Trojans Go From Being the Hunter to the Hunted

Paul McDonald recalled his first team meeting at USC in the 1970s, at which Coach John Robinson walked in and, almost matter-of-factly, scrawled on the chalkboard:

Beat Notre Dame.

Beat UCLA

Win Rose Bowl

Win national title.

“Wow,” McDonald said to himself, “this is serious stuff.”

It was then; it is now.

For the first time since 1979, USC begins the college football season ranked No. 1.

Now comes the tough part -- dealing with it.

USC handled the pressure in 1979, going 11-0-1 and finishing second to national champion Alabama.

There are eerie similarities between that team and this season’s. In 1978, the Trojans won a share of the national title by defeating Michigan in the Rose Bowl.

Last season, USC won a share of the national title by defeating Michigan in the Rose Bowl.

The quarterbacks then and now, McDonald and Matt Leinart, are left-handers.

There was a White in the backfield then, Charles, and a White in the backfield now, LenDale.

There are also profound differences.

There was no Internet as we know it in 1979, no 24-hour news cycle, no chat rooms, no Google, no one named “Lester” passing off innuendo for news from his basement website.

USC got off easy in winning a share of last year’s national title because it flew under the radar.

The Trojans did not become No. 1 in both polls until the last night of the regular season, when Kansas State knocked off No. 1 Oklahoma in the Big 12 Conference championship game.

By contrast, USC starts this year as No. 1 in just about every publication except Popular Mechanics.

The Trojans are tops in both polls, Associated Press and the ESPN/USA Today coaches, and in Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Lindy’s, Athlon and Street&Smith;’s, among other magazines.

They are No. 1 on collegefootballnews.com and nationalchamps.net.

One can be a nifty number but also, as Three Dog Night sang, the loneliest.

“It’s probably the hardest position in the world to be in,” Sam Cunningham, legendary running back on USC’s 1972 national title team, said.

And, today, it might be harder than ever.

USC faces its first national-camera close-up Saturday against Virginia Tech in Landover, Md.

News of starting tailback Herschel Dennis’ being the focus of a sexual assault investigation broke about the time national college football writers from Boston and Atlanta arrived in town to feature USC for their newspapers.

Bad news, like a virus, spreads quickly.

USC will discover -- perhaps it is already catching the drift -- that winning a national title is one thing, defending it quite another.

“All it does is put a big crosshairs on our chest,” tight end Alex Holmes said.

Managing the 11 games may be the easy part, compared to managing everything else.

It probably is not coincidence that, since AP started publishing preseason polls in 1950, only one team has gone wire to wire in winning the national title -- Florida State in 1999.

And anyone who followed that team could tell you that act was as much high wire as wire to wire.

History is strewn with tales of championship hangovers:

* Oklahoma’s 1985 title was followed by a two-year bowl ban.

* Miami’s titles in 1989 and 1991 came with a probation price tag, as did Washington’s in 1991 and Alabama’s in 1992.

* Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden’s first national title in 1993 was tainted by the infamous “free shoes” scandal. Nebraska’s 1995 title run was complicated by Coach Tom Osborne’s controversial decision to reinstate troubled tailback Lawrence Phillips before the national title game.

Every program has problems -- said McDonald, “If you look hard enough, you’ll find anything you want to know” -- but the nightly news seems a bit more fixated when you’re No. 1.

Ohio State’s championship run two years ago came with the carry-on baggage of tailback Maurice Clarett and, since, a series of off-field hiccups.

Florida State’s 1999 championship squad finished unbeaten, yet Bowden spent much of that season talking about the actions of his players, most notably star receiver Peter Warrick’s role in receiving discount merchandise at a department store. At the 2000 Sugar Bowl, Bowden pined for the days when team problems were quietly settled by “the coach and the police.”

Last year, when asked about the difficulties of being No. 1, Bowden mused, “You know, 50 years ago you could slip it all by. You can’t slip nothing by anymore. I miss the old days.”

When you’re No. 1, you answer more questions, run from more reporters, perhaps think you can get away with more and leave yourself vulnerable to nefarious rogues and sycophants.

Being top-ranked also means closing ranks. USC players think they know what to expect.

“Being on top, you have more people gunning for you in all sorts of ways,” Leinart said. “You’ve got to sacrifice. There’s going to be times when you want to have fun, but football season, you have to focus on just that. Especially in L.A. It’s easy to get in trouble. You’ve got to be careful, you’ve got to be smarter.”

Yet, it has already been established some USC players have not been very smart. Dennis, at the very least, was suspended for breaking curfew.

“Obviously, being a top team we’re in kind of a fishbowl, people are waiting for us to slip up, make mistakes,” Leinart said. “What’s going on right now is tough on us. We just have to move on and hope the problem will get solved.”

USC faces a crossroads at the dawn of what appears to be a budding dynasty.

For the coach of a top program, managing off-field issues is as important as managing the Xs and O’s -- ask former UCLA coach Bob Toledo.

To date, fourth-year Coach Pete Carroll has received high marks for maintaining player deportment.

McDonald said, “I don’t think players have changed that much. It’s just the world we live in, with the media. You can’t lock everyone in a room. Pete is as good as anybody, as fair as anybody. He’s A-plus in that category. But you can tell your kid one thing until he’s blue in the face, but you’re not them.”

The question of whether a coach should be held responsible for the off-field actions of 100 players is open to debate and one Colorado Coach Gary Barnett might pick you up at the airport to discuss.

Asked recently how often he talked to his team about the perils of success, Carroll sighed and said, “Forever, tirelessly.”

And he’s not the only one.

Last week, at Nebraska, one of the school’s top football aides excused himself early from a dinner with reporters because the police chief was coming in to give his annual talk to the team.

“Coaches all over America try every way we can to get the message out,” Carroll said. “Sometimes there is a breakdown. Along with focus, comes stress. You have to stay level-headed, stay balanced.”

Carroll says USC has no choice but to deal with the increased scrutiny because he has no plans of easing off the national-title-quest gas pedal.

“It comes with the territory and it’s going to come in abundance,” he said. “That’s what we have to learn to deal with.... You’d better get accustomed to the landscape or you are going to get knocked down and fall back in the rainstorm.”

At USC, a school with a storied football tradition, former players often can provide cautionary tales.

“They have to grow up, take responsibilities for their actions and understand you’re responsible for the image you put on the field and the image you put out for the university,” Cunningham said of today’s Trojan players.

Yet, even Sam “Bam” recognizes that today’s football terrain is different from the one he ran roughshod over.

“It’s a wide open world, there are no secrets,” Cunningham said. “Before, you could have skeletons in the closet for years. Now you can’t have them for 30 seconds.”