Top football teams live on their routines, so there was Bruce Rollinson again, wearing his white jacket again, conducting Mater Dei’s “hut” drill again late Friday night at Long Beach’s Veterans Stadium.
The Monarchs lined up in front of their coach and reacted to the commands in unison. Then they cheered and Rollinson, 70, addressed his 318th win, his eighth CIF Southern Section title, and other questions that, on this night, were still trapped in the back of the inquiring minds around him.
“We started in June of 2020 and then we couldn’t play because of COVID-19,” he said. “We played in the spring, and then we took two weeks off and we’ve been at it ever since.
“One more game (for the state title). But this is always such a big one. We’ve now beaten our biggest rival three times in this calendar year. I was awake all night thinking about that.”
He smiled. “Or maybe it was because I ate too much.”
Mater Dei indeed beat Servite, 27-7, to remain the theoretical No. 1 team in America.
There were Los Angeles TV trucks that wouldn’t have visited in normal times, but everything else was rigidly routine. It did not feel like Robinson’s final game in that white jacket because nobody at Mater Dei expects it to be.
But a .783 winning percentage does not mean a coach gets to decide when that game is. Woody Hayes didn’t. Joe Paterno didn’t.
According to Scott Reid’s investigative report for the Southern California News Group, a Mater Dei player assaulted a teammate in the spring and left him with a traumatic brain injury, and Rollinson, depending on the day, said he was both aware and unaware such a practice was commonplace at Mater Dei.
The victim’s family is suing Mater Dei and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Orange, and its lawyer is citing Rollinson’s “dismissiveness.”
The “fight” began in the space between lockers, then spilled out into the locker room. Teammates either ignored what was happening or razzed the disadvantaged player, far smaller than his opponent.
Mostly the police report indicates this was not a Monarchs-will-be-Monarchs flare-up between two kids on testosterone overload. It was, in fact, part of the routine.
A Santa Ana police investigator recommended that the Orange County District Attorney’s Juvenile Division file felony battery charges, but the DA’s office is disinclined.
Considering that Rollinson has been at Mater Dei for 46 years, one would expect a counterattack of support, and it has come.
Surely there is no question that hundreds of young men have profited from the Mater Dei football experience, used it for higher education, shaped their careers on its discipline and demands.
But there will always be excesses, and excessive ones like this cannot be tolerated.
If Jon Gruden can be fired for 10-year-old e-mails, Rollinson can be vulnerable, too.
At most public schools, with school boards and accountability, Rollinson would not have coached Friday night’s game. Someone would remember where the buck stops.
This is not a public school, and you don’t have to be a movie nerd, don’t have to watch “The Verdict” or “Spotlight,” to realize that few wagons are circled as quickly as those of the Catholic Church.
The new president of Mater Dei, Walter Jenkins, asked for “trust” and “patience” about a situation that happened in February. Tell the police, which got stonewalled by Mater Dei and didn’t sit down with Rollinson until April 21. Jenkins took his position July 1.
This is far bigger than one human beatdown, and Mater Dei isn’t the only football entity that has molded players through abuse.
Those who came to Long Beach and waved “Mater Dei Brotherhood” flags should ask why a brother should be left bleeding. Does “brotherhood” only extend to those who have scholarship offers?
As always, the larger question pits the institution against the person.
Paterno fell because no one at Penn State could bear the thought of endangering this thing he’d built, the sanctity of game days, the gravy train on which so many were riding, the behemoth that had forgotten about the young men who played.
The minute that anything – a company, a university, a church – becomes bigger than its individuals is the minute that change must happen.
There are places in which a football program that allowed such violence would be dissolved for at least a season.
But now the lawsuit crawls through court, maybe toward a settlement, and the church’s top lawyers will mount a prevent defense thicker than anything the Monarchs display.
Rollinson seemed to know this. Expect his white jacket to be cleaned and ready for the first cool night in 2022.
