HARDHEADED MATOCK AN INSPIRATION AT USC.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

A lot of kids go off to college and they think they have all the answers, at least until the time comes to do their first load of laundry. Then their heads start spinning like clothes on tumble dry.

After turning their favorite white T-shirt a sickening Pepto-Bismol pink, they eventually sort things out. For defensive tackle Marc Matock, his tenure at USC has been a basket of dirty laundry. For the past five years he has had to sort through people and priorities and perceptions and perils and make up his mind how best to treat them. Are they OK to mix or do they have to be separated? Is it a heavy load or light? Is delicacy required?

Matock's college experience has had a few wrinkles but he has shaken them out in a manner that has impressed his coaches, his teammates, his mother - everyone, it seems, save for himself.

A collegiate football career that looked like it might be headed for the rag pile when Matock suffered a broken ankle in the fifth week of the season has been mended. Yet the 6-foot-5 senior can't be sure whether or not he'll play competitively again after the Trojans' game today against Texas Christian in the Sun Bowl. And the uncertainty is tearing him up.

You see, Matock has it stuck in his head that there will be a permanent tomato sauce stain on his USC letterman's jacket unless he goes on to play on Sundays. That's because even though he's listed as a public policy and management major, his focus is pre-NFL.

``I don't feel like my football career will be complete if I don't play in the NFL,'' Matock said the other day after his final practice on USC's Howard Jones Field. ``That's always been what I've wanted to do.''

It's easy, when assessing your laundry or your life, to see everything in blacks and whites. But it's all the shades in between that color a person's experiences. Maybe Matock can't see his growth for his goal, but others can.

When Matock was named the Most Inspirational Player in a vote of his teammates, his initial reaction was it was a nice consolation prize after failing to make all-conference or All-America. Then a teammate excitedly set him straight, saying, ``Man, do you know what kind of people have won that award?''

Mike McKeever, Craig Fertig, Ronnie Lott and Marv Goux, to name just a few.

Matock's mother Paula got teary-eyed at the team banquet just hearing the adjectives first-year head coach Paul Hackett used in forever linking the middle of her three sons with those esteemed names.

Words like tenacious. Compassionate. Humble. Hard-working.

Then Matock walked up to the podium and thanked his mother, and Paula just about went to pieces. Understand, it wasn't always easy, raising three boys on her own. (Marc hasn't seen his father since he began college.) She thought she'd be able to rest a little easier after getting the last of them off to college, but 1998 arrived with other ideas.

The family home in Salinas was destroyed in a mudslide in February. Paula lost all her own personal belongings but did manage to cart all her sons' sports trophies to safety. Marc had arthroscopic surgery on both shoulders in the spring. Then, on the first Saturday of October, there was Arizona State center Grey Ruegamer's chop block on Matock that most people assumed had cut the rest of his season right out from under him.

Matock talked a brave game in the locker room afterward, telling his teammates that he'd be back for the postseason. But later that night, when he was alone with his mother, he stared straight into her eyes and said in a small voice, ``Mom, is it over?''

``No way!'' replied the woman lovingly described by her son as ``hardheaded.'' And so it was Matock summoned the will to rehabilitate his ankle in time to play in the two most important games of any Trojan's year. He appeared in 10 plays against UCLA and started against Notre Dame. He contributed six tackles in the 10-0 win over the Irish and finished with 35 tackles, five for losses, and one sack in seven regular-season games.

Clearly, the gene for hardheadedness was passed from mother to son. Something else soon will pass between them, under heredity's umbrella. It's a cashmere overcoat that Paula brought to the Trojans' oppressively hot season opener against Purdue and their cold, damp regular-season finale against the Irish and every game in between.

In any kind of weather, the coat embraces Paula (and by extension, Marc) like a hug. It's a security blanket, of sorts. It belonged to Paula's late father, George Barsi, who coached the basketball team at Santa Clara University from 1938 to 1947 and was later enshrined in the university's Athletic Hall of Fame.

Note to Marc: the coat is too finespun for even the delicate wash cycle. Repeat after us: Dry clean only.

Will the coat come in handy next year in Cleveland or Buffalo or Baltimore or Green Bay? Matock knows he shouldn't hang his hopes on the NFL. But try as he might, he can't shed the hope that he'll have a really good game today, a great showing at the NFL combine in February and wind up on some draft-day war room list somewhere.

``With the injuries and stuff, I don't have a clue what the scouts think of me,'' Matock said. ``I'd like to think this year wasn't all for nothing.''

Even if his football career should end today, Matock will see in good time that it most definitely was not.