Even Zumberge Could Use a Few Wins for Image

There is a big board in the office of a USC administrator that details how the top 25 college football teams in the country are ranked each weekend during the season.

No, the board isn’t in Coach Ted Tollner’s office or in the office of any members of his staff. It’s located in the office of the administrator at USC, President James H. Zumberge.

Zumberge brings the rankings up to date each week, and he showed his handiwork to a reporter recently.

“That’s the anti-athletic Zumberge for you,” he said wryly.

There is a lingering perception, seemingly unfounded, among some members of the alumni that Zumberge is on a mission to undermine USC’s athletic program.

Of course, if he did that, he would be cutting off donations to the school from many alumni, whose attachment to USC is the athletic program, mainly football.

Zumberge said he grew up in Minnesota during the heyday of Coach Bernie Bierman’s powerhouse teams in the ‘30s.

“I used to sit home and plot the Minnesota games on radio when the team was on the road, and when the team was home I used to usher as a Boy Scout at the games,” Zumberge said. “And I’ve hardly been identified with non-athletic institutions.”

Zumberge is the former president of SMU and chancellor at Nebraska, where he hired Tom Osborne, the successful Cornhusker coach.

Yet, Zumberge, who became USC’s president in 1980, is viewed by some as being an academician who is anti-athletics.

Asked how he could dispel such a notion, Zumberge said:

“The university was already in serious trouble with the NCAA when I arrived, and it was my lot to deal with it. Immediately, I became identified with the sanctions that were placed on us; all the negativism that was generated by that situation fell on me.

“I’m not complaining about that. I’m just trying to explain that what appears to be a large number of people have an opinion of me that I’m anti-athletics. They don’t bother to look where I came from.

“I don’t want anyone to get the impression that I’m demoralized as being viewed by many that I have no sympathy for athletics, because I know they’re wrong. I also know it takes time to accomplish things on a permanent basis, and one has to take a measured approach to be sure you know what you’re doing.”

Zumberge hired Mike McGee in July 1984 to succeed Dick Perry as athletic director, but the USC president was evaluating and reviewing the school’s athletic programs long before McGee was hired.

The USC president said he didn’t give McGee a specific mandate as to what he expected to be accomplished with the athletic program, which had been in an overall down cycle.

“I just told Mike that we’ve slipped in our winning program and we need to get it back on track,” Zumberge said. “I didn’t give him a rigid time frame or a rigid schedule of specific steps to be taken, nor did I give him a blank check. It was something he and I had to work out together with the full consultation of the executive committee of the Board of Trustees.”

Zumberge said he has given up trying to defend himself against the charge he is anti-athletics.

“Until we start winning big in football again, it won’t go away,” he said. “And, even then, people might say it happened in spite of me.”