USC men’s basketball coach Eric Musselman was jumping rope in the Trojans’ weight room and watching ESPN’s “College GameDay” when inspiration struck.
“I just told one of the managers randomly, ‘Hey, go grab that helmet,’” Musselman recalled. “And they grabbed the helmet, and I put it on. I’m like, ‘Videotape this.’”
The vertical video was splashed across social media and is proof of camaraderie among coaches at the university. It also demonstrates the importance of showmanship – even when it comes to sports – in a city like Los Angeles.
“If you’re at a place like Arkansas and you win, there’s going to be 20,000 people. That’s what’s going to happen,” Musselman said. “In this city, the truth of it is, whether you’re a major-league baseball team or a football team, being cosmetically pleasing does matter.”
The average attendance for USC men’s basketball games last season in Musselman’s first year leading the program was 5,074 despite posting a 12-7 home record. The Galen Center seats more than 10,000 people.
The program continues to fight for attention in a city that is saturated with sports and entertainment options. Alijah Arenas will likely help in that battle and was set to become a budding star for the Trojans due to his talent, personality and ties to Los Angeles before an injury likely wiped out his freshman season.
So the short, punchy videos keep on coming, and many are now hosted on the official USC Athletics YouTube channel. In one clip, the coach is passing out fliers on campus for a women’s soccer game. In another, he’s buying food and drinks for a long line of students at Dulce, a coffee shop in the USC village.
Most of the clips are focused on football, however. He has handed out pregame field passes to students and ran the steps of the Galen Center in a football uniform – minus the pads. While the football team was at Purdue for an away game, Musselman burst out of the tunnel at the Coliseum, but was stunned to find the stadium empty.
“Muss is great,” Trojans football coach Lincoln Riley said. “His energy is crazy. He does some things I wish I could get myself to do – maybe before I retire – but I love his energy.”
Some ideas are spur of the moment and others require some pre-production. Musselman and his staff toss around ideas in his office, constantly trying to one-up each other before gathering any props they might need.
His wife approves or rejects the content ideas as well as his daughter, who is a sophomore in high school, but Musselman has no fear of putting himself out there.
“The job description of a coach is probably outside the box,” he said, “but I think you hit a certain point in your career, and I’m not really worried about people making fun of me after all the places I’ve coached and been.”
However, it seems like Musselman has always been a natural showman. His mom’s family was involved with Pepsi – which has a history of identifiable marketing – and his dad, Bill, took the promotion aspect seriously when he was coaching basketball in the college and professional ranks.
Grainy video from 1975 shows the late Musselman’s Minnesota Gophers team juggling basketballs, launching trick shots and dribbling in unison to the Harlem Globetrotters’ theme music. People would buy tickets just to watch the warmup, Eric Musselman recalled.
Musselman recreated his father’s warmup while coaching at Nevada and Arkansas, and is expanding on his father’s ideas at USC with his own twist.
“Certainly, the old-school philosophy of ‘If you win, fans are going to come and there’s going to be high interest,’” Musselman said.
“But there’s also the marketing side to it. If you study different people, whether it’s Charlie Finley with the old Oakland A’s, and how they made their statement through all the different uniform designs. And then what Jerry Jones does of keeping the Cowboys in the news or at the forefront of conversation.”
The heart of Musselman’s grand visions remains pure, beating in time to the connection he feels within college sports.
He had lasting relationships with coaches across campus at Nevada and Arkansas. Now, he’s part of a network of coaches at USC that lean on each other for advice and sometimes even play beach volleyball against each other.
“That’s what makes college coaching and being on a college campus so unique,” Musselman said. “I’m just trying to have some fun and support other programs on campus. That’s why I want to coach in college.”
