FOOTBALL

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

USC flew to Illinois on Thursday. This used to be standard operating procedure for trips of this length but when the Trojans played Purdue two weeks ago, they flew on Friday.

So leaving on Thursday this week was apparently noteworthy.

When did USC leave for Illinois in 1996, the last time it played in Champaign, Ill.? Thursday, of course. They were breaking ground back then too like Lincoln Riley today.

  • Before he became interim president, Beong-Soo Kim was general counsel at USC, the highest-ranking legal official. So did he sign off on breaking USC’s TV contracts by trying to move the USC-Notre Dame game to Netflix?

It’s bad enough that Jen Cohen apparently blessed this maneuver but it would be really depressing if Kim supported it.

  • Colin Cowherd will be at the USC-Illinois because he now lives in Chicago. Expect the appropriate overreaction if the Trojans win.
  • And now for some history:
Michael Landon and Yvonne Lime in 1957
  • I’ve told the story before of how actor Michael Landon went to USC as a javelin thrower on the track and field team.

He was known by his real name, Eugene Orowitz, but here’s a story I just heard Thursday. Landon was a freshman and had long hair, which was unique then.

He believed his long hair gave him strength like Samson.

“I weighed 125 pounds in high school and I was the best javelin thrower in the United States by far,” Landon said. “Well that just doesn’t make sense (that my long hair was the reason). But it does to me because I’d let my hair grow longer and longer and longer.”

It didn’t last long. A group of football players reportedly held him down and shaved his head, which Landon thought robbed him of his strength. In his first meet for USC, Landon injured his shoulder and was out for the season.

He dropped out of USC and worked as a shipping clerk. One day, Orowitz (Landon) and a friend read for a part in a movie along with dozens of actors.

Orowitz got the part in “I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” changed his name to Michael Landon and the rest is history. Landon later starred in “Bonanza,” “Little House on the Prairie” and “Highway to Heaven.”

  • Landon, who was from New Jersey, didn’t possess great grades in high school and Cal sent him to Santa Barbara Junior College. That was when USC athletic dept. employee Dick Bank went to work. Bank said he paid Trojan track team member Bert Purdue $10 to take the USC entrance exam posing as Landon.

WHEN EDESEL GARRISON DOMINATED NOTRE DAME

Edesel Garrison vs. Notre Dame in 1971
  • Here’s a great way to remember Edesel Garrison, when he was the man of the moment at the 1971 USC-Notre Dame game.

The contest was a mismatch on paper. No. 6-ranked Notre Dame had not been scored on in the previous 14 quarters and the Trojans stumbled into South Bend with a 2-4 record (three of the losses were to top 16 teams).

But Garrison was too much for Notre Dame to handle. In the first quarter, Garrison caught a 31-yard touchdown pass from Jimmy Jones to give USC a 7-0 lead.

The Irish quicky tied the game, 7-7, on their next possession but Garrison caught a 24-yard touchdown pass from Mike Rae four plays later to give the Trojans a 14-7 advantage.

On the next possession, Garrison caught a 42-yard pass down to the Notre Dame 4-yard line. Sam Cunningham dived over the goal line for a 1-yard TD and the Trojans led 21-7.

Garrison had three receptions for 97 yards and two touchdowns in the Trojans’ first four possessions.

USC never looked back and won the game, 28-14, to hand the Irish their first loss of the season.

The key was USC decided it would be difficult to run the ball against the Irish defense and made passing a big part of the game plan. Garrison would have put up huge stats if he played today but teams just didn’t pass as much in those days.

USC-ILLINOIS FLASHBACK

Halfback Willie Brown gains yardage during USC’s 28-16 victory over Illinois at Memorial Stadium 1962.

In the photo below, halfback Ron Heller tests the Illini defense.

CROSSTOWN RIVALS

  • USC graduate John Ritter pulls a gun on former UCLA basketball player Mike Connors during a 1975 episode of “Mannix.” But the real news is this scene takes place in the Brady Bunch living room.

Where is the famous vase Peter Brady broke with his basketball? At least three episodes of Mannix used the Brady Bunch house for filming.

  • Actress Patricia Crowley died last week just three days before her 92nd birthday. You might remember her from the TV show, “Please Don’t Eat The Daisies.”

Crowley’s first husband was former USC baseball player-turned-super agent Ed Hookstratten. Among Hookstratten’s clients were Elvis Presley, Johnny Carson, Vin Scully, Tom Brokaw, Dick Enberg, Tom Snyder, Don Meredith, Marcus Allen, Pat Riley, John Robinson, Chuck Knox, George Allen and Bryant Gumbel.

