An Oregon bond which became a USC football relationship

USC-Oregon week is an occasion to recall the many and significant connections between the two football programs. Consider the bond between John Robinson and Norv Turner, as we noted several years ago:

“John Robinson and Norv Turner both attended school at the University of Oregon. Robinson played on the 1957 Duck team which made the 1958 Rose Bowl against Ohio State. Turner came to Eugene in 1971, when Robinson was in his last year as a UO assistant, a position he held for just over a decade. Turner was the backup quarterback at Oregon to a man you might have heard of: Dan Fouts. Turner was a graduate assistant at Oregon for one year, but when John Robinson took over as USC’s head coach in 1976, he hired a young wide receiver coach onto his staff in Los Angeles: Turner.

“The two worked together for 13 of the next 15 seasons. Turner spent all 15 of those seasons in L.A., with either USC or the NFL Rams. (The cover photo for this story shows the two men on the Rams in 1988.) Read Norv Turner, an Oregon grad who coached at USC for nearly a decade, tell his story in relationship to the Ducks and Trojans. Then read John Robinson as he talks about Norv Turner:

:Norv Turner: George Seifert was the secondary coach at Oregon and had recruited me. John was the offensive coordinator. I was the third-team quarterback. Dan Fouts was the starter. In 1971, they fired that staff. Coach went to USC as an assistant on John McKay’s staff and then to the Raiders for a year before he got the SC job. I had been a GA at Oregon and he hired me to come to USC. He stressed to the players that we’re gonna go good against good on a daily basis. That’s how we’re gonna get better. That was the first thing he talked about in meetings.”

There is more to this story (click the link above to read it), but it shows that what started at Oregon developed at USC, with Turner continuing to follow Robinson to the NFL and the Los Angeles Rams after their USC run ended. Turner then became Jimmy Johnson’s Super Bowl-winning offensive coordinator with the Dallas Cowboys and a longtime NFL coach. This is one small but rich part of the USC coaching tree and its roots in Eugene, Oregon.

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This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: An Oregon bond which became a USC football relationship