence Tuesday, a local college football type acknowledging a mistake without threat of a subpoena or suspension.

Paul Hackett had been found guilty of bad football coaching in USC’s season-ending collapse against Texas Christian.

By a jury of one peer, Paul Hackett.

“I take total responsibility for that loss,” Hackett said, shaking his head, stubbing his cleat against the concrete outside Heritage Hall. “I didn’t prepare the players properly. I made some mistakes. I learned something.”

And maybe we’re also learning something.

Not many major college coaches would begin their second seasons by taking the blame for an embarrassing defeat that completed their first.

Eight months after the Trojans’ 28-19 loss to TCU in the Sun Bowl--lingering dirty snow at the end of a colorful fall--Hackett could have done many things to make it finally melt.

He could have refused to talk about it. After all, rival recruiters had already talked it to death in living rooms all over town.

He could have blamed the players who have since left. What, is Chris Claiborne going to fly back here from Detroit to convince us that he was not too fat and out of shape to handle TCU’s option?

He could have changed the subject. Sure, it was a bad loss, but now Carson Palmer is a year older and Chad Morton is on the verge of stardom and . . .

Hackett did none of those things.

After the first day of practice for freshmen and newcomers Tuesday, he handled the problem as one guesses he teaches his youngsters to handle their problems.

Head up, butt down, feet churning, he tackled it.

“Between the end of the regular season and the bowl game, I shifted a gear, and so the team shifted a gear, and we never got it back, we were never ready,” Hackett said. “It was an attitude and preparation thing, and it was my fault.”

Coming from the NFL, where there is never more than two weeks between games, Hackett said he had no idea how to keep the team fresh during the monthlong break between the victory over Notre Dame on Nov. 28 and the seemingly easy Sun Bowl against 16-point underdog TCU on Dec. 31.

Well, actually, he had an idea. But it was the wrong one.

“I thought, ‘OK, we made the bowl game, it’s a nice reward for a good year, we can give the kids the little break at first,’ ” Hackett said. “I figured once we arrived in El Paso, we could turn it up.”

Then they arrived in El Paso, and the only thing that got turned up was the music. They were immersed not in timing and tackling drills, but banquets and bullfights.

“I thought, once you got to the bowl site, you could settle down and get things done,” Hackett said. “I was wrong. Too much to do. Everybody gets too distracted.

“Now I know, you must get everything done before you get there.”

Midway through the week, watching his team struggle on the practice field, Hackett’s stomach turned, and it wasn’t the burritos.

“I saw that we were behind, and we were not going to be able to catch up,” he said. “I knew we were in big trouble before we ever took the field for the game.”

It didn’t take long for USC fans to come to the same realization.

TCU scored touchdowns on its first three possessions and led by 25 points after one possession in the third quarter. A good 9-4 season turned into a ordinary 8-5 for USC, and suddenly all anybody could think of was Fresno State.

After spending the season battling the memories of John Robinson, suddenly Hackett was faced with those of Larry Smith.

“It felt terrible, just terrible,” he said. “You know, I tell my team, ‘Finish, finish, finish!’ All year long, in all of our games, we had stressed the final quarter, we had held up the fist.”

Hackett paused, rubbed his nose underneath his glasses, shook his head.

“But here it was, the end of an entire season, and my fist wasn’t up there,” he said. “I did not finish.”

Much of the blame immediately went to Claiborne, who was apparently so mired in his Butkus Award laurels that he couldn’t chase down ballcarriers.

Hackett takes the heat for that too.

He said Claiborne asked for a few days off to visit friends in Florida after receiving the Butkus Award there, and he gave him those days.

Hackett said he worries that Claiborne didn’t work very hard before the game because his coach didn’t make him work very hard.

“I said, ‘Fine, Chris, enjoy yourself’ . . . when I should have said, ‘Wait a minute, what about bowl practice, what about preparation?’ ” he said. “I treated a lot of things during that month like it was the spring, figuring we could turn it on again later. But with kids, you just can’t do that.”

Hackett needed to be reminded that college kids still treat the holidays as the holidays.

“All this stuff pulling at them during that time of the year, I had no idea it would affect us like it would,” he said. “Now I know. This year, we stay focused. This year, we keep working hard. This year, we don’t forget that we must finish the job.”

The end of 1998 now washed clean, Hackett turned off the hose and sighed.

“I know that somebody might think saying all of this shows a weakness,” he said.

Funny. I was thinking just the opposite.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

USC FACTS

* Coach: Paul Hackett

* Record at USC: 8-5, 1 season

* Starters returning: 16 (9 on offense, 6 on defense, 1 punter)

* First game: Sept. 4, at Hawaii, 9:30 p.m.

* UCLA game: Nov. 20, at Coliseum, time TBA

* Notre Dame game: Oct. 16, at South Bend, Ind., 11:30 a.m., PDT