IT HASN'T BEEN ROSES FOR USC SO FAR IN '06.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

For a while there, it looked like this would be the Trojans' year (again).

It was the Trojans' year for four days, give or take 2 minutes 13 seconds, the time on the Rose Bowl clock when Pete Carroll got brave on fourth-and-2, leading to USC losing the ball and Texas' Vince Young running it in and the Heritage Hall bricks beginning to crumble.

In the latest bad news, Pacific-10 investigators are on Reggie Bush like LenDale White on a stack of French toast, looking into who paid for Bush's parents' house and whether the rulebook should fall on the Trojans.

This, after embarrassing reports about White's conditioning made him a punch-line target and an NFL draft question mark, likely to be chosen this weekend somewhere between Matt Leinart and Henry Winkler.

This, after football people expressed worry about Leinart's priorities after he fired sports agent Leigh Steinberg and hired entertainment-oriented Creative Artists Agency to represent him.

A Bush investigation - this means either that USC's feel-good era is officially over, or that the Democrats are back in charge of Congress.

Sure, you say, but Bush, White and Leinart have moved on from USC, so they really aren't the Trojans' problem anymore. But at least one of those is still their problem. More about that in a moment.

Meanwhile, the Trojans do have an obvious present-tense problem in John David Booty's late-March back surgery, expected to keep the quarterback-in-waiting from throwing for eight weeks.

And they had a future-tense disappointment when Jimmy Clausen, the royally bred quarterback from Oaks Christian High School of Westlake Village, said last week he'll enroll at Notre Dame instead of USC.

It's going to take a lot of misery to make Trojans fans forget 34 wins in a row, 1 1/2 national titles in a row, and three Heisman Trophies in four years.

But I guess that's exactly what we might be talking about as this investigation, first reported online Sunday by Yahoo! Sports, lurches ahead - the possibility of figuratively or even literally erasing the achievements of the Carroll era.

If Bush is found to have received the sort of ``extra benefits'' forbidden by the NCAA, will the Trojans face punishments such as scholarship reductions, bowl-game and TV bans, or - yikes - game forfeitures? That's a real possibility, again, if.

Will Bush's 2005 Heisman Trophy be taken away under the requirement that the award winner ``be in compliance with the bylaws defining an NCAA student''? That sounds farfetched, an offshoot of the strip-Barry-Bonds'-records movement, but friends of Heisman runner-up Vince Young suddenly are very big technicality fans.

At issue, apparently, is whether the house Bush's parents lived in near San Diego belonged to a man who tried (unsuccessfully, it turned out) to steer the tailback to a particular agent and marketing firm; what USC knew; and when USC knew it.

It didn't look good when the parents moved out of the house shortly after Yahoo! Sports raised questions.

It wasn't reassuring, either, to hear Bush in his television appearances Monday. He sounded rehearsed, and that was in the best moments.

This was Bush on ``Pardon the Interruption,'' the Tony Kornheiser-Michael Wilbon show:

``Well, let me first say, when the smoke clears, and when everything is said and done, everyone will see we have done absolutely nothing wrong according to public standards and NCAA standards,'' Bush said. ``You know, my parents leased a house, like any normal family leased a house, and this story is really getting blown out of proportion. You know, it's kind of funny. You know, one of the things I've learned through this whole process is that as your public image grows, and eyes are more focused on you, there may be a few people out there who want to latch onto you to maybe get something out of you.''

Change a word here or there, and you have his initial answer on SportsCenter.

Bush, a 21-year-old facing a high-profile investigation amid NFL draft week, probably could have been forgiven for saying nothing beyond that, but he gamely tried to answer questions about the specifics. There was hemming and hawing and finally: ``I don't want to get into the details right now.''

If this was an attempt to confront the accusations once and for all, it didn't work.

This is going to be with him for a while, with Trojans football, with Trojans fans.

But it's starting to feel like that sort of year all around, after three years - give or take 2:13 - of football bliss. Reggie Bush is under suspicion. LenDale White just got mentioned in the same sentence as Maurice Clarett.

Matt Leinart's image is shifting from Joe College to Broadway Joe.

Not that the Trojans didn't take a few PR hits over the past few seasons for off-the-field missteps. Since they fell to Texas, though, the hits seem to be leaving bruises.

They can console themselves with the thought that 2006 hasn't been all roses for Vince Young, either.