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USC Athletic Director Mike Garrett opens up, just a bit
Garrett's gruff manner has made enemies, but now he might need every friend he can get as NCAA storm clouds gather above his successful program. So he's making a try at letting his guard down.

By David Wharton

February 14, 2010




Mike Garrett brought a Heisman Trophy to Heritage Hall when he played for USC in the 1960s, and he has helped the Trojans become a national powerhouse in several sports since becoming athletic director. Los Angeles Times / February 10, 2010)




The frown that Mike Garrett often wears in public, an expression made of blunt features set hard as stone, gives way to something unexpected. His eyes glisten with tears.

"I frankly don't know why I'm being so emotional," he says.

This is not the USC tailback from the 1960s, bulling his way to a Heisman Trophy. Not the gruff athletic director who has presided over sports at his alma mater for two decades, winning championships by the fistful.

Garrett reaches for another tissue and says, "I guess I don't usually talk to people."

All these years, he has remained stubbornly guarded, reluctant to grant interviews or speak in public, but times have changed.

The university's multimillion-dollar sports enterprise has suffered a black eye over allegations that star athletes in football and basketball received gifts from agents. Later this week, administrators will face an NCAA committee that wants to know if Garrett let his department veer out of control.

USC has already announced self-imposed sanctions in basketball, including forfeits, a postseason ban and recruiting restrictions. Its cherished football team, which slipped last season and lost coach Pete Carroll to the NFL, could face similar penalties.

Garrett acknowledges feeling "terribly embarrassed" by the stigma of an NCAA investigation.

"It's just not in our nature," he says more than once. "And I can't convince anyone of that until we go to the NCAA and present our case."

This turn of events has emboldened his enemies, some of them Trojans fans, who call him arrogant and blame him for what happened on his watch.

With so much at stake, his wife and a top administrator encouraged the 65-year-old to consider a new approach: speaking up.

Feeling the heat

During a lengthy interview in his Heritage Hall office recently, Garrett ranged from lighthearted to somber, those tears rising when he talked about family and the university.

As for the NCAA investigation, he spoke generally, not discussing details or strategy for the hearing.

"I do have a law degree and we do have general counsel," he says. "We're waiting for that day."

The Trojans face multiple allegations, the most serious involving football player Reggie Bush, basketball player O.J. Mayo and former basketball coach Tim Floyd.

Bush, a running back who won the 2005 Heisman, and his parents allegedly took benefits from would-be sports marketers in 2004 and '05. Mayo, a guard who played one season at USC, allegedly received gifts funneled to him from a Northern California sports agent in 2007-08.

Floyd resigned last spring after reports that he had paid one of Mayo's handlers, Rodney Guillory, to steer the prized recruit to USC.

The athletes and coach have denied wrongdoing. Floyd has said he feels abandoned by his former boss, telling The Times in December: "Mike's reputation took precedence over the truth."

Any athletic director is somewhat removed from his teams' daily operations, and the NCAA places ultimate responsibility on university presidents.


But to the public, the buck stops with Garrett.

He has never explained why he allowed Floyd to associate with Guillory, whose involvement with another USC player resulted in NCAA trouble years ago. Also, Trojans fans wanted more than his two videotaped statements about the allegations, posted on the Internet.

"We were still researching and investigating," he says sharply. "So you don't go spouting off when you don't know what it's all about."

His silence -- in this and other circumstances -- may trace back to a kid growing up poor in East L.A.

'Like dirt'

His stepfather taught him to work hard, he says, and his mother insisted upon tidiness. "If you weren't rich," Garrett says, "at least you could be clean."

Coming out of Roosevelt High, he hoped to play for UCLA, but the Bruins considered him too small. USC coach John McKay swooped in.

College was daunting -- "I didn't read or write so well," Garrett says -- especially amid a privileged student body that, in 1962, did not welcome minorities on fraternity row. McKay drew no such distinctions.

"He treated everybody equally -- he treated us all like dirt," Garrett says with a grin. "When I saw that, man, I turned on. I said it's not about anything but performance, so let's get it on."

Garrett made himself into an able student while hammering toward USC's first Heisman in 1965. Teammate Dave Moton says, "Size didn't mean a whole hell of a lot to him. He practiced hard, he played hard."

One more thing: Garrett studied his coach. Though McKay could be witty in public, with players he was demanding, often distant, always fair.

"Even now, his thought processes, I incorporate them," he says. "I ask myself, 'What would Coach McKay do?' "

A winding path

After college came eight years of pro football, including two Super Bowls with the Kansas City Chiefs, before Garrett retired at 29.

He tried real estate and construction, went to law school and worked for the San Diego district attorney, then took an executive position at the Forum. Looking back, he wonders whether fate determined this winding path.

It prepared him for budgets and coaching searches, television contracts and arena construction. But athletic directors also typically possess public relations savvy.

