Barbs for Garrett? He’s Got This Job Wired

I needed a sympathetic ear, so I called Mike Garrett.

Now maybe I shouldn’t have tipped my hand, and told his secretary I wanted to talk to him about NIU (or, for that matter, identified myself.)

I’ve been a diehard Trojan fan now for 25 days, and while I really like that feeling of thinking I’m better than most people, I worry now that USC is on a collision course with my very own Northern Illinois University, which is college football’s current-day giant killer.

NIU, the No. 20-ranked football team in the nation with Michael “The Burner” Turner running the ball, is located in DeKalb. They invented barbed wire in DeKalb in an attempt to keep people from moving away.

Cindy Crawford went to the local high school while I was attending college there. Apparently she wasn’t interested in older men. In fact lots of famous people went to NIU, such as Dan Castellaneta, you know, the voice of Homer Simpson, and Steve Harris, Eugene Young on “The Practice.” I also met the wife at NIU, and still think fondly of the place.

I never graduated from NIU because that would have meant going to classes more often, but I was a Huskie. So I called Mike Korcek, the school’s highly regarded publicist, and asked if there’s any talk of running into USC later this season.

“Who?” Korcek said. “We don’t pay a lot of attention around here to USC.”

Sounds like the perfect getaway for UCLA fans.

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THE HUSKIES have already knocked off two ranked teams this season, Maryland and Alabama, and imagine what a BCS win over USC would mean. This week they get Iowa State in a sold-out Huskie Stadium, and a victory will give the school a 4-0 mark for the first time since 1965.

“This is like a dream,” said Korcek. “Alabama sold $40,000 in game programs last week when we were there; it probably takes us all season long to do that. We had 1,500 kids here watching the game on closed-circuit TV. We even had 20 media people at practice this week; there were years when we couldn’t draw 20 people to media day.”

Now I was hoping Garrett would tell me it’s all right to pull hard for the Huskies, seeing as how something wonderful like this doesn’t happen very often. But he hasn’t called back so far. I called NIU’s AD, learned it was a woman, Cary Groth, and I think that’s a wonderful thing, and would urge USC to do the same thing.

“I’ve never really had any contact with Mike Garrett,” Groth said, and I said, “try calling Steven Sample.”

“We’re a non-BCS school,” Groth continued, “so although it’s technically possible we could meet, I don’t see us getting a chance to play USC. If we’re ever going to play them, it’d have to be during the season. We’ve started talking about trying to play some of those programs out west, and we’ll probably start calling soon.”

I told her to go easy and start with UCLA, of course, and then work up to San Diego State or maybe Cal.

In the meantime, I can only hope good things continue to happen for the Trojans and Huskies, and I’m never put in the position of having to pick who should win. I mean I’d hate to jeopardize my relationship with Garrett.

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I’D LIKE to hear the spin Drew Brees puts on this one: The San Diego Slugs, short on healthy receivers, suspended David Boston for Sunday’s game with the Raiders, thereby putting on hold the anticipated returns on the seven-year, $47-million contract they gave Boston this off-season. The Slugs cited “conduct detrimental to the team,” suggesting among other things that he’s been late for team meetings, which is understandable when you consider the guy pops more than 90 dietary supplements a day. You have to allow time for him to swallow.

Boston, who sports the kind of upper body you might see on one of those ESPN bodybuilder contests, has apparently had differences with the team’s strength coach, called an assistant coach a bad name and has been acting pretty much like former Slug quarterback Ryan Leaf -- thereby ostracizing himself from teammates.

Boston had a history of problems in Arizona, but of course that didn’t stop the Slugs from throwing all that money at him. And to date that’s all he’s caught.

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USA TODAY reported that Converse will launch a new shoe in November called Loaded Weapon. You can’t go through most airports today without removing your shoes for security, and now we’re going to have kids talking about their new Loaded Weapons.

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UCLA WAS recruiting him about the time he made the decision to transfer to Santa Margarita High in 1999, and while I checked to see if quarterback Chris Rix ever made an official visit to UCLA -- and where he might have parked -- I was told he committed to Florida State before making an official visit to Westwood.

It’s clear, however, he must have received some education at UCLA, which makes his recent decision to use a handicapped placard to park on the FSU campus even more disturbing. The UCLA handicapped parking scandal, which involved quarterback Cade McNown among others, became a public embarrassment during the summer of 1999, and Rix was right here to witness the whole thing. And he still elected to park in the wrong place at FSU. How would you like him leading your team?

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from John Jamgotchian:

“I am glad to hear you make speaking engagements ... we would love to have you as a speaker any Tuesday that your schedule allows. I am a member of the Warner Center Optimist Club ...”

Then you won’t mind getting back to me in a few years.

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