Hackett’s Waste Line Growing Every Week

It’s not fair to question the job qualifications of a coach who is a little more than midway through his second season on the job, whose best player, the leader and quarterback, has been hurt, who has not had time to make a mark with recruits or with philosophy.

But how can you not question the job Paul Hackett is doing at USC with the Trojans?

USC wasted a 21-point lead for the second week in a row, lost 35-31 to Stanford with a pitiful lack of resolve, of smartness, of ability to play fundamental football. The Trojans also lost a chance to prove themselves capable of a sweet march through the second half of the season, which might have led to a Pac-10 title and a Rose Bowl berth in a season where slow and mediocre might win the race.

So how can you not question the coach who called out his upperclassmen this week? Hackett laid blame on players for not showing enough leadership. That is not how Knute Rockne or Bear Bryant did things. Or John McKay and John Robinson. Great coaches don’t go public with criticism of their players. A great program needs a great coach. Let’s get that straight.

And it’s not easy to find a great coach. Ask the leaders at Notre Dame. Ask the hierarchy at Michigan. Bob Davie is not a worthy heir to Rockne and Frank Leahy and Ara Parseghian. Gary Moeller and even Lloyd Carr, with his one national title but also with too many bad years, are not worthy heirs to Bo Schembechler. Worthy heirs aren’t just anywhere.

Hackett does not seem capable of bringing USC back on par with its marvelous marching band, with its proud and famous home field and its gallant white steed that can still bring goose bumps when it gallops around the Coliseum after a USC touchdown.

All Hackett seems to bring is excuses.

“It’s not one thing,” Hackett said Saturday, after the Trojans frittered away another game with silly penalties, missed kicks, interceptions and fumbles. “It’s fumbled balls, shanked punts, missed field goals, fumbles on the five-yard line.” Hackett says “we” when he talks about the mistakes. But the mistakes Hackett lists are all of the player variety.

Where is the fault for the man who leads? Where is the fault for the man who should be able to make his players believe in themselves, who should be able to convince his players that a 21-0 lead means that you are invincible, that you are good enough to put your heel on the neck of the opponent and not kick yourselves in the shins?

The Trojans walked off the field Saturday hollow-eyed and staring straight ahead. There were no tears. There were no helmets thrown in anger. There was no surprise at losing to a Stanford team that has, itself, been humiliated by San Jose State.

“We were about where we thought we’d be at halftime,” Hackett said. USC led 24-14 at halftime but USC also led 21-0 at the end of the first quarter. If Hackett told his team at halftime that this was right where they should be, then what a terrible message. For when you go ahead 21-0 on your own field, you should expect more at halftime. You should expect that your defense wouldn’t let a running back who had gained 223 yards in six games gain 68 on one play where there were at least four missed tackles. That 68-yard run by Brian Allen led to Stanford’s first touchdown and seemed to lead the Trojans to the inevitable.

“It seems like somebody is glaring down on us, someone is not on our side upstairs,” USC strong safety David Gibson said.

To say that your fate is in the hands of fate, that is the way losers speak. Is that what Gibson’s coaches are telling him? That someone up above has a grudge against the Trojans? Because if that’s the case, then there is no point in playing. The game is lost, the season is lost.

Hackett spoke of the need to “hang on to some balls” and of “needing to do things better than we’re doing it.” Hackett said “we just gotta regroup,” and that “at some point we’re going to turn this around.”

But when? And how?

“I don’t know,” was Hackett’s answer to those questions.

When Hackett was asked, the question posed carefully and tactfully, about the perception that he had put the blame on his players last week when he blamed the upperclassmen for lack of leadership, Hackett became snappish. “That’s your perception,” Hackett said. “You’ll write what you want.”

And then he walked into a room and the door was closed.

But that wasn’t only one person’s perception. That has been the perception of USC fans all week. To their credit, USC players have not questioned Hackett’s leadership. Chad Morton, a senior, a captain and maybe one of those whose finger Hackett was pointing at, said his coach “had every right to say what he said. We players have to try harder.”

But try harder at what?

USC football used to stand for something. For great tailbacks and great toughness. For relentless marches up and down the field. Now it stands for, what? Giving up leads? Being invisible in the fourth quarter? For never making the big play and always giving up the big play?

There was no shock among the USC players at this loss. “Same old story,” USC quarterback Mike Van Raaphorst said.

The author of this story is Hackett.

So is it unfair to question Hackett now, so soon? It would be unfair not to.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com