In the early 1980s, failed campaigns for San Diego City Council and Congress -- he received fewer than 5,000 votes as a Republican write-in -- exposed Garrett's limitations. Friends say he can tell a joke over dinner, but not to a roomful of people.

So why run for office?

"I was an idiot," he says. "It was totally out of character."

That didn't stop him from returning to USC as an associate athletic director in 1990 and, two years later, vying for the head job.


Certain boosters considered him too rough around the edges, but his old Forum boss, Lakers owner Jerry Buss, visited USC President Steven Sample to offer a recommendation.

"When I hired Mike, I must admit it was largely because he had been such a famous athlete," Buss recalls. "Then I realized he had super powers as an administrator, an organizer."

The next level

No one who has worked with Garrett would describe him as warm. Some people who have known him for years say they don't really know him at all. Even a friend, former USC vice president Dennis Dougherty, says, "Mike would not make a good drinking buddy."

That might explain some of the opposition to his 1993 hiring. Garrett hesitates, saying, "My whole life has been about proving that I could play at the next level."

Using McKay as a model, he surrounded himself with talent and gave staff freedom to meet his tough demands.

"Some people don't work in that kind of environment," says Daryl Gross, a former assistant who became the athletic director at Syracuse. "But if you're creative and you don't have to ask him for a lot of structure, you will flourish."

As for coaches, Garrett says he looks for intensity, leadership and vision. He remains hands-off, so long as they win.

A similar relationship has formed between him and his boss. Asked about Garrett's managerial style, Sample says, "To be honest with you, I see him more in terms of results."

That includes 21 national championships in sports including football and women's water polo. USC often finishes in the top 10 for the Director's Cup, awarded to the nation's winningest athletic department.

Equally important to Sample, graduation rates have met NCAA standards and Garrett's staff has raised $375 million in donations.

"Just unbelievable," the president says. "That's the thing we look at with all of our deans, people who have total responsibility for what is called a revenue center."

Earning a base salary of $719,000 in 2008, according to the most recent tax documents available, Garrett can boast of two crowning achievements.

After decades of waiting, USC has a basketball arena, the $147-million Galen Center, and the football team enjoyed a historic winning streak under Carroll.

"If you're a Trojan," says Buss, an alumnus, "you really like it when football wins."

But for all Garrett's success, there have been public missteps.

Only criticism

It is a poorly kept secret around USC that a faction of boosters recently maneuvered behind the scenes to oust the athletic director.

A coup is unlikely with Sample in charge, but what might happen after his August retirement is pure conjecture.

Garrett's supporters worry he gets no credit for USC's victories, only blame when things go wrong.


"Every time there's some B.S., they jump all over him," says Mark Larson, a real estate executive and influential booster.

The negative headlines date to the messy firing of football coach John Robinson in 1997. Fans blamed Garrett for the failure of the next guy, Paul Hackett, and for hiring a basketball coach, Rick Majerus, who backed out a few days later. They howled when Carroll, initially seen as an NFL retread, was hired on Dec. 15, 2000.

That day, as Gross circulated among boosters and reporters explaining the hire, Garrett bristled at the naysayers, "Joe Blow doesn't know football."

Even the team's return to prominence did not help.

Critics called Garrett lucky, saying Carroll had not been his first choice. There were rumors of friction in the department, whispers that he had grown jealous of his coach's celebrity, which both men denied.

Garrett's problems continued last month when he picked the controversial Lane Kiffin to take over the team and announced his decision by reading stiffly from notes.

"What's the term -- working the room? -- I never did that very well," he says. "I have to fight to get in front of a microphone and talk."

Robinson says, "He was that way as a football player -- he never tried to be a big personality about it. If you compare Mike Garrett the tailback with Mike Garrett the athletic director, there are a lot of similarities."

'I do listen'

This is the Mike Garrett whom friends and close colleagues have come to know:

A man devoted to his second wife, Suzanne, and four kids, including 5-year-old twin boys who came along late in life. A stern boss who can laugh in meetings and takes time to counsel athletes about schoolwork.

Not that he shows any of this in public, his feelings hidden behind that stony face. Blame arrogance or introversion or defensiveness. Perhaps a little of each.

"Some people choose to be warm and fuzzy," says an athletic department official from a Pacific 10 Conference school, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Some people just choose to get the job done."

Yet, when Garrett's wife and USC senior vice president Martha Harris, a close aide to Sample, suggested opening up, he relented.

"They said it was time," he says a bit wearily. "I do listen."

With the NCAA infractions committee meeting Thursday through Saturday in Tempe, Ariz., it occurs to him that his time at USC might have gone more smoothly had he been less guarded.

Either way, the tears and the occasional lump in his throat suggest that explaining himself is not easy.

"I guess I don't share this," he says. "This is not what I normally do."

david.wharton@latimes.com

twitter.com/LATimesWharton

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times



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