USC Runs The Safe Route

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// USC Runs The Safe Route

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By Kevin Patra ⋅ June 23, 2009
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Don’t you wish you had a gaggle of reporters following your every move? Then they could explain to all your friends why you decided to date your girlfriend.

None of the hot girls fancied him much. He’s not rich, thin, gangling, and not very smooth. He didn’t really have a shot at landing a supermodel. But he landed someone that fits his personality. She’s smart, has a good sense of humor, doesn’t have a big rack but that’s not a big deal for him.

USC’s hire of Kevin O’Neill is like dating your kindergarten teacher.

Let’s be honest, like 90 percent of guys trying to land models, it wasn’t happening. The Jamie Dixons and Jeff Van Gundys weren’t going to step foot on USC’s campus.

If someone said they were sure a tornado would pass through an open field soon would you build your house on it? Hell no, not if you already have a pretty sturdy one built someone nice.

And if you don’t have a nice house to take the supermodel back to, she isn’t going. So like Average Joe college student, AD Mike Garrett could court all the big names he wanted, there was no chance he was getting any of them in the sack.

Alas, like a frat guy at the end of the night, he took the best looking girl not laying her own puke.

Now where have I heard this one before? Hmmm. Big time football school gets broiled in basketball scandal, loses a fairly successful coach and hires one who was best known for his recruiting skills….hhhmmm. I swear I’ve heard this story before…

Ohhhh right, this happened that Michigan school. Remember: Chris Webber, paid athletes, Steve Fisher half-ousted/half-slunk away before shit hit the fan, replacement Brian Ellerbe was known as a great recruiter at Loyola College in Maryland.

OK, OK, so O’Neill won’t be as bad as Ellerbe (although if he accomplished as much as Ellerbe did in his first season–Conference Tournament Championship–the Galen Center might spontaneously combust). But OJ Mayo wasn’t Chris Webber and USC basketball isn’t Michigan basketball, which is to say that the fall wasn’t as far, but the climb back up might be just tough, or tougher.

If you were a top high school basketball prospect why would you want to play basketball at USC?

The school priorities its sports: Football, Football, Football, Football, Football, Title IX, Football, Basketball, Football. So you will be playing eighth fiddle in a sparsely filled stadium There is a chance you won’t be able to play in the NCAA Tournament for their first couple of years. Last you heard NBA-type college players (Chase Budinger and Jerryd Bayless) didn’t like the new coach very much, and NBA players (Jalen Rose/Morris Peterson) didn’t show much affection for him when he coached Toronto. You could go up to Westwood and play for a proven winner, Ben Howland who just happened to have two former players win championship rings. Or hey, you could even go play for Obama’s brother-in-law at Oregon State and maybe the President will come to one of your games.

Tell me again anyone wanted to coach basketball at USC?

Oh, right, damaged goods.

O’Neill has never been anyone’s No. 1 choice. He’s been passed up, passed on, probably even passed out on. He’s known as an intense, chalkboard breaking coach. He grinds his players to get the most out of them.

O’Neill needed USC just as much as it needs him. He needed a program where he can be himself without being a fire cooked gaze glaring at him. The enormous shadow cast by Pete Carroll and his team in the Coliseum should cool the coals for O’Neill. He has little or no expectations. If the program takes a while to turn around, oh well, who outside of the locker room will really care-considering no one did when they “won” with Tim Floyd-as long as the football team does well.

But don’t expect the five-star recruits anymore. They don’t play for chalk grinders, not unless there is an underlying tradition that supplements for a crazy coach. USC doesn’t have that basketball tradition, and O’Neill isn’t that coach. At least in his first couple years he will recruit system players who will do what he asks, and will probably lose a lot of games. Like any business model that is broke, O’Neill and USC have to reinvent their brand and how they approach building a team under the swirling NCAA sanctioning tornado.

O’Neill’s hire was an admission by Garrett that not only could he not get the supermodel, it probably not in his best interest.

His best bet was to date the high-strung, caffeine-guzzling, pantsuit-wearing schoolteacher. She might not provide abundant titillation but can provide stability and companionship.

And if all goes well after a few years of sanction dating, it might be a relationship the university will want to put a ring on.

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Kevin Patra lives by the adage: Those who can’t do, write. Currently, he is a graduate student at the University of Southern California studying Online Journalism, after spending four years at the University of Michigan obtaining a bachelors degree from the school of Language, Science & Fun. Patra still owns a teal Grant Hill jersey and is looking for his old FILA basketball shoes.