Back to USC
The National Football Foundation held a big seminar this week in Dallas, featuring college football coaches, athletic directors, presidents, etc. Naturally, a question on USC was presented to Ohio State coach Jim Tressel and Florida State president T.K. Wetherall.
Q. I guess this falls under recruiting. USC is being criticized by a lot of people nationwide for having two agent issues right now. I'd like to ask the coaches and Dr. Wetherell, as well, how responsible are you as coaches and as presidents for knowing the whereabouts of your star players? We're talking about star players, Reggie Bush and the like, what they're driving, who they're seeing, who they're going around with, because that seems to be the issue with USC right now, not only did they not know, they didn't want to know.
COACH TRESSEL: Well, it's hard. I'll tell you, it's very hard. We are responsible for keeping track of their audible registration, and I have to sign off that I know what everyone is driving at all times, which makes it difficult, because I get there before they do and I leave after they do, so I'm not even in the parking lot in the light of day. But we're responsible for it.
We, and I'm sure these guys do the same, they have people who try to keep an eye around the facility as to who's driving what, and all of a sudden there's someone coming in with these new wheels or whatever, and I guess what we're trying to do, too, is trying to keep them busier. I know it probably breaks that 20 hour rule, but it's not football activity, but we're trying to keep them busier and having to come more and all those things, in part to protect them from someone that may try to latch onto them, and maybe secondly, to keep more of an eye on them so that maybe you could notice.
But I would not throw any stones from where I sit at USC from the standpoint of it is so hard to keep track of people. If people have an interest in doing things that they don't want you to know they're doing, they're going to make it hard for you to see.
DR. WETHERELL: From a president's perspective, I think most of us try and hire an AD that you have a lot of confidence in, and some of us get involved in that more than others, I guess. You do the same thing with coaches and you kind of let them do their business.
From a recruiting standpoint, I think it's the coach's decision as to who they're going to recruit and the talent. Where I try and protect a coach, usually it's some booster or major donor calling up that's got a kid that's probably a pretty good player but maybe not to the level we are and wants to see the kid sign and come to Florida State. My job is to let the coach sign who he needs to sign and keep him away from that.
My biggest concern in recruiting right now is juniors and this early recruiting stuff. And it's more from a public relations standpoint. I try and think back to when I was 17 years old, and you had Meyer or Bear Bryant or Vince Dooley or somebody coming around, telling you how wonderful you were, feeding you steak dinners when you were a senior and you knew you were going to go next year. If you started that when I was a junior, man, my head would have been huge, and I'm sure I wouldn't have paid a lot of attention to English and history and math and that kind of thing.
All of a sudden this kid has a great junior year and a great senior year and it's all in the local hometown paper that he's coming to Florida State, well, he hasn't paid any attention to that academic stuff and that 16 credits and all that other, and before you know it, the university has been embarrassed because he can't get in, his parents have been embarrassed, we can't work with him because of the NCAA, we can't send a coach down to help him. That's the biggest problem I see in recruiting.
Back to your other issue, how do you look at it, part of the whole thing with discipline isn't just what you hand out when they break the rule, it's being involved with them day in and day out. I guess everybody does about the same thing in terms of telling them what the rules are and stuff like that. But the most successful programs seem to me to be those programs that have coaches or maybe assistant coaches or trainers or whatever that are constantly involved with those kids. They're talking to them and they're listening to them and they're hearing them in the training room and they're hearing them whenever and they know what those kids are doing. You know, I can go by practice and I don't know all the kids, but I know if a kid comes from a single parent, lived in the projects, mother rode the bus to work at the hospital, and he drives up in a new Bimmer, think about that for a minute. Or he's got a new set of wheels on his Hummer or whatever. Coaches need to start looking.
The people in the athletic department, the trainers, they see all that stuff early, and they know about it and they talk to them, and that's the best way to solve that problem. I think when you hire the right ADs, the right coaches, they hire the right people, most of that stuff will take care of itself.
It's easier for us in maybe like Tallahassee. We're 15 miles from the Georgia border, 15 miles from the gulf, 200 miles from any major city with nothing but pine trees in between. We see those kids pretty well. If you're in LA or Columbus and then the NCAA doesn't let you have athletic dorms, doesn't let you have training tables, they're eating all over the place, you don't get to touch them except when they show up for practice, it really becomes difficult.
The temptations out there are pretty great when you're 18, 19 years old. I'm not sure most of us would be able to resist them, so I would hope and wish that the NCAA would think a little bit more about the ramifications and some of the decisions and then let coaches get more involved with players.
The funniest thing about the Reggie Bush situation and the car is he had a Chevy Impala. He came from a middle class family and they got a house in Mission Valley. It isn't like he was driving a Hummer or a Benz and his parents were living in Del Mar.
