Daryl Gross leans down, sitting at the desk that has been his for only four months, and pulls out a small, wooden box.

Signs of his past success are all around – the doctorate degree on the wall behind him, his sharp-as-broken-glass suit.

Signs of his undefined future are all around – the cardboard boxes filled with paperwork littering the floor, the mostly barren bookshelves.

He places the box on his desk. He opens it slowly and slides it across his desk.

‘This,’ Gross says matter-of-factly, fluorescent light glimmering off his bald head, ‘is why I do this.’

Inside is enough bling for a Jay-Z video. There are 18 rings, all commemorating a conference or national championship won by one of the teams Gross oversaw while at the University of Southern California. They symbolize what Gross strives for most – not just victory, but supremacy.

They symbolize something else, too. The rings represent Gross’ journey from being an undersized Division II wide receiver studying pre-med to the man in control of the entire Syracuse athletics program. That last step occurred December 17, when Chancellor Nancy Cantor named Gross the successor to Jake Crouthamel, who had served as SU’s director of athletics for 27 years.

Those rings are a by-product of Gross’ tenacity, the cutthroat competitive streak that he blends with engaging affability. Behind his ever-present smile – which grows largest when he speaks about his two daughters, Jamie and Jolie – lies someone who needs to win.

‘To me, to be in the middle of pack in the Big East, that doesn’t excite me at all,’ Gross said. ‘If we’re going to play it, we need to play it at the national level. That’s the philosophy that I have, and that’s the message that’s getting out.’

To hear Gross tell it, mediocrity will not be accepted within the Syracuse athletic department. He’s holding those under him to the same strict standards he’s aimed for his entire career.

Losing will not be tolerated by Gross, a man who still remembers the name (Andrew Green) of the boy who beat him in the finals of a wrestling tournament at Los Angeles Unified High School (ITALICS) in gym class (ITALICS).

‘I don’t know how he beat me, either,’ Gross said.

‘He’s so competitive, it’s slightly annoying,’ said James Grandison, Gross’ roommate at the University of California at Davis.

Two football seasons ago, when USC played California, Grandison decided to make the 10-minute trek from his home to Berkley to watch his old roommate’s team. He planned to meet another roommate at the game, and afterward the trio of old college friends would head out for a couple drinks and some laughs, a mini-reunion of sorts.

That was before the Trojans lost, the only time that’s happened in two years. Grandison didn’t speak with Gross afterward. He didn’t have to – he knew Gross would be too dejected for any postgame plans.

Grandison didn’t speak with Gross until four days later. Even then, Gross couldn’t stop thinking about the loss. ‘We just weren’t prepared,’ Gross told him in a less-than-pleasant tone. ‘We need to stop taking things for granted.’

‘He was talking to me like I was one of the players,’ Grandison said.

Fortunately for Gross – and his friends – USC didn’t lose much at the end of his Trojan tenure, and that can be largely traced to him. It was Gross who pulled the trigger on the hiring of Pete Carroll, who has won 42 of his first 51 games and delivered two national championship trophies.

It was not an easy decision. Much of the USC athletic brass disagreed with Gross, but he convinced them to take a chance. While Gross was a scout with the New York Jets after graduate school, he observed Carroll and felt his teaching ability and upbeat style would translate on the college level.

At first, it didn’t. Carroll went 6-6 in his first season at USC, and fans grew restless. Carroll had bombed out of the NFL after mediocre stints with the Jets and Patriots, and now it seemed he was doing the same in the college ranks.

‘It would have been easy for him to start inching away from the football program at that time,’ said SU senior associate athletic director Mark Jackson, who served as the Trojans’ director of football operations and came with Gross to Syracuse. ‘He stuck with us through good and bad times.’

Gross, supremely confident in the man he hand-picked to turn around the football team, never wavered. After back-to-back last minute losses during Carroll’s first season, Gross walked into the visitor’s locker room at Washington and told the coaches what a great job they were doing.

Three years later, he walked into the locker room to celebrate a national championship.

‘He was a catalyst in my coming to USC and he was a big key in our success as a football program,’ Carroll said. ‘He’s a great guy with a lot of energy and I think he’ll do a tremendous job at Syracuse.’

He carries with him the confidence he needed to stick with Carroll outside the office, too. At the noon time basketball league he organized for the USC athletic staff, Gross was one of the most vocal players.

‘He’d let you know if his game was on,’ Jackson said. ‘There were some heated games up there.’

As intense as he can be, one of Gross’ greatest strengths is the way he handles people. His charm is contagious. He landed his first job with the Jets as a scout merely by impressing a few Jets scouts while compiling film for them as a graduate assistant at USC.

For a time in college, Gross worked with Grandison in Lake Tahoe, and a part of their jobs entailed handling demands of celebrities staying at various hotels. One evening, Gross arranged a room for the agent for Kool & The Gang, in town for a show, and the two hit it off.

Later that night, an astonished Grandison watched Gross and the members of Kool & The Gang enjoying cocktails at the posh Tahoe Caesar’s Palace, laughing it up and talking like old friends.

When Gross saw his friend, he ambled over.

‘Hey, I was just talking with their manager earlier, and he thought I was cool,’ Gross told his friend. ‘They gave me two front-row tickets. You want to come?’

‘And it was all so easy,’ Grandison said. ‘He wasn’t even angling for free tickets. It doesn’t matter if it’s a maintenance worker or a celebrity with fame and money. Daryl is comfortable in his own skin.’

That comes from a diverse upbringing in Los Angeles. He saw the inner-city side of Los Angeles, but he went to school from an early age in Beverly Hills, where his mother was a teacher.

He was friends with kids from the worst parts of Los Angeles and hung with the children of celebrities. He played basketball on playgrounds and golf and tennis in Pasadena. He became comfortable with any type of person.

He also became just as comfortable playing sports. He was a bona fide sports freak growing up, reading the sports page every day and designing sports stadiums out of clay in art class.

At L.A. Unified, he tried every sport imaginable, from gymnastics to baseball. He was a track star in high school and could have run at UCLA, but instead decided to focus on football at UC-Davis.

While