FOOTBALL

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

For the people who think USC is 3 plays from being 7-1. Why was it playing three teams it was better than (Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland) so close that one play could determine the outcome?

Anyone else sick of hearing about the recruiting saga of Julian Lewis?

  • Lincoln Riley said he preferred fruity candy to chocolate in a Big Ten Conference Halloween video. Figures.
  • USC has laid off or closed the departments of 179 workers since May and could have more layoffs. I’m sure these workers fell great knowing more than $100 million is going to be spent on Lincoln Riley’s pet football building.

  • And now for some history:
  • Here is the 1965 UPI All-Coast first team, which featured seven USC players. Chuck Arrobio was a dentist in Pasadena for several decades and was an assistant coach at St. Francis High School.

Tim Rossovich became an actor. Nate Shaw became an assistant coach at USC from 1980-86 and is the uncle of former Stanford coach David Shaw.

Offensive guard John Garamendi of Cal was Lt. Governor of California and is currently a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

  • Imagine a 600-seat theater right across the street from USC at 931 W. Jefferson Blvd. that was reportedly the first movie house in Southern California to employ uniformed ushers and also featured a chef.

It opened as the University Theater in 1913, changed its name to the Realart Theatre in 1922 and in 1935 became the Trojan Theatre.

The Trojan Theatre in 1936
This is an ad from 1947

The theater closed in 1952 because the owner didn’t want to work the box office while an employee went home for Christmas vacation. The site is now part of the USC Village, which does not have any movie theaters.

  • USC held a memorial dance for former football coach Howard Jones in 1947. Jones died in 1941. This was the same year USC started raising money for a 10,000-seat on-campus arena it intended to call “Howard Jones Fieldhouse” but fell way short of the $1 million proposed cost.
Howard Jones Fieldhouse
  • Former USC basketball player Alex Hannum won two NBA titles as a coach with the St. Louis Hawks and Philadelphia Warriors. Here’s a good stat: The only two times Bill Russell did not win an NBA title in 13 years, his Boston Celtic teams were eliminated by Hannum-coach teams.

But during a two week, six-game Eastern road trip in 1942, Hannum gave his teammates a scare. Before USC played Canisius in Buffalo, Hannum suffered a burst appendix and underwent emergency surgery. He was so ill during the attack some members of the team of the program worried his life was in jeopardy.

The surgeon in Buffalo turned out to be a former captain of the basketball team at Canisius.

USC defeated Canisius, 42-25, and went to New York City and defeated Long Island, 48-40, before 15,000 at Madison Square Garden.

Hannum left USC because of World War II but returned and played from 1946-48.

Alex Hannum in 1942

RESTAURANT OF THE WEEK

The Kite Coffee Shop would be across the street from Marks Tennis Stadium and might have been open 24 hours in 1965.

  • Maybe Tom Selleck ate at the coffee shop when he wasn’t selling airline tickets for United.

PICTURE OF THE WEEK

Pamela Tiffin with Robert Wagner and Paul Newman in the 1966 film, Harper.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Teri Garr passed away at age 79 this week. She was in many movies like Young Frankenstein, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Tootsie and Mr. Mom. But did you know she appeared in nine Elvis films?

Here’s some of her appearances:

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

      1. He and Mike Battle once took turns jumping onto a bed of nails in order to see who would give in first. They both seemed a bit eccentric, especially for the 1960s

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  4. So SC’s Alex Hannum and his teams beat Bill Russell’s Celtics 2-times, Boston’s only blemishes in 13 years. The Lakers lost 6 of those and all were agonizing defeats

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  5. — In a way a coach saying “We were one play away from winning” is correct, such as OJ’s 1967 64-yarder. But that is often the difference between football teams, one big play

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  7. What a different time – a UPI “All Coast” team with an O-line that averaged about 219 lbs, and only because one guy was a one-off at 243 lbs. Extraordinary how much football – and USC – has changed since that time.

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  9. Did the Rams get a parade after winning the Super Bowl, did Carrot get a parade after winning championships in 2003 and 2004?– No, because there is no loyalty in L.A. like that of Dodgers’ fans

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  10. –And the Dodgers got to show off their personalities while giving speeches, especially Kiki Hernandez who was an MC for a while and Manager Roberts singing and dancing with Ice Cube

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  11. Scooter,

    “For the people who think USC is 3 plays from being 7-1. Why was it playing three teams it was better than (Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland) so close that one play could determine the outcome?”

    This is what you wrote. Grammatically, it is incorrect. It is a hanging sentence. You should have written,

    “For the people who think USC is 3 plays from being 7-1, then why were they playing three teams whom USC is better (Michigan, Minnesota, and Maryland), so close that one play could have determined the outcome”?

    Scooter,

    Your St. Paul High School, located in Santa Fe Springs, English is showing.

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