They’ve Turned USC Into a Sunday School

While Texas players were dutifully poring over playbooks earlier this week, USC players were doing a different sort of research.

Crowded into a trainer’s room, they were watching and howling as Matt Cassel threw two touchdown passes for the New England Patriots.

This is the same Cassel who, in four years as a Trojan quarterback, couldn’t get off the bench.

This is the same Cassel who threw zero college touchdown passes.

“We’re like, he couldn’t do anything here, but now he’s coming up big in the NFL?” receiver Steve Smith said. “It reminds you, this is some kind of place.”

USC is some kind of place, indeed. Whether that is good or bad depends on whether you like your college football dressed in leather jackets or letter sweaters.

As the Trojans creep toward history, they wander farther from tradition. They will take the Rose Bowl field Wednesday with a personality as diametrically opposed to their opponent as rainstorms to Rose Parades.

“USC is a mini-pro team,” said Texas offensive tackle Justin Blalock. “And we’re a college team.”

He may not score a more direct hit all week.

For perhaps the first time in college football history, the ruling dynasty is neither good ol’ boy nor Gipper; neither corn-fed nor corn pone.

USC is slick, polished NFL.

It is a head coach and six assistants who arrived here straight from Sundays and haven’t changed their calendars.

It is players who are covered and cheered like a pro team in the nation’s largest city that doesn’t have one.

It is six junior stars -- six! -- who could declare for the NFL draft after Wednesday’s game.

In Mack Brown’s eight years of coaching juniors at Texas, he hasn’t lost one.

It’s no coincidence that, a year after forgoing the NFL, Matt Leinart is no longer the face of the team.

That distinction belongs to Reggie Bush, the junior who runs around with Sunday afternoon speed, Monday Night swagger and prime-time somersaults.

“With all of USC’s talent and all their attention, there is an aura about them,” said David Thomas, Texas’ tight end.

Is that a good thing? For 34 consecutive games, yes. For the one culminating night, who knows?

When you act like pros, you are vulnerable to the selfish distractions of pros, and so USC will take the field with its head spinning.

Start with the six juniors.

Bush is gone, but what about running mate LenDale White? He wants to leave, meaning this game will be the first stage of his combine workout, meaning he will sweat.

“We wish him the best,” Smith said.

Then there is tackle Winston Justice, who hasn’t been highly ranked by scouts and said Tuesday that he’s not happy about it, so what happens now?

“I’m not sure what to think,” Justice said.

Smith says he’s probably staying, but remember last year’s title game -- what if a rerun changes his mind? Darnell Bing said he’s undecided, and the Trojans only hope he will commit to stopping Vince Young before making up his mind.

“We talk about the NFL a lot,” Smith said. “In the locker room, all the time, cracking jokes, talking about different people.”

Then there is ever-honest guard Fred Matua.

“You’ve got to think a good game here sets you up for next year’s draft,” he said.

It is this sort of mind-set that has the Longhorns giggling as they hide deeper in the weeds.

“Maybe people out here are in the USC players’ ears, telling them to leave,” defensive end Tim Crowder said. “Back home, they’re in our ear telling us they want us to stay. Maybe it’s more business for them, and more fun for us.”

Just what the Trojans need, an inflated chip on the shoulder of an opponent. The last time somebody came to town with such wide eyes and tsk-tsks it was poor little Fresno State, and you saw what nearly happened.

“We don’t think about the NFL too much,” Crowder said. “For now, this is enough for us.”

Easy to say when you don’t have an entire offense of NFL players. But at USC, the pro perspective runs far deeper than talent.

It starts with Carroll, who has obviously decided to gain his NFL redemption simply by coaching an NFL team at a different level.

They practice like in the NFL, crisp and loud and hard.

They preach like in the NFL, cliches up to the chinstrap, one you-know-what at a time.

And Carroll’s practice of immediately playing freshmen is direct from the NFL, where age isn’t as important as ability.

“How we run it, it feels like the NFL,” said linebacker coach Ken Norton Jr., who should know. “Sometimes it feels like Matt Leinart is Troy Aikman, Reggie Bush is Emmitt Smith and Dwayne Jarrett is Michael Irvin.”

This attitude is not only different from most college programs, it is different from previous Trojan programs.

“It’s a totally different culture now,” said John Jackson, a TV analyst who was a Trojan wide receiver from 1986 to ’89. “Pete creates an NFL atmosphere in everything.”

Jackson says it’s evident even in the way the Trojans prepare in the hours before games, many of them roaming the field in sweatsuits like NFL players.

“It’s very relaxed and businesslike,” he said.

And because they have won?

“It’s become business, faster,” he said.

It’s the business of interviews and autographs and appearances.

“We can’t get any more exposure,” Carroll said. “We get all the exposure of any NFL team in any other city.”

It’s the business of pro football in a college setting, great for the scoreboard, not always so warm for the heart, and certainly ample fodder for Texas.

“Sometimes this feels so much like the NFL, you have to force yourself to take care of all your other business,” Matua said.

Oh, yeah, like books. Four years after the Trojans recorded the highest graduation rate in program history, Smith said the two-time defending national college football champions did indeed talk about studies:

“We talk about how we despise going to class,” he said.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous Plaschke columns, go to latimes.com/plaschke.