Williams Hasn’t Decided on NFL

Tension and anger pulsed through USC’s football program on Monday as the Trojans anxiously waited for receiver Mike Williams to make a decision about his future.

Williams, a consensus All-American last season as a sophomore, is contemplating whether to take advantage of the recent Maurice Clarett decision that allows all underclassmen to make themselves available for the NFL draft. Sources said he decided to turn pro on Friday, but vacillated over the weekend.

Players have until next Monday to petition for inclusion in the draft, which will be held April 24 and 25.

Most Trojan players expected Williams to announce his decision Monday. Instead, the day began with players grousing about critical comments attributed to Williams in the campus newspaper.

A team leadership committee met in the late afternoon to address the issue. Williams and Coach Pete Carroll later emerged from another lengthy meeting to announce that Williams was still processing information about whether to stay in school or make himself available for the draft. Neither player nor coach set a date for a decision or announcement.

“I’m still thinking about it,” Williams said. “Still using all my resources: Coach Carroll and outside of this. When it comes, it’ll come.”

Referring to the aftermath of the Clarett decision, Carroll called the 6-foot-5, 230-pound Williams, “a first-time guy dealing with a first-time situation.”

“He’s kind of quagmired in the process a little bit,” said Carroll, who spearheaded an intense weekend lobbying effort to persuade Williams to put off turning pro. “Once he gets through it, he’ll be ready to rock and roll and get going.”

Williams rocked teammates with comments that appeared in Monday’s edition of the Daily Trojan.

In the story, with a headline that read, “Williams is ‘leaning’ to return,” Williams is quoted as saying:

“I looked at the confidence level of this team and other teams that I’ve been on and I didn’t see a high confidence level on this team. We’re so young and we don’t have a lot of impact guys. I just see a bunch of football players who are individuals. We don’t have a bunch of players who just love football. We don’t have guys who are self-motivated. I don’t want to name any names because I love my teammates, but they know who they are.”

In the morning, several USC players angrily shook their heads when asked about Williams’ comments and suggested Williams look at himself. Other players agreed, in part, with Williams.

“Some of that is true,” running back LenDale White said.

Defensive tackle Shaun Cody, who will be a senior next season, chalked it up to the pressure of making a decision -- and Williams being Williams.

“Knowing Mike for a while, sometimes he says some things when he’s venting,” Cody said. “He’s probably mad at the whole situation. You don’t take it personally. That’s how he plays on and off the field.”

In the afternoon, Williams was summoned to the leadership committee meeting in a room on the first floor of Heritage Hall. He wound up conferring with Carroll in the football offices upstairs. Kathy McCurdy, who took Williams into her family’s Florida home when he was 16, arrived about an hour later and joined the player-coach conference.

Afterward, Williams said of his published comments: “Maybe they weren’t put in the right context or the right way.”

He said several teammates had called him first thing in the morning and that they offered support.

“It’s not the first time bad things are going to be said about me, and [it’s] probably not going to be the last,” Williams said. “Hopefully, it’s the last big conflict within this team.... As long as guys know that I don’t think bad about them or this team or the team concept ... we’ll get over it.”