PAST GLORIES : USC Celebrates 100 Years of Football Full of Memories and 8 National Titles

No one is quite sure what happened to the Alliance Athletic Club, but its football opponent on Nov. 14, 1888, endured.

The University of Southern California has maintained an athletic program for 100 years, starting with that obscure first game against the Alliance AC on the campus of the school that was founded only eight years earlier in an uncultivated mustard field.

To say that USC football had a humble beginning is an understatement.

There were no uniforms for the Methodists, who did not become the Trojans until 1912, when Owen Bird, sports editor of The Los Angeles Times, supplied the nickname.

The original coaches, Frank Suffell and Henry H. Goddard, were also members of the team. The quarterback, Arthur Carroll, volunteered to make pants for the first team.

Appropriately, Carroll later became a tailor in Riverside.

USC won that first outing against Alliance, 16-0, in a game that combined elements of American football, rugby and soccer.

Flushed with success, USC granted Alliance a rematch on Jan. 19, 1889, on a vacant field in what is now downtown Los Angeles. Alliance had a better scouting report on USC the second time around and barely lost, 4-0.

It was a modest two-game season but an undefeated, untied and unscored-upon one nevertheless.

As USC gets ready to play at Boston College next Thursday night at the outset of its centennial year in football, it can look back on a heritage of 8 national championships, 21 victories in 31 bowl appearances, famous coaches, players and rivalries such as the Notre Dame and UCLA series.

THE COACHES

After that first season and until 1919, USC football was a sometime thing. Some years, there was no coach. Other years, there was no team. From 1911 through 1913, rugby was the school’s fall sport. Among the seven early football coaches was Dean Cromwell, who became more renowned as the school’s track and field coach.

The hiring of Elmer (Gloomy Gus) Henderson as coach in 1919 coincided with USC’s emergence as a football power on the West Coast.

Henderson didn’t have a dour disposition. He became known as Gloomy Gus because of his dire predictions concerning his team.

But Henderson won many more games than he lost and his six-year record at the school, 45-7 (.865), is still the best percentage of any USC coach.

USC made its first Rose Bowl appearance under Henderson in 1923, beating Penn State, 14-3. The Trojans also won 10 games in each of the 1921 and 1922 seasons.

Curiously, though, Henderson was the first USC football coach to be fired, and there have been only three of those. Jeff Cravath in 1950 and Ted Tollner in 1986 were the others.

It has been surmised that Henderson was fired because he couldn’t beat California’s Wonder Teams during his tenure. The popular theory, though, was that California and Stanford pressured USC administrators into dumping him because of his recruiting methods and the school’s academic, or eligibility, standards at the time.

In any event, USC tried to hire Notre Dame’s famed Knute Rockne as his replacement but settled instead on a quiet, almost austere man who brought a winning record from Iowa.

Howard Harding Jones, known as the Headman, brought national prominence to USC with his single-wing, tailback-oriented style of attack.

The Trojans were called the Thundering Herd under Jones, whose offensive philosophy was simple but effective.

“Football to me is power-massed power, functioning smoothly, driving forward relentlessly,� Jones said.

The Trojans prospered under him, winning national championships in 1928, 1931 and 1932. Jones’ Trojans also won eight Pacific Coast Conference titles and were undefeated in five Rose Bowl appearances.

It was in the Jones era, 1925 to 1940, that the Trojan tailback legacy began. Unlike the modern tailback, who is primarily a running back, Jones’ tailbacks, designated as quarterbacks, also passed, punted and played defense.

Some of them were among the 19 All-Americans who played for Jones. The most significant were Mort Kaer, Morley Drury, Russ Saunders, Marshall Duffield, Gus Shaver, Orv Mohler, Homer Griffith, Cotton Warburton, Ambrose Schindler and Grenville Lansdell.

Jones also had a lineman who wasn’t All-American caliber but became an American legend--Duke Morrison, the late John Wayne.

Nick Pappas, a development consultant in the USC athletic department and a quarterback under Jones, said the Headman would demonstrate what he wanted accomplished in practice. And to get a player’s attention he would take a stance and literally lower the boom on an unsuspecting lineman.

