Lack of Good Will Haunting Bruins

On one side of town, a starting tackle pleads no contest to a misdemeanor count of solicitation of prostitution, and everything is Cardinal and quiet.

The stories in this newspaper are never played higher than Page D3. The penalties, if any, are never announced.

On the other side of town, two backups are arrested on suspicion of alcohol-related misdemeanors, and all Bruin breaks loose.

Both stories are on the sports section cover. Both players are very publicly suspended for one game.

While USC’s Winston Justice now fights to win a national championship, UCLA’s Marcus Cassel and John Sciarra are fighting simply to regain their reputations, and you wonder.

Are the programs playing under different rules?

Is equality being chop-blocked by reputation?

The answers are yes, and yes, and the reason is so obvious, on Tuesday afternoon, Dan Guerrero needed only five words to voice it.

“You reap what you sow,” he said.

The Bruin athletic director’s simple wisdom should be plastered above every doorway leading out of every Bruin locker room, to be touched by every Bruin athlete going home every night.

There undoubtedly are kids from both programs who have been into off-field trouble.

But only UCLA fired its football coach because of it.

Certainly, the athletes living behind the walls on Exposition are no different than the athletes living amid the traffic in Westwood.

But when they played two seasons ago, it was UCLA’s quarterback who created a game-costing distraction when he acknowledged two earlier alcohol-related convictions.

And, yes, on any night, one could probably find as many Trojans as Bruins hanging out in local bars.

But only the Bruins banned their players from one of them.

In a vacuum, defensive back Marcus Cassel’s misdemeanor drunk driving charge would have disappeared somewhere in the softball scores. But because the university knew of the problem, yet didn’t announce his suspension for several weeks, there was the appearance that officials were hiding it out of embarrassment. Agate became headlines.

Also in a vacuum, quarterback John Sciarra’s arrest on public drunkenness and giving false information to police -- he has not been charged -- would have been lost in the tire ads. But when it happened last month, his lawyer Vincent LaBarbera advised him not to tell his coaches because the incident could apparently disappear after a few months of good behavior.

LaBarbera obviously had never heard of Cory Paus. By putting the Bruin program in such a precarious position, he helped put his client on the front page.

“It is what it is,” former UCLA quarterback John Sciarra said of his son. “He’s paying for his mistake with public humiliation.”

Bob Toledo’s regime set the market, but, for now, Karl Dorrell’s regime will bear that price.

Each of the Bruin players should understand that people are watching, and people are waiting, and mistakes will haunt.

Maybe not right away, but certainly when it can hurt UCLA the most.

Take the story of third-stringer Sciarra, which broke this week, just after starter Matt Moore suffered a knee injury and Sciarra was preparing to begin his first game as the No. 2 quarterback.

He was arrested back on Aug. 8, yet the anonymous tip didn’t arrive via e-mail until Monday.

“Whoever released this now certainly had his reasons for it,” Guerrero said.

Guerrero never said it, never even implied it, but a certain group of his followers have always thought such reasons were spelled U-S-C.

Those long-running rat rumors -- which have come from both sides -- add spice to the already steaming intrigue of the rivalry.

But UCLA players need to forget the messenger, and understand the message.

They are being judged differently than the Trojans, not because of who they are, but because of who they were.

Their past is their present. They are lassoed by their legacy.

It’s not fair. But it’s no different than what they will encounter when applying for a job or a loan. It’s life. It’s a lesson. Learn it now.

“We’ve talked and talked and talked about these things,” Guerrero said. “They listen, but do they hear?”

As for Winston Justice, he was not suspended, but apparently paid his price after preseason practices, doing extra work to the point of exhaustion.

That being USC, Pete Carroll was applauded for his common sense.

If it were UCLA, Karl Dorrell would be ripped for his sneakiness.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.