Wanted: Hearing Aid for Garrett

USC lost two football scholarships, half a swimming and diving scholarship and some gloss off the reputation of an athletic department that, while it hasn’t won enough football games to please the alumni in the last couple of decades, had also not been slapped with any of the ugly recruiting or academic scandals of so many other colleges.

But Thursday the NCAA announced that for three years--in 1996, 1997 and 1998--on three occasions, USC athletic department-approved academic tutors wrote term papers for student-athletes.

That’s what is known as academic fraud and it cuts to the heart of what a university stands for. It is considered a major NCAA infraction. It means USC could be in line for the death penalty--the suspension of an athletic program--should it be caught committing any other major infractions in the next five years.

It is up to Athletic Director Mike Garrett to make sure this doesn’t happen again, and Garrett has once again given USC fans and alumni cause to wonder if he’s up to that task.

That’s because the NCAA’s “major” infraction wasn’t the greatest mistake Garrett’s department had to deal with this week. And the other mistake was all his fault.

Despite being counseled otherwise by many members of the athletic department, Garrett refused to invite John Robinson to a reunion of the 1976 Rose Bowl-winning USC football team the former coach led to an 11-1 record. No matter the grievances Garrett might have against Robinson--who was fired after the 1997 season--this is a petty and mean-spirited act by someone ill-equipped to run a major athletic program.

More than anything, an athletic director needs to get along and listen.

An athletic director needs to hear from everyone under his control--from coaches and players, from tutors and administrative personnel. He needs to pay attention if there is a whisper, a hint, that something is going on in the academic tutoring department.

And an athletic director needs to understand that if many members of his department tell him it will be public relations suicide to invite a team to campus but withhold the invitation from the coach, then he needs to take that advice.

An athletic director must make nice to alumni, all of them, even the ones he doesn’t like. An athletic director needs to raise money, which becomes more difficult when you publicly insult a man who many alumni wish were at USC right now, doing your job.

For many Trojan fans, ex-players and supporters, John Robinson would be a popular hire as athletic director. Robinson, who received the news of his firing on his telephone answering machine, has rebounded by becoming first, and again, a very good football coach and now the Nevada Las Vegas athletic director as well.

In the USC football media guide, there are short biographies of the Trojan All-Americans, all 99 of them. Garrett’s bio is 29 lines, longer than any other bio, longer than those of Marcus Allen, Charles White, Ronnie Lott, Brad Budde; longer than those of Ricky Bell, Clay Matthews, Lynn Swann or Anthony Davis; longer than the ones for Sam Cunningham, Clarence Davis, O.J. Simpson or Ron Yary; longer than the combined bios of Marlin and Mike McKeever; longer than the bios for Frank Gifford, Jon Arnett, Ron Mix and Cotton Warburton.

Large bio, large ego to go with large accomplishments. Some USC alumni would like another distinction added to that bio--former athletic director.

Garrett is USC’s first Heisman Trophy winner and has supervised an athletic department that excels in many sports. But someone who won’t listen, can’t hear. When someone can’t hear, he doesn’t learn.

There was a sigh of relief at USC Thursday. There were fears of more serious sanctions and deeper-seated problems being uncovered by the NCAA.

But what was uncovered wasn’t good. In the 15-page NCAA report, it was revealed USC was using undergraduate students as tutors. The problems with this arrangement are obvious. Undergraduates are in classes with the athletes. It is much easier for an athlete or a coach to put pressure on an undergraduate.

In one of the violations, an unnamed coach asked the tutor coordinator to “make certain that student-athlete 1 completed the paper in time to submit it the next day.” Because no tutors were available, the tutor coordinator “personally instructed student-athlete 1 how to use the Internet to conduct research--assisted student-athlete 1 in formulating a thesis for the paper--Student-athlete 1 attempted to type the paper but had such poor typing skills that the tutor coordinator assumed the typing for him.”

From there it just became easier for the tutor to write the paper.

The NCAA also found “a lack of monitoring in the administration of [USC’s] Student Athlete Academic Services [SAAS].”

In other words, the internal department service, under Garrett’s control, was really out of control.

There was no evidence, according to Jack Friedenthal, a George Washington University law professor who led the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions, that Garrett or any of the coaches involved knew of these specific instances of fraud.

But as the man in charge, Garrett should have understood having undergraduate tutors would be likely to lead to conflicts of academic and athletic interests.

It would have been nice to ask Garrett about this, but all statements on the NCAA sanctions were being issued out of the university news bureau. Garrett was traveling and unavailable to speak about what he might do to prevent further infractions or to address what seems his unproductive stubbornness about Robinson.

Too often, Garrett is unavailable to comment.

USC has an athletic department mission statement that says the department will be run “under an administrative structure managed in an open” manner; where one of the basic principles is “administering clearly, openly and responsibly.”

It’s that open part where Garrett misses. He often seems to close himself off from people who love USC and who want the best for USC sports. The more he does that, the more he loses support, in and out of USC. The less he listens, the less he’ll know how best to lead USC.

Great collegiate programs deserve great leaders. Mike Garrett needs to step up and become one. This week he stepped back.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.