There Are Signs of Thaw in Bibby’s Cold Heart

There was never any problem with USC enjoying success in basketball because you could always count on Coach Henry Bibby coming off like some cold-hearted, unapproachable, old-school loon, which certainly wasn’t going to endear him to the alumni and administration of any other school, so Bibby wasn’t going anywhere.

Last year, for example, there was a rumor that our cold-hearted, unapproachable, old-school loon was headed to Las Vegas, as if the glad-handing gambling capital of the country would ever consider someone with all the charm of a ticket-quota-driven meter maid.

And, in fact, Nevada Las Vegas never made a move to talk with Bibby, hiring instead uncle Charlie Spoonhour, who was out of work but was the easygoing kind of guy you’d expect to find swapping cigars with the heavy rollers.

By all accounts, after all the job openings were posted, no one called Bibby last season after the Trojans finished 24-10, which tells me local reporters did a great job of portraying Bibby as the menacing monster who would never fit in elsewhere.

Three things have happened this year, however, to suggest our resident ogre could become someone else’s godsend:

USC continues to be successful under Bibby despite the handicap of playing games in a rat trap and playing second fiddle to John Wooden’s school.

Bobby Knight has proved that hiring a monster is not necessarily a bad thing.

I wouldn’t rule out a new and more image-conscious Bibby sitting down for Oprah or a Barbara Walters’ interview, and crying.

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FOR THE record, I like Bibby, obviously making allowances because he’s connected with USC, but like Henry Fonda in “On Golden Pond,” I’ve always thought our grumpy old Henry was more engaging than he wanted to let on.

And to be honest, I don’t want the eccentric one going anywhere because he’s our very own eccentric one, and for that matter, pretty darn good at what he does.

Our grumpy old Henry is probably one of the best things going for USC--if not the only thing (couldn’t help myself)--because the records show this school is not an easy place to win 44 of the last 62 basketball games played. The records also show USC has been promising a new arena forever, and yet the site of this potential big-time recruiting tool at Jefferson and Figueroa still remains a parking lot.

But more than all that, Bibby is someone who has paid his dues over a well-traveled career of trying to make it as a coach, and when this guy tells you he’s seen it all, he really has coached games in buildings with no walls and just a leaky roof. That explains why he’s at home in the Sports Arena.

He has his faults, of course. If he doesn’t remind everyone once, he reminds us a hundred times a season that Mike Garrett was the only one who took the risk of hiring him, as if anyone else would want to work for Garrett.

The old stories about his estranged relationship with his son, Mike, who plays for the Sacramento Kings, are probably always going to register as a ding against him, no matter the explanation. But a lot more wins than losses has a way of making everything right, as Knight demonstrated at Texas Tech.

I’m also constantly at odds with ogre Henry because he gets his jollies playing mind games with his athletes in the name of old-school discipline, tearing them down like a drill sergeant before building them back up in his own likeness. I call that abusive, and he says, “That’s not abusive--that’s love.... Abusive is the way you write about your wife in your column.”

And I thought no one at USC read Page 2.

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AFTER MAKING a point to say none of his three seniors has shown leadership this season, and he doesn’t expect that to change, I suggested he was playing mind games again with his players in preparation for the Pacific 10 Conference tournament.

“I don’t play mind games,” he said. “I just push the buttons that have to be pushed with the players to get the best out of them.”

Semantics, I said, and Bibby grinned. “Absolutely,” he said.

You have to like someone who knows he’s giving you a bunch of bunk, and honest to admit as much if caught, while still sounding defiant and surprised you would ever think he would give you a line of bunk until caught red-handed.

But this is also a more mellow Henry Bibby, although he disagreed. I see a kinder and more embraceable coach, and I think he knows now why UNLV or no one else called last season.

He still wears a USC baseball cap two sizes too big that swallows not only his bald head but his ears as well, but the chip on the shoulder no longer seems so obvious, which has to be a real concern for anyone who wants to keep this guy in town working wonders with the Trojans. If the Trojans continue to win, and duplicate or better last year’s showing in the NCAA tournament, he’s going to have to do something really stupid or say something really offensive now to turn off the suitors.

USC could lose an outstanding coach, and then what else would the school have going for it?

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in an e-mail from Jimmy Fraser:

“Don’t forget the licensing checks every baseball player receives--in excess of $100,000. They’ll tell you that money is taxed--unlike the automobiles loaned to them and the audio and video equipment they ‘find’ in their lockers during the year. (The rich get richer.) When’s the last time a ballplayer picked up the check for you?”

I can’t even remember the last time Kevin Brown invited me to dinner.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com.