Coach Larry Smith Passes

by Paragon SC on Jan 28, 2008 3:24 PM PST in News Comment 11 comments

From ESPN:

Larry Smith, who led USC to Rose Bowl appearances in his first three seasons coaching the Trojans, has died. He was 68.

Smith died Monday following a lengthy illness, two newspapers reported. Smith had been diagnosed with leukemia, the Tucson Citizen and the Arizona Daily Star reported on their Web sites. He died at a Tucson hospital.

Smith also coached at Tulane, Arizona and Missouri and had a 143-126-7 record. His teams appeared in 10 bowl games in which he was 3-6-1.

Regardless of how his tenure ended it is always tragic when there is a loss of life.

Rest in Peace Coach.

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RIP coach Smith

He was the coach when I was a student at USC. I had a chance to meet, and chat with him on several occasions. He and his staff set a good example for the team and the student body of USC. He would frustrate me at times by running it up the middle on 3rd and long, but he was a class act on and off the field in the end. It was sad that he had to leave after some frustrating losses in the Freedom Bowl of all things, but winning is overall the standard which all coaches are eventually measured. My thoughts and prayers are with Coach Smith and his family. Fight On! Larry Smith, and thanks again.

by frak on Jan 28, 2008 4:25 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

True enough

It's peculiar human ingratitude that the first thing I remember about Smith is being slack-jawed after that Freedom Bowl loss, because in the wake of the team quitting on the field, Smith was shown on the news saying that "tradition doesn't matter." I knew that he meant "tradition guarantees nothing," but good lord that's the sort of thing you only say when you know you're on the way out.

But I also remember sunny afternoons in the Coliseum watching games like SC crushing the Sooners in '88, which were a part of why I got attached to Trojan football in the first place. He always put teams on the field who were competitive even when they weren't the most talented, and who acted like they'd been there before.

As Frak said, in how Smith handled his departure and refusal to get into mud-slinging after the fact, he showed what he was made of.

I'm sorry he wasn't able to spend more time with his family - 68 isn't so old, these days. Rest in peace, coach.

by DC Trojan on Jan 28, 2008 6:37 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

Didn't like how he led the TrOJans

to victories over us in '87 and '88, but he always seemed like a good guy and he had the cojones to go for 2 in the Barnes-burner at the end when a tie was still an option. Gotta respect his abilities and best wishes to his family and friends on his passing.

by ucladj89 on Jan 29, 2008 6:46 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

Coach Smith was a legend in the Bay Area!

It was around the time of Junior Seau and Tim Ryan when I became aware of Coach Larry Smith. There was this guy from Oak Grove High in San Jose, CA- forgot his name, he was a lineman, and big-time recruit- and he said in one his press-clippings that stood out to me at the time, something like "going to USC with all it's tradition of titles and coaches is a dream come true. I'll be playing for the best coach in the West. Larry Robinson!"

My cousin had attended USC in the 70's, when I visited her as a child I remember going through campus and Heritage Hall and thinking to myself at the basketball courts by her dorm room- "I'm coming here for school when I grow up". This football player's words and my own wishes for my future was the first REAL time I started to pay close attention to USC. 3 Rose Bowls? Insane.

The Bay Area press hated Coach Robinson. Hated him. Which made me grow fond of him from afar. What was to like for family universities in Stanford and Cal in the 90's? Elway was gone already. All the NorCal Div. I teams sucked bigtime. (I hate Stanford football, basketball? eh? alright during the Montgomery years)

Coach Robinson, you helped this kid dream. Rest in peace dear sir. Fight On!

by tapoutstylist on Jan 29, 2008 8:13 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

Robinson, Smith? whatever it takes?

thanks for giving me a pass on my mis-quoting and mis-naming of Coach Smith. Peet's coffee (2 bigass ones) is some serious brew.

by tapoutstylist on Jan 29, 2008 11:58 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

The knock on Smith was that he couldn't recruit

Larry Smith was in an unenviable position. He had to recruit at a time when USC was located in perhaps the epicenter of everything that was wrong with big-city, urban American life. Frak may understand, but to those on this site either too young to remember or too old to experience what a tense period it was in the Hood, Los Angeles, especially the South Central neighborhood in the late 80's/early 90's, was slow boiling cauldron ready to blow, kind of like The Wire, but with palm trees and angrier. Smith could recruit big names, but he was unable to recruit the kind of depth needed to compete year-to-year at an elite level. Kids like Russell White, Lincoln Kennedy and Napoleon Kauffman, who would have been SC locks back in the McKay days, went to Berkeley and Washington.

Add to the fact that USC just installed a new president who demanded that players go to class and graduate ...

When he said big names and logos mean nothing he was recognizing a fundamental shift in big time college football -- that with scholarship limits and the expanded bowl format allowing more teams chances at post-season play and to generate revenue, tradition ain't what it used to be and that uniforms don't win games. It took Trojan football fans a while to come to grips with that, perhaps not until after the Paul Hackett. Notre Dame fans are still in denial.

by Zoulou on Jan 29, 2008 9:59 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

only two seasons of new expectations

President Sample took over in March 1991, which meant only 2 seasons out of 6 for Smith of some actual expectations of attending class etc.

Without wanting to risk libel, wasn't Russell White practically illiterate? What I remember at the time was that SC had recently completed some kind of NCAA sanctions for academically ineligible players and wasn't willing to take the risk of enrolling White... so Cal used their genius shield to enroll him. Does that ring a bell for anyone else?

by DC Trojan on Jan 29, 2008 12:01 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Russell White

My recollection is that it turned out that Russell White had a learning disability that had not been previously identified. He was dyslexic but it was not identified until after he enrolled at Kommie U.

Fight On!

by Mrtravlear on Jan 29, 2008 1:53 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

good lord

that's just shameful - how on earth did no-one notice?

Actually, I shouldn't be surprised. I did volunteered with JEP one semester to teach 8th graders about international relations - it was an accelerated group and yet one of the girls was, so far as I could tell, undiagnosed dyslexic... either that or the teacher didn't care enough to stop me from getting the kids to write on the board.

Mind you, she was off the charts for math, so maybe she'd been covering for all that time. She was certainly smart enough.

by DC Trojan on Jan 29, 2008 2:29 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs