USC drew national praise Monday when it announced four-year scholarships for football, men’s and women’s basketball. That same day, two track-and-field athletes faced hearings before a university committee because track coach Caryl Smith-Gilbert wanted to revoke their scholarships. Each athlete experienced a performance decrease under the new coach.

The committee decides whether a scholarship is renewed when a coach does not want an athlete to remain on scholarship. A decision needs to come before scholarships are renewed July 1. This quote from Monday seems even more important now.

“USC hopes to help lead the effort to refocus on student-athlete welfare on and off the field,” athletic director Pat Haden said.

Monica Morita, who was director of student services for the athletic dept., recently resigned to become executive assistant to Norm Chow at Hawaii.

Dominic Davis, a tailback-cornerback from Alemany High School, was offered a scholarship today by USC at the Rising Stars camp. Davis is a senior.

I mentioned quarterback Kahi Neves earlier today and this afternoon he was named QB MVP at the Rising Stars Camp. The 2016 prospect is drawing interest from Oregon and will now be on USC’s radar. And in a great irony, he is not going to start his junior year of high school but beat out plenty of QBs who will be starting.

USA loses to Germany, 1-0, but it does not matter as the Americans advance from the Group of Death as Portugal defeated Ghana, 2-1, in the other match. It looks like the U.S. will play Belgium next week pending the later games results.

If you were in our live chats a few weeks ago, I was asked if the U.S. would advance and I said yes. I got one right! But I also picked Belgium as my darkhorse to win the World Cup, so that spells trouble.

Some of the big names (Travis Waller, David Sills) skipped the Rising Stars camp but there are younger quarterbacks. One is Kahi Neves, a Class of 2016 prospect from South Jordan, Utah.

Neves has been offered by Utah and Hawaii so far even though he is not even expected to start for his high school team next season.

Former USC coach Ed Orgeron is taking a year off to be with his family in Louisiana and the New Orleans Times-Picayune checked in on him.

“I’m not opposed to going back to college and being a defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator, and I’m not opposed to going to the NFL,” Orgeron said. “I’m young (53) and I think things will work out for a reason.”

Here’s the USC Student Union building in 1930. The building looks virtually unchanged today, however, for many years USC’s coaches worked on the second floor. In the 1960’s, you had John McKay there with some of his legendary assistants (Dave Levy, Marv Goux, Craig Fertig, Dick Coury, Ray George, Willie Brown, Hudson Houck). His staff those days also included some future big names: current Kansas State coach Bill Snyder, former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs and former San Diego Chargers coach Al Saunders.

“We would hear (McKay) yelling at his assistants and throwing the projector,” former USC basketball coach Bob Boyd told me once.

Tony Brown, a Class of 2015 recruit from La Mirada, was named wide receiver MVP at today’s camp. Chacho Ulloa, a class of 2016 recruit from Corona Centennial, was named defensive backs MVP.

Here’s former USC player Don Doll’s NFL card prior to his second season with the Detroit Lions. His stellar football career is highlighted here and if you read the card, it says he is getting a master’s in physical education. That used to be a major at USC and there was a time when almost every high school in Southern California had a coach with a P.E. degree from USC. The major is looked down at these days but helped start a lot of local coaching careers.