Piece by Piece, Respect Builds for USC’s Garrett

Every workday he drives past the construction site of the arena that would never be built, on his way to the home of the team that could never return to the pinnacle of college football.

“People would comment about SC football and the arena: ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ ” Mike Garrett said. “They’re both coming true.”

As the athletic director who raised the funds to make the Galen Center a reality and made the call to name Pete Carroll the head football coach, Garrett’s entitled to feel good these days. That’s especially true considering the heat he took for replacing the beloved John Robinson with Paul Hackett, then the ridicule he faced for the process that brought Carroll to campus.

With each girder that moves into place at Jefferson and Figueroa, with every week the back-to-back champs remain atop the Associated Press rankings, all of the criticism looks foolish.

You’d think Garrett would want to hop on Traveler, ride around the Coliseum and scream “HOW YA LIKE ME NOW?!”

That’s not Mike Garrett.

He doesn’t want to hear a choir sing his praises or listen to the crunch of critics eating their words. But maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t mind hearing his name coming through the Coliseum loudspeakers just one more time: “Garrett with the carry ... gain of three yards.”

Garrett doesn’t always say what you’d expect. He began our 30-minute interview Wednesday by discussing the Galen Center’s use for jazz concerts, not as a basketball recruiting tool.

He ended it by explaining that the giant picture of the Coliseum hanging behind his desk isn’t taken at a USC game, but rather a high school game in the 1930s.

But one theme kept recurring: the value of the three-yard gain.

“It’s like when I was playing football,” the former Trojan tailback said. “If I had a carry and I only gained three yards, but I knew I did the best I could in that situation, I felt good about that. I didn’t need exterior gratification. I knew I ran that play as well as I could.

“No, I wasn’t Jim Brown, and I wasn’t Gale Sayers. But when I ran the ball, I ran it true and I ran it as well as I could. And that was enough.”

It was enough to gain 3,221 yards at USC and win the Heisman Trophy in 1965.

His leadership is enough to bring national championships in nine sports to USC. His money-making brought the $70 million needed to finally break ground on the long-discussed arena.

And none of it’s enough for him to be satisfied, or enough to step to center stage.

The cameras are everywhere this week, with USC preparing to face Notre Dame in an old rivalry with renewed importance.

Not much face time for Garrett though. And if you want to learn about him, you’ll have to turn to Page 206 of the football media guide -- two pages from the back cover.

“I’m not into P.R.,” Garrett said. “That’s not important.”

“I just want to be behind the scenes and give people resources and let them do what they have to do. The more we win, the more I don’t have to be seen and the better it is for me. I just love doing what I’m doing.”

He added:

“I’m still running that three-yard play as best one can do.... I feel very good about what we do. I don’t celebrate. That’s for people who are not sure of themselves. I don’t have to get in your face. The most important thing is, I’m doing the best I can. My family is doing well. People are healthy, I’m making a living and we’re winning. That’s what we’re all about. Getting in someone’s face, what does that do for you? It makes everybody angry. It doesn’t make it complete.”

Garrett became the athletic director in January 1993 after two years of working under Mike McGee. That was on the heels of the Freedom Bowl fiasco, which led to the return of John Robinson. But after a 6-5 season in 1997, Robinson was gone, Hackett came in and a 19-18 record followed in three years.

“He was a very fine offensive coordinator,” Garrett said. “Some coordinators don’t make the jump to head coach. That’s just kind of how it works. I thought he gave his best shot. He didn’t cut it. I don’t think he’s a head coach.”

Most people thought that would be an apt description of Carroll, who made his name as a defensive coordinator for the New York Jets, but was 33-31 as head coach of the Jets and New England Patriots. While the Trojan faithful panted for Mike Riley and Dennis Erickson, Garrett wound up with Carroll -- and ridicule.

Garrett wanted a defense-oriented coach. He liked Carroll’s enthusiasm. I don’t think Garrett could have survived another bad football-coach hire. Garrett doesn’t think it would have mattered but would have hired Carroll regardless.

“That’s how much I believed in Pete,” Garrett said. “But I don’t think my job was on the line. There were people who didn’t like it, but I don’t think my job was on the line with the people who really mattered.”

Garrett didn’t buy into the prevailing notion that the college landscape had changed and tradition-rich schools such as USC and Notre Dame couldn’t restore their former glory. USC still had great weather and a fertile recruiting base.

“It’s more like we were there, ready to happen,” Garrett said. “All we needed was the right person to do it.”

Which might explain the old picture behind the desk. He first saw it at a men’s clothing store near campus when he was a student, then acquired it 13 years ago. It’s from a game between Gardena and Lincoln high schools. There are a lot of empty seats, but 70 years ago the Coliseum capacity was more than 100,000 -- and the city’s population less than 1.5 million.

“You’ve got at least 60,000 to 70,000 people there,” he said, staring at the picture. “What it told me was L.A. is a town where if you win, they love you. If you don’t win, they don’t love you as much. If you don’t win, they ignore you. That’s L.A. I accept that.”

So he keeps moving forward, three yards at a time.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.