From TributeToTroy

The successful John Robinson, who had coached USC to three Rose Bowl wins and the 1978 national championship, was replaced by Ted Tollner, who had joined the USC staff in 1982 as offensive coordinator. However, although nobody knew it then, it wouldn’t be the last time Trojan fans saw Robinson.

Tollner’s first season wasn’t auspicious as the Trojans slumped to a 4-6-1 record, the first losing season in 22 years. Their 27-6 loss to Notre Dame was the start of a frustrating streak—13 consecutive years without a win over the Irish. Center Tony Slaton was an All-American in 1983.

The Trojans rebounded in 1984, winning seven straight Pac-10 games and clinching the Rose Bowl bid a week before the end of the conference season with a 16-7 victory over Washington.

Tollner had a defensive team featuring All-American linebackers Jack Del Rio and Duane Bickett, while a fiery JC transfer, quarterback Tim Green, who replaced injured Sean Salisbury, provided leadership on offense. The Trojans had a letdown after beating Washington, losing to UCLA and Notre Dame. But Tollner’s team regrouped to beat Ohio State, 20-17, in the 1985 Rose Bowl for a 9-3 record.

Although USC was favored to repeat as conference champs in 1985, the Trojans had a 6-6 season, ultimately losing to Alabama, 24-3 in the Aloha Bowl.

The Trojans started fast in 1986, winning their first four games. Then, USC was upset by Washington State, 34-14, and lost to Arizona State, 29-20, before winning three straight conference games. But the Trojans finished on a sour note, losing to UCLA, 45-25, and Notre Dame, 38-37. Tollner was then fired, the first USC coach to be terminated since Jeff Cravath in 1950.

Tollner’s four-year record was 26-20-1.

Tollner was a lame duck when USC lost to Auburn, 16-7, in the 1987 Citrus Bowl that concluded a 7-5 season. Offensive guard Jeff Bregel and safety Tim McDonald, All-Americans in 1985, did so again in 1986.

A day following the January 1 Citrus Bowl, Arizona coach Larry Smith was named as Tollner’s replacement. Smith had revived Arizona’s program in his seven years there, winning 70% of his games in his last four seasons. He also coached Arizona to a startling upset over No.1 ranked USC in 1980 and had beaten rival Arizona State five straight times.

The Trojans had a roller coaster season in 1987, Smith’s first year as coach. Michigan State beat USC, 27-13, at East Lansing in the opener and Oregon upset USC, 34-27, at Eugene at midseason to imperil USC’s Rose Bowl aspirations. But the Trojans rebounded to beat Washington, 37-23, at Seattle when a loss would have meant virtual elimination from the Rose Bowl race. The Trojans kept winning behind quarterback Rodney Peete, who was to break every meaningful USC passing record, and tailback Steven Webster, a 1,000-yard rusher.

As it has so many times in the past, the Rose Bowl deciding game paired the Trojans against the Bruins. But USC, an 8 1/2 point underdog, prevailed, 17-13, getting the winning touchdown on Peete’s 33-yard pass to receiver Erik Affholter, who juggled the ball in the corner of the end zone.

Peete provided the play of the game late in the first half, when he ran down UCLA’s Eric Turner, who had intercepted Peete’s pass and was apparently headed for a TD that would have provided UCLA with a 17-0 halftime lead.

USC was back in the 1988 Rose Bowl only to lose to Michigan State again, 20-17. Offensive lineman Dave Cadigan was selected an All American.

The 1988 campaign began in glorious fashion for the Trojans. USC was celebrating its athletic centennial and the football team did its part, starting off 10-0 and rising to No. 2 in the rankings. With its second consecutive Rose Bowl berth clinched by virtue of a 31-22 win over UCLA (Peete was hospitalized all week with the measles, but came off his sickbed to lead Troy to victory), the undefeated Trojans hosted top-ranked Notre Dame. But the Irish prevailed, 27-10, and USC couldn’t recover in the 1989 Rose Bowl, falling to Michigan, 22-14, as Smith lost to his former boss, Bo Schembechler (who he served under at Miami of Ohio and Michigan).

Peete, who finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting and set a USC season and career passing records, was an All-American, along with Affholter, safeties Mark Carrier and Cleveland Colter and defensive tackle Tim Ryan.

USC’s 1989 season was supposed to open in historic fashion—against Illinois in the Glasnost Bowl in Moscow of the Soviet Union, but those plans had to be scratched because of contractual difficulties with the game’s organizers (the game was played in the Coliseum and the Illini won, 14-13).