First off it wasn't just any impala, it was tricked out and made the cover of a magazine. Second just because you think the house and car are more middle class than OJ's Porche Cayanne, does that make it ok?
ReelBruin,
Yea. It's cool with me. It should be cool with you too unless you want to give back those basketball championships.
Reggie's car was ok, it wasn't as nice as what Matt Barnes rode back in his college days...
If your refering to Sam Gilbert, your forgeting that
he was a huge booster of SC football, as well as Bruin
Basketball.
My point is a tricked out Impala isn't that far fetched considering his family was from the projects. Parents do have the ability to buy things for their kids and I don't think this was to far out of line for his background.
The house they lived in wasn't that lavish as well. Also take into consideration the Real Estate market. Maybe they had a lo to previous equity. Maybe that had a crazy loan. Not far fetched.
I am not saying he didn't get these things. Just saying from an athletic department perspective, it isn't that glaring.
Had to love the slanted LA time for writing an article about OJ's response and interjecting what he was driving at the end. OJ has signed with an agent and can afford a Prosche now, wasn't driving it during the season.
I remember being at ucla in the early 80's and right in front of me was some ucla BB player, Rod Foster driving a brand new Firebird with a personalized license plate that read Rod 10, where did he get the coin for that? My bud who went to ucla said that Darren Daye NEVER attended class, people took his tests for him and he drove a nice car. Don't throw stones bRUINS, they all play the game.
UCLA elitists look down their noses at Mayo because of his impoverished upbringing; to them, just another “thug” from South Central. Go ahead bRUINS; keep putting Mayo and every other kid that’s gone to bed hungry in his place. Keep screaming loudly from your safe white neighborhood isolated from the ghetto, and show the world what you’re all about with your rich @hole players like that Tub of Love and the sons of wealthy foreigners.
Locoweed:
I can only assume you are being sarcastic since UCLA is actually a majority Asian university and white students comprise only a very small minority of the student body.
Another thing, USC is in South LA, not South-Central LA. Look it up on a map.
Dillweed,
UCLA=Upper Crust Licentious Arrogance; you are spewing typical sanctimonious bRUIN blather. Asians are not an underrepresented minority; in fact UGLA is 82% white and Asian; 8% “unknown,” and 3% international. African Americans account for only 3% of the student population and Latinos are just 4%; truly embarrassing for a state university.
BTW Dillon, since you’ve finally discovered we’re not in South-Central LA, feel free to ask all other bRUIN trash to stop calling us the University of South Central.
To correct RB2, the writer on the original story even stated that the Cayenne was owned by a friend of OJs, not hold the Mayo himself. Mayo's a poor kid with an incarerated father from a single mom upbringing with 7 siblings. And, he has denied the allegations from the coke dealer.
The magazine cover came after the NFL draft. BTW Sam Gilbert does tarnish the UCLA basketball program, just wait until the cheating coach Wooden is gone. They say the books are already written.
All this carping between UGLA and SC is pretty funny. Both schools have a tarnished athletic history, and comparing which school is more egregious is a losing battle.
End of story.
Lawyer John,
Very true, but you can't deny the fact that U-C-L-A SUCKS!
Fight On!
Well, Locoweed, you know I usually try to take the rational approach to life's issues, but we are all somewhat inconsistent in our approach to life. For example, I have an old sign I had made up some 20-years ago that I still keep in the trunk of my car, and use for certain situations. That sign reads: BRUINS
SUCK
Aaaah, the truth is finally out.
You morons from $C can never get your arguments straight.
Sometimes UCLA is just a quaint public school and $C is the mighty private school. Other times, UCLA is snobbish and $C represents real middle-class students (give me a break).
Here's the correct answer: UCLA is a public school, with more down-to-earth students and alumni, which relies on public funding, and does better than $C in almost everything, both academic and athletic. On top of that, $C had a 39 year head start, to boot!
Face the truth that you'll always be Second Class in this town.
Gutty little Peter,
That may or may not be, but you can't deny the fact that U-C-L-A SUCKS!
Fight On!
There are very few programs where USC and UCLA both excel--they actually complement each other pretty well. For example, you'd go to USC for film production, but UCLA for film history. UCLA might have more diversity in California students, but at USC I had roommates from every continent except Antarctica.
My experience at USC was that there were two kinds of students: those who could afford it and those who were on huge amounts of financial aid (I received huge amounts of aid). Most of the students I knew at UCLA were significantly better off financially than I was, but I had friends at USC who were so wealthy they really had no concept of money. It always seemed to me that USC had the upper- and lower-class students, while UCLA had the lion's share of middle-class students.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each school. I knew people who had to wait an extra year at UCLA to get the class they needed to graduate, while at USC they taught a class where I was the only student. But, obviously, the cost per class was significantly higher at USC.
Topher