Hookstratten also chaired fundraising on Dedeaux Field in 1971. I wonder what he would have thought about the tearing down of Dedeaux Field. Or the fact USC is still $50 million shy on the project.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Here is the 1971 USC-Notre Dame game I wrote about. Jimmy Jones and Mike Rae alternated series at QB. Rae also handled kicking duties along with All-American linebacker Willie Hall.

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Britt Ekland

25 thoughts on “If It’s Friday, It’s Time For A USC Notes Coliseum”

  1. DON: While promoting her new book, 107 Days, Kamala Harris sat down with the “House Guest” podcast to reminisce about her disastrous 2024 presidential campaign. Naturally, she wanted to highlight just how much the people allegedly adored her. But instead of recounting an anecdote that might actually make her look good, she went with some weird story about how adoring supporters at her rallies would literally pass babies through packed crowds — hand to hand, like some kind of bizarre political relay — so that Kamala could pose for a photo with the child. 

    “You know, one of my favorite things to see, and it would always happen spontaneously, um, at our rallies, and thousands of people would come,” Harris said. “And there, it would happen is, invariably, somebody would want me to take a picture or to hug their child.”

    Kamala went on to explain that parents would hand their children over to strangers in the crowd so they could be passed to her and then returned safely. “Someone in the back would hand that baby over, through the crowd… of people who would hold… and care, but pass the baby. And then pass the baby back,” she said.

    While Kamala described the practice as “magical” and emotionally moving, the imagery is, at the very least, bizarre: passing infants along a chain of strangers like packages in a game of human hot potato. “The parent trusted the stranger that was next to them, who trusted the next person, and all of them as though it was their own child. There was something so magical, in many ways, about that,” she said.

    KAM:Does anyone really believe this? Can you picture parents willingly circulating their infants through sweltering throngs of strangers, trusting them to hoist them like a concert crowd surfer just to grab a photo op with me?

    I make things up, just like Cowardly Gabby. It’s a Democrat thang.

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      1. We’ve never been Stanford, in terms of holding our athletes to the same academic & intellectual standards as regular students. That incident was a great example of that.

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      2. KAM: Steven Sample, Max Nikias and Carol Folt have transformed USC into The Stanford of the West.

        DON: I remember LUKE ScKYWALKER used to call USC that back in the Pete Carroll era on this blog.

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  5. Football players shaved his head?! What a bunch of f***ing a-holes.

    You see, college kids have been terrorizing Jew kids for decades!

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    1. Yep. Especially the stuff about that 1971 Notre Dame game. I remember McKay saying afterward on the radio, “The way to beat ’em is to bomb ’em early.”

      R.I.P. Edesel

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      1. And loved the trivia about Mannix using the Brady Bunch living room.

        DON: Especially since Mr. Brady moonlighted as a LAPD Lieutenant on Mannix!

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  7. That Edesel (not Edsel) 1971 Notre Dame game was the forerunner of the 1972 game when the national champion Trojans with Anthony Davis scoring on 2 kickoffs stomped ND

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  8. The SC bullies who scalped Landon probably didn’t like Michael’s movie star looks, as in “Who does he think he is?”

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  9.  Sinclair Broadcast Group is bringing Kimmel back to its ABC affiliate stations on Friday night

    fake gabby and trump hardest hit

    laughing my a s s off

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    1. KAM: Laughing my a s s off at Cowardly Gabby’s horrible week of a booming economy and Cowardly Gabby forced to watch President Trump today at the Ryder Cup!

      DON: And now we discover:

      States are issuing CDL’s to people who are in our country illegally

      – Thousands of licenses issued that should never have been issued

      – Governor Mimbo’s Alta Kalifornia is the WORST offender

      – eligibility requirements are a joke

      – states are not following procedure

      Effective immediately, the eligibility for non-domiciled CDLs is completely overhauled. Thank you Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for making our roads safe again after 4 years of highway terror and incompetence from the Mayor Pete/Senile Joe Regime!

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  10. I always thought that Michael Landon was a stud track star at USC. A Southern California kid who set some records in the javelin. Graduated and went on to become a movie star. I now find out his real name was Eugene Orowitz. Grew up in New Jersey. Only weighed 125 lbs. A wimpy looking guy. Too stupid to pass the USC entrance exam. Was punked and had his head shaved and dropped out of school. Not my imagine of the Little Joe Bonanza character who won all the fights and got the best looking girls. Oh well, I always thought Hoss was more entertaining.

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      2. KAM: What’s even more hilarious is my new book where I pretend I didn’t notice that Biden was senile since the days I ran against him in the primaries in 2020.

        DON: How could you hide all the stories of Senile Joe’s stench and sound effects as he waddled around the White House wearing his Depends and how you had to lead him to and from the podium and introduce him to cabinet members and lead him like a child to meetings where he would stand there like John Gill in the Classic Star Trek episode?https://x.com/OllieMathews14/status/1970263646446969064lol

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