The Trojans then won eight of their next nine games, including a dramatic 18-17 comeback win at Washington State when freshman quarterback Todd Marinovich—whose father, Marv, captained the 1962 USC squad and whose uncle, Craig Fertig, was USC’s 1964 captain—passed USC 91 yards down the field in 18 plays at game’s end. Troy’s only loss during that span was 28-24 at Notre Dame (USC also tied UCLA, 10-10). USC, which finished 9-2-1, made it to the Rose Bowl for the third year in a row and the third time was the charm for Smith as he beat No. 3 Michigan, 17-10, in Schembechler’s last game as Wolverine coach. Tailback Ricky Ervins, who rushed for 1,395 yards in 1989, ran 14 yards for the game-winning TD with 1:10 to play to earn Rose Bowl MVP honors.

Carrier and Ryan repeated as All-Americans in 1989 (Carrier also won the Thorpe Award as the nation’s top defensive back), while linebacker Junior Seau and offensive guard Mark Tucker also won All-American acclaim.

USC’s Rose Bowl streak ended in 1990, although the 8-4-1 Trojans did play in a bowl that season, narrowly losing to Michigan State (17-16) in the 1990 John Hancock Bowl. The season’s highlight was the UCLA game, the highest-scoring and perhaps most thrilling game in the storied crosstown rivalry. The game, won by USC, 45-42, featured a 42-point fourth quarter with four lead changes, capped by Marinovich’s 23-yard game-winning pass to Johnnie Morton with 16 seconds to go. Linebacker Scott Ross was a 1990 All-American and tailback Mazio Royster rushed for 1,168 yards.

The Hancock Bowl loss—marked by a sideline shouting match between the stern disciplinarian Smith and the free-spirited sophomore Marinovich, who soon after left for the NFL—signaled the beginning of the end for Smith’s tenure at USC. Things quickly unraveled in 1991, as the Trojans were upset in their home opener by unheralded Memphis State, 24-10. Although USC upset No. 5 Penn State the following game, 21-10, Troy had a difficult year.

The Trojans were 3-8, ending the season with six consecutive losses—including the first of an embarrassing eight in a row to UCLA—and no bowl trip.

Smith’s 1992 season started decently. Despite a tie with San Diego State in the opener and a close 17-10 road loss to top-ranked Washington, USC regrouped to win four in a row, but then disaster struck as the Trojans lost four of their last five, including 38-37 to UCLA when a potential game-winning 2-point conversion pass with 41 seconds to go fell incomplete (Troy had a 14-point fourth quarter lead) and 24-7 to upstart Fresno State in the 1992 Freedom Bowl.

USC, fielding its 100th football team, finished 6-5-1, despite featuring a pair of All-Americans in electrifying wide receiver/return specialist Curtis Conway (who set the school’s career kickoff return record) and offensive tackle Tony Boselli. So, just three seasons after directing the Trojans to three straight Rose Bowls, Smith was fired...and a familiar face returned to Troy.

After a successful nine-year run coaching the Rams, in which he made the playoffs six times, and then a year off spent as a television analyst, John Robinson returned to USC in 1993 in hopes of restoring the football program’s past glory.

He had an immediate impact, as his first team tied for first place in the Pac-10 (UCLA received the Rose Bowl bid because it beat the Trojans, 27-21). Like in his first stint at Troy, Robinson lost his opener (31-9 to North Carolina). He then lost three road games to Top 15-ranked teams (Penn State on a failed two-point conversion attempt at game’s end, Arizona and Notre Dame), but the 8-5 Trojans did beat Washington in Seattle to end the Huskies’ 17-game home winning streak and they prevailed over Utah in the 1993 Freedom Bowl, 28-21.

USC almost made it to the Rose Bowl, but for an intercepted 3-yard pass in the end zone with 56 seconds to play to preserve UCLA’s 27-21 victory. His team featured Johnnie Morton, an All-American who set USC’s career receiving record with 201 catches, plus quarterback Rob Johnson (whose 3,630 passing yards was a Trojan season record) and fearsome linebacker Willie McGinest. USC played in the new-look Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where a $15-million renovation included the removal of the running track and the lowering of the field.

The 1994 season saw the return of another familiar face to USC when one-time ballboy Keyshawn Johnson transferred from a junior college. Johnson, a big, speedy receiver, was brash, loquacious and had a magnetic personality. The Trojans began 2-2, then strung together five wins in a row.

Although USC lost again to UCLA, its 10-10 tie with Notre Dame did dent a long drought to the Irish (Notre Dame had won the previous 11 games).

USC made a statement in the 1995 Cotton Bowl with its 55-14 win over Texas Tech to finish 8-3-1, and Johnson also stood out in that game as he caught eight passes for 222 yards with three touchdowns (the yardage and TDs were Cotton Bowl records). Boselli, hampered by a knee injury in 1993, earned All-American honors again.

