FOOTBALL

If It’s Friday, It’s Time For A USC Notes Column

I wrote earlier this week about players who developed after they left USC. Well, former USC wide receiver Mario Williams is just 60 yards shy of becoming Tulane’s first 1,000-yard receiver since 2013.

That’s an indictment of Lincoln Riley and wide receivers coach Dennis Simmons. Again.

  • Duce Robinson is visiting Florida State today.
  • Is Jen Cohen ever going to get the Hall of Fame going again? USC has not inducted a Hall of Fame class since 2018.
  • Here is the tweet USC defensive line coach Eric Henderson deleted attacking a reporter. It’s an amazing amount of unprofessionalism for a member of Lincoln Riley’s staff.

I really wish guys like Riley and Coach Henny were in New York or Philadelphia and had to deal with media who have teeth.

  • And now for some history:
  • Who is this? None other than Marv Goux back in his playing days as a USC lineman. Goux played center at least one season.
  • No one remembers who George Levinson is today. But he was an important figure to USC coaches like Howard Jones, Sam Barry, Jeff Cravath, Jess Hill and maybe more.

Before the days when teams filmed opponents, scouts were important and Levinson, who lived in Chicago, was a USC super scout. He would go to games to watch USC opponents.

In 1939, he attended a Tennessee-Auburn game on Dec. 9 because USC played the Volunteers in the 1940 Rose Bowl.

In 1954, he went to Notre Dame games against North Carolina, Penn, Michigan State and Iowa to scout the Irish.

“He’s always given us a good line on what to expect,” Hill said. “We’ve been outmanned against Notre Dame but never surprised.”

  • In the 1950’s, Manual Arts High School had a running back named Grant Gridiron. I am not making this up.

A DIFFERENT WORLD

  • It must have been nice back in the day for USC to play a road game and not immediately board a chartered flight back home. When USC played Notre Dame in 1954, Jess Hill let the Trojans spend Saturday night in Chicago.
  • I bet Hill gave his players the night off in New York City after they defeated Army, 28-6, at Yankee Stadium in 1951. Meanwhile, Hill met with the New York Alumni Club at the famed Stork Club that night.
  • Bruce Springsteen gave a free concert to USC students in 1982? What’s this? How come I never wrote about it before?

For decades, the staffs of the Daily Trojan and Daily Bruin would produce a fake issue of the rival paper. It looked exactly like the real paper but the stories were all fake. Early Friday morning, the day before the USC-UCLA game, the staffs would sneak on their rival campus and deliver the fake papers while removing the real ones.

I participated in the early morning raid at UCLA myself as a student.

How many USC students initially fell for the Springsteen story?

The Daily Trojan started the tradition in 1958. Eventually, the fake issues were suspended, if I recall correctly, because they became too vulgar.

VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

This song features features incomparable vocals (Cass Elliott); music by five-time Academy Award winner John Barry (he also did 11 James Bond films) and an unforgettable actor (Lee Marvin). It’s “The Good Times Are Coming” from the underrated Western, “Monte Walsh.”

Speaking of imcomparable vocals, here is Queen with a live performance of “Somebody to Love” in 1981.

32 thoughts on “If It’s Friday, It’s Time For A USC Notes Column”

  4. Rita Moreno was SMOKING hot!

    I only recently realize that she, Morgan Freeman and Bill Cosby were on The Electric Company. I had always thought Chunk started that “Hey, you guys!!” scream in “The Goonies”. But nope! It was Rita on The Electric Company.

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  7. KAM: Kahlil Gibran once wrote, “Work is love made visible”

    DON: Well, I wouldn’t go that far– Some work is ‘hard work’ or as Ronald Reagan said, “They say hard work never hurt anybody, but I figure why take the chance”

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  8. KAM: This time of year people get to talking about God and heaven

    DON: My view of heaven is like when discussing whether president Teddy Roosevelt went to heaven, the response was “He will if he wants to’

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  9. Of all women, actresses must suffer the most as they gradually lose their youthful beauty that helped them become movie sensations

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      1. Yes, it is funny that the people who voted for it were too stupid to notice that Joe was never running the country and admitted it on several occasions throughout his term!!

        WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER.

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  10. yet another virtuoso performance, wolfman! The Dummies of Southern Cal definitely don’t deserve the top beat writer in the nation given their failing academics and sports programs!

    for the last time come over to UCLA and cover a real school commensurate with your talents. Southern Cal doesn’t even appreciate their own student sports writers much less their illustrious alumni.

    #DontForgetTheCadreParties

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      1. You mugs don’t know how good you have it with an institution like the Wolfman gracing your blog with his dulcet prose…the LA Sports Pantheon has Murray, Mud, Healy, and Wolf. If the trOXans had any common sense, they would erect a statue of the Wolfman on campus.

        #ImpressiveErection

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  13. Scooter,

    SC women’s basketball team plays Connecticut tomorrow at 5 pm. Men play on Sunday at 1 pm.

    With SC’s football team being run into the ground by Riley, maybe you should concentrate on basketball and baseball.

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  14. Attended the ‘3rd Annual LA Bowl’ at SOFI Wednesday evening hosted by ‘Gronk’. Seats were in the south end zone. Two years ago it was 35 yd line lower level of upper deck – east side. Architecturally the stadium is stunning but once one gets inside it is jarring the contrasting – levels, concourses, stairwells – not aligning. It is bizarre at best as if Dr. Seuss was tasked to design the seating. The most glaring sight is how far one descends from the north entrance – a rather narrow steep escalator with complimenting stairs takes you to the main concourse but then only the east side allows one to walk to the opposite side of the stadium, In addition there are sets of stairs to ascend/descend to continue either way. There is a sense of the frightening difficulty were a need to evacuate the stadium pop up – further down you are the more challenging it is to ‘leave’ i.e. no clear signage let alone visibility on how one navigates leaving.

    All levels have a narrow bank of illuminated advertising that changes every 5 – 10 seconds further distracting the fan esp in the end zone. The rapid fire ‘blinking’ seems like a lawsuit for an epileptic episode waiting to happen. It is very difficult knowing what yard line the ball is on also the score – I mean difficult. Finally the game clock – digital – opposite field level end zones the numerals are big enough but the problem is anyone can ‘wander’ in front of it blocking seeing the digits.

    Beautiful exterior but a real mess inside…..then there’s the parking…..

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  16. The fake issue my freshman year in 85 was awesome – right after Traditions had opened it was reported a vote was taken on a campus pub with UCLA faculty and they decided instead on a milk bar named Bearly Milking It. Funny stuff and a great tradition that no longer exists, another small diminishment of the memories and love that used to wash over me when I returned to campus.

    Bucket – great to see you back. Wit has been sorely missing on this blog. Hopefully Helen will make an appearance soon.

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