FOOTBALL

USC Sunday Buzz: The Speculation Fell Flat

There are still people who fall for former USC assistant coach Donte Williams being mentioned for head-coaching jobs.

His name got tossed out by the media for the San Jose State job. Then Pete Thamel of ESPN reported San Jose State athletic director Jeff Konya wanted someone with head-coaching experience (of course) and was targeting former Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo.

This wasn’t as bad as last year when some media insisted Williams was a strong candidate for the UNLV job. The Rebels proceeded to hire a real coach (Barry Odom), who went 9-5.

This isn’t to say there won’t one day be an AD dumb enough to make Williams a head coach, just that none of this current speculation is based on anything legitimate.

  • A lot of people are picking their favorite Sports Illustrated covers with the publisher announcing mass layoffs.

So here is my favorite USC cover and it’s a unique choice. A beautiful shot by Hy Peskin for the March 19, 1962 edition of the USC-UCLA basketball game featuring UCLA’s Gary Cunningham (55) and John Green (45) along with USC’s all-time leading scorer for more than 20 years, forward John Rudometkin (44).

Why did I pick this cover over some much better-known football covers? Because it is so rare to find high quality color pictures of USC basketball during this era; because the Trojan uniform is strikingly gorgeous and the jam-packed Sports Arena was one of the nation’s best arenas at the time in just its third year of existence.

22 thoughts on “USC Sunday Buzz: The Speculation Fell Flat”

  1. Anyone else think Jen Cohen is looking around for a new men’s basketball coach right now ?

    Nice uni’s for USC, they are better looking that the ones these days, notice all the black players back then ?

    Here’s some trivia that Wolf missed about that cover. USC beat ucla on the 16th and lost on the 17th, OF FEBRUARY ! Why did they wait until March to put the game on the cover ? Here’s more trivia, BOTH games were played at the Sports Arena.

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    2. Weird how USC turned the tide in football when UCLA turned the tide in men’s hoops. I remember going to my next door neighbor the UCLA fan’s house and usually listening on the radio or sometimes even watching SC beat UCLA in football and then that winter listening or watching with him as UCLA would beat USC in basketball. It was a rare event for them to show a game live back then . Then if it was a day game we would go out after and play one on one basketball on his hoop attached above the garage. USC had some great players and teams then under Bob Boyd. Remember John Block, Bill Hewitt, Mack Calvin , Dana Pagett, Paul Westphal, Mo Layton, Ron Riley, Joe Mackey and Gus Williams and the magical 70-71 season where SC went 24-2 with two heartbreaking losses to UCLA? I remember both the basketball games in 71 being televised and watching them at his house because it was #1 vs #2 in the nation that year.

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  3. Few black athletes back then due to a tradition of ‘prejudice,’ but once barriers came down blacks took over at least in part because they are usually faster than whites

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  4. My favorite SI cover was from 1978 with Charles White on the cover. the Caption read “Rolling Back the Tide / USC’s Charles White runs wild”.

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    2. Not sure if Sports illustrated covered the 1970 SC-Alabama game but that contest changed the Crimson Tide forever and in 1971 Bear Bryant had his first of many black players

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  5. My all time favorite SI cover was when the US beat the USSR in hockey in 1980 at the Olympics, it’s the only SI cover not have a caption on it, it didn’t need one.

    The US amateur’s beating the Russian pro’s is still the greatest upset in the history of sports.

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      1. Thanks Gabby! One of the greatest games in any sport I’ve ever watched, right up there with 1967 USC 21 UCLA 20 and the 1974 USC 55-24 comeback on ND…

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    1. Not even close. For shits sake, Russia had grown men playing college kids who came from various colleges to form a team and were probably together 2 months, the Russians had been together for years. About 2 weeks before the Olympics, the Russians beat the US 9-3 at Madison Square Garden, the final score could have been 19-3, that’s how dominant the Russians were. These same Russians would tour the US and play various NHL teams and beat them.

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      1. The U.S. team was made up of amateurs with an asterisk attached.
        For example, Ken Morrow was a New York Islander recruit who after winning the gold in 1980 later that same year won a Stanley Cup with the professional team

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      2. No shit, others were also property of pro teams, but they weren’t pros because they hadn’t signed a contract yet and they had not played together for long, but keep trying.

        Ken Morrow, aka Wolfman, also scored an OT goal in game 3 against the Kings in 1980, I was there.

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  7. If an athletic director is dumb enough to hire Clay Helton the clipboard holder, and another athletic director dumb enough to extend his contract. Then it’s possible for Donte Williams to get a head coaching position. He’s still young, and has room to learn, so you never know. University’s across the country are full of dumb athletic directors, but nobody has a longer history of hiring them then USC , Mike Bohn being the latest .

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  8. Rudy is/was my all time favorite,as I attended many of his games or listened to Chick Hearn tell of his great moves on the radio…Forrest Twogood had some good years with this transfer from Hancock JC.

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