Chris Galippo was on the Southern California campus when he got the news. Christian Tupou was in the weight room. Derek Simmons was watching ESPN News.

Anger, disappointment and indifference all set in as they found out USC would be hammered with NCAA sanctions for various violations in its athletic programs.

Among the punishments announced June 10, 2010, was a two-year postseason ban for the football program.

Finding out there would be no shot at the conference title, no shot at another Rose Bowl berth, no shot at making one last run at a national championship elicited a range of emotions from the veteran players.

‘We were all definitely frustrated because you go to USC to play in the big bowl games,’ said Simmons, a senior defensive tackle on the 2010 team. ‘It got taken away from us.

‘But life goes on.’

The 2010 and 2011 senior classes enjoyed two Rose Bowl wins under head coach Pete Carroll before he bolted for the Seattle Seahawks just months before the sanctions rocked the program. Along with the bowl ban, USC lost 30 scholarships spanning three seasons and was forced to vacate its 2005 Bowl Championship Series national title.

The seniors were forced to finish their careers with the sanctions hanging over their heads, as they were bombarded with questions about the punishments and the effects over the last two years.

Gone was the mystique of the USC dynasty that drew them to Los Angeles, erased by violations committed during Reggie Bush’s legendary career.

All that was left was a 13-game regular season schedule, leaving no chance to capture the titles they dreamed about when they committed.

But life goes on.

After dealing with the sanctions in 2010, Tupou said the shock has worn off. The 2011 seniors weren’t blindsided by the bowl ban like last year’s group. They may not have a bowl game to play for, but they have USC’s proud history to live up to. And they still have their individual futures to consider.

‘We need to solidify our futures by making it to the next level and playing really, really good football, so that we can get drafted and go on to the NFL,’ Galippo said. ‘So bowl or no bowl, that’s something.’

***

Jordan Campbell was in limbo. No longer officially on the USC roster after violating new head coach Lane Kiffin’s team policy, the fate of his football career as a Trojan was uncertain.

With Carroll already gone, he had considered transferring. And just four days after the sanctions came down, Campbell, a linebacker, became the first USC player to announce he was leaving.

‘It wasn’t SC,’ Campbell said. ‘I fell in love with the Pete Carroll era. … But with him leaving, it wasn’t USC no more.’

As a rising redshirt junior, Campbell was able to transfer to any Football Bowl Subdivision school without sitting out a year following the sanctions.

He landed at Louisville, but he was ineligible the entire season because of ‘unresolved issues at USC,’ a Louisville spokesman said in an email to The Daily Orange. The spokesman said his ineligibility was not related to NCAA transfer rules.

Campbell has since moved on to Division II New Mexico Highlands but still says he had the best time of his life at USC. He lived his dream to be a Trojan for three years.

It was a dream he first got a taste for on Nov. 19, 2005.

Campbell looked on from the stands in awe as Reggie Bush broke a highlight-reel 50-yard touchdown run against Fresno State. Surrounded by the band and the student section, Campbell watched Bush put the ball behind his back before cutting across the field and into the end zone.

The stadium erupted and Campbell — watching the game as a fan in high school — soaked in the scene as Bush crossed the goal line in front of him. The crowd of 90,007 was going crazy. The Song Girls. The field.

It was grandiose. It was perfect.

‘That’s living the dream right there,’ Campbell said. ‘That’s why I chose to go to USC and play for USC.’

Carroll visited him multiple times at Norco (Calif.) High School to recruit him. The entire school was quickly in frenzy, and students filled the hallways, trying to take pictures of the USC head coach.

Once, they had to lock themselves in the locker room just to be able to talk. Carroll sold him on his ‘win forever’ philosophy.

‘Pete Carroll was a god, he did whatever he wanted, and people looked up to him and respected him,’ Campbell said.

But ‘win forever’ only lasted three years. Carroll moved on, and so did Campbell.

To this day, Campbell is still proud he was part of the Trojan family — violations or not. He has no regrets.

Not everyone views their time at USC as positively as Campbell does. Others have moved on and chosen not to look back.

Blake Ayles, who left the Trojans for Miami, declined to comment through a Hurricanes’ spokesman. The athletic communications representative said he ‘does not have any interest in discussing USC.’ Malik Jackson, now at Tennessee, was not made available by a Tennessee spokesman.