“Jones had an offensive theory,� Pappas said. “First down, touchdown; second down, first down; third down, punt. He didn’t use fourth down for a punt until we got to our 40-yard line. Looking back, what was incredible was that we got most of our yardage on first and second downs.�

Jones died before the 1941 season, and the Trojans had some success under Jeff Cravath, Jess Hill and Don Clark, but it wasn’t until a jaunty former halfback from Oregon became USC’s coach in 1960 that the school regained its national stature on a more permanent basis.

McKay, like Jones, coached at USC for 16 seasons and redefined the tailback position while modernizing the I-formation.

His record was similar to Jones’. His Trojans won national titles in 1962, 1967, 1972 and 1974 and nine Pacific 8 titles. He also had a 5-3 record in the Rose Bowl.

McKay’s wit, sometimes acerbic, provided material for reporters pursuing a snappy quote.

On overworking tailback O.J. Simpson with too many carries: “The ball isn’t heavy. Anyway, O.J. doesn’t belong to a union.�

At halftime of the 1964 USC-Notre Dame game, with the Trojans trailing, 17-0: “Gentlemen, if we don’t score more than 17 points in the second half, we don’t have a chance.� USC won, 20-17.

Talking about one of his offensive lines: “You’ve heard of the Seven Blocks of Granite? Last year, we had the Seven Blocks of Cement.�

On the opening kickoff of a game with Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., when his small halfback, Mike Hunter, slipped and fell on the USC 5-yard line: “My God! He has been shot!�

When McKay left USC after the 1975 season to become coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League, his successor, John Robinson, didn’t miss a beat.

Robinson-coached teams won three Rose Bowl games--1977, 1979 and 1980--and the 1978 team shared the national championship with Alabama.

However, the early ‘80s were marred by Pacific 10 and National Collegiate Athletic Assn. sanctions that prevented the Trojans from appearing in bowl games and on national television.

The rest is recent history. Tollner’s Trojans won the conference championship in 1984 and beat Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. But his ensuing record wasn’t judged by administrators to be up to USC’s standards and he was fired.

Larry Smith, Tollner’s replacement in 1987, had the distinction of being the only USC coach, other than Robinson, to get a team into the Rose Bowl in his first season, although the Trojans were beaten by Michigan State.

THE PLAYERS

Brice Taylor, a guard, was USC’s first All-American, in 1925. Dave Cadigan, an offensive tackle, was the latest choice, in 1987.

In between, there have been 103 first team All-Americans and four Heisman Trophy winners--Mike Garrett, Simpson, Charles White and Marcus Allen. All of the Heisman winners, in keeping with the tradition pioneered by Jones and restored by McKay and Robinson, were tailbacks.

This year, a quarterback, Rodney Peete, is being promoted as a Heisman contender. It’s a sign of the times. These days, USC’s offense is structured around the quarterback.

GREATEST MOMENTS

Such recollections are always subjective but here are at least some of them:

1931--Johnny Baker kicked a 33-yard field goal in the final minute to beat Notre Dame at South Bend, 16-14, in a game the Irish once led, 14-0. The victory snapped Notre Dame’s 26-game unbeaten streak and staked USC to the national championship. When the Trojans returned home, they were hailed in a downtown parade before a crowd estimated at 300,000.

1939--Doyle Nave, a fourth-string quarterback, threw a 19-yard pass to reserve end Al Krueger in the final minutes, providing USC with a 7-3 victory over Duke in the 1939 Rose Bowl game. It was Nave’s fourth straight completion to Krueger. The Blue Devils previously were unbeaten, untied and unscored upon.

1964--Craig Fertig’s fourth-down pass to Rod Sherman with under two minutes remaining gave USC a 20-17 victory over Notre Dame at the Coliseum. The Irish were unbeaten and top-ranked at the time.

1967--Simpson ran 64 yards for the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter against UCLA. The 21-20 victory wrapped up the conference title, Rose Bowl bid and national championship for the Trojans.

1974--Anthony Davis returned the second-half kickoff 102 yards to a touchdown, igniting an improbable rally against Notre Dame during which USC scored 35 points in the third quarter after trailing at halftime, 24-6. Final score: USC 55, Notre Dame 24.

1980--White gained 71 of USC’s 83 yards on a late drive against Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. White got his last yard on a dive into the end zone for a comeback 17-16 victory.