Amazingly, USC was able to play its games that year in the Coliseum even though the grand stadium was severely damaged in an earthquake in January of 1994 and had to undergo $93 million of repairs.

Robinson got his next team back to the Rose Bowl. The 1995 Trojans started off 6-0, then lost at Notre Dame and tied Washington in Seattle, 21-21 (Troy scored 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter). Because of a better overall record than the Huskies, USC got the 1996 Rose Bowl bid where it defeated No. 3 Northwestern, 41-32, a Cinderella team making its first Pasadena visit since 1949. Johnson finished his brief USC career as the Rose Bowl MVP, grabbing 12 passes for a game-record 216 yards with a TD.

His 102 catches that season were a school record and he ended up second on USC’s career receiving list before becoming the No. 1 pick in the 1996 NFL draft. Tailback Delon Washington rushed for 1,109 yards for the 9-2-1 Trojans.

Although USC wound up 13th in the final 1994 AP poll and 12th in 1995, that 1995 campaign was the peak of Robinson’s second stint guiding USC. He couldn’t take USC any higher; in fact, his Trojans leveled out the next two years.

In 1996, Troy went 6-6, losing a pair of heartbreakers—both in two overtime periods (the NCAA instituted the tiebreaker beginning with the 1995 bowl contests). First, USC lost at Arizona State, 48-35, then fell to UCLA, 48-41, as the Bruins erased a 17-point deficit in the final 6:12 of the fourth quarter. The bright spot of the season was a 27-20 season-ending overtime win over Notre Dame in the Coliseum, breaking USC’s 13-game non-winning streak to the Irish.

In 1997, for the second year in a row, USC didn’t play in a bowl. However, the 6-5 Trojans did post their second straight win over Notre Dame, this time 20-17 on Adam Abrams’ 37-yard field goal with 1:05 to play to give USC its first victory in South Bend since 1981. USC’s 23-0 win at Oregon State was not shown on television, ending USC’s streak of 111 consecutive live telecasts. Defensive tackle Darrell Russell earned All-American honors.

Robinson, whose last two teams went 1-6 against Top 25-ranked opponents, was fired after the 1997 season.

His replacement was someone familiar with USC and its tradition of success: Paul Hackett. Hackett had been an assistant under Robinson from 1976 to 1980 and was on the Trojan staff during the 1978 national championship season. He then made his mark in the NFL as a quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator with four teams, including the 1984 Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers. In his career, he had tutored the likes Joe Montana, Marcus Allen, Jerry Rice, Tony Dorsett, Charles White, Herschel Walker and Danny White.

Hackett got off to a good start, winning his 1998 opener (27-17 over Purdue) to become the first Trojan head coach to win his debut since Jess Hill in 1951. USC went 8-5, shut out Notre Dame, 10-0 (the Irish’s first shutout since 1987), and played in the 1998 Sun Bowl. Chris Claiborne was an All-American and became USC’s first winner of the Butkus Award as the nation’s top linebacker.

The 1998 season also had a sad note to it, as 91-year-old “Super Fan” Giles Pellerin died at the UCLA game while viewing his 797th consecutive Trojan game, home and away. His streak dated to 1926; he had seen every USC-UCLA and USC-Notre Dame game ever played before his passing.

USC looked like it was going to take another step up in 1999, starting off 2-0. But quarterback Carson Palmer broke his collarbone in the third game and was sidelined for the season, and Troy dropped six of its next seven contests (the win was at home against Oregon State, USC's 1,000th game).

Although they missed out on a bowl, the 6-6 Trojans rebounded by winning their last three games, including 17-7 over UCLA to snap an eight-game losing streak to the Bruins. All six of USC’s losses were by 10 points or less. Tailback Chad Morton rushed for 1,141 yards.

Things didn't improve in 2000, as the new millennium unfolded. Although USC began 3-0 and climbed to No. 8 in the AP poll, it lost the next 5 games. Despite beating UCLA on David Bell's dramatic field goal with 9 seconds to play, the Trojans finished 5-7 overall and out of a bowl for the second consecutive year. Their 2-6 mark in the Pac-10 left them with their first-ever last place finish in conference play. Hackett was fired after the season.

TROJAN TIMELINE

• Early Years (1888-1924)
• Thundering Herd (1925-1940)
• Forties & Fifties (1941-1959)
• Glory Years, Part I (1960-1975)
• Glory Years, Part II (1976-1982)
• Wilderness Years (1983-2001)
• Return to Glory (2002-present)