And former Trojans Shareece Wright, Stanley Havili and Tyron Smith all declined to comment for the story through NFL representatives for their respective teams.

For Campbell, though, he knows nothing will match those three years he got to live his dream.

It’s a dream he is reminded of whenever he looks at the USC tattoo on his right arm, which he got to reveal his commitment in high school.

‘I’m not ashamed of that (tattoo) at all,’ Campbell said. ‘I was part of the No. 1 class in the nation. I was part of something great.’

***

They lived the life of professionals at the college level. USC’s popularity extended right into Hollywood.

Simmons said during Carroll’s era, the streak of success coupled with the lack of an NFL franchise in LA made the program a big draw.

‘We’re kind of like the professional team, so everybody is looking at us,’ Simmons said.

Carroll often had celebrities at practices and team meetings to speak to the Trojans.

Simmons specifically remembers Will Ferrell coming multiple times. And he still laughs about one visit when he showed up as ‘Captain Compete.’

The joke started with a scare. A stuntman fell from a video tower before practice, and players worried the fall could be deadly.

The fear quickly disappeared when Ferrell came running onto the field dressed as a superhero, carrying the man.

Simmons said Carroll loved practical jokes, and with the program always winning, they only added to the fun.

But that all changed when Kiffin came in. With the NCAA looming over the program, the head coach closed practices to outsiders. He had to protect the program.

And he has carried that all-business approach into this season.

His theme for camp in 2011 was ‘no distractions.’ Tupou said Kiffin ended each practice reminding the players not to let the NCAA sanctions affect them.

This USC team still has the chance to recapture the greatness that recently defined the program. And to do that, the team must be focused on winning the games it does get to play, not the ones it can’t in the postseason.

‘We could easily sit here and say, ‘Well, we don’t have something to play for, we’re just happy to win,” Kiffin said in the Pac-12 coaches’ teleconference Sept. 6. ‘But we have high standards of our expectations for the way that we play here.’

***

With 81 scholarship players on the 2011 roster as of Aug. 21, USC comes into this season with added depth, something it was desperately missing a year ago. The depth chart was decimated after losing six transfers and releasing two recruits last year.

Kiffin was forced to hold back at practices. With only 71 scholarship players heading into the 2010 season — 14 below the NCAA maximum — staying healthy outweighed the benefits of physical play.

‘We were in such fear of the numbers going lower than where they were at, you know, that that’s the choice that we made,’ Kiffin said.

Though it helped the players survive from week to week, Kiffin said it hurt his team on game day. And it showed in the Trojans’ final 8-5 record.

It made a difference in crushing last-second losses to Washington and then-No. 16 Stanford. The Huskies and Cardinals had rotations that kept their players fresh, playing about half the snaps the Trojans did, said Galippo, the linebacker. And in both games, a fatigued USC defense couldn’t halt late drives that set up game-winning field goals.

‘When it gets down to those two-minute situations at the end of games,’ Galippo said, ‘that’s the difference between one team being gassed and another team being ready to go.’

For Simmons, the former defensive tackle, USC should always be ready to go. The players have the Trojans’ legacy to uphold, regardless of numbers.

The greats like Marcus Allen and Troy Polamalu are watching. And so is the potential next line of USC players.

‘Regardless of what happens, we still have that reputation to maintain, and if we went out there and laid an egg every Saturday,’ Simmons said, ‘it would definitely probably affect future recruitment.’

And if the past and future aren’t enough to keep this Trojans team motivated in the present, Kiffin will be there to crack the whip at practice. Tupou said the head coach has worked the players so hard, they haven’t had time to worry about the postseason ban.

The program is getting back to the same intense competition level that characterized the program when the best of the best flocked to USC.

And with each day, as the players fight to get on the field, they are slowly removing the stain the NCAA sanctions have left on the program.

Life does go on.

‘It all starts out with eliminating the distraction about the whole NCAA thing and working on getting that erased from our team,’ Tupou said. ‘And then it’s all about competing.’

rjgery@syr.edu

Published on September 12, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Ryne: rjgery@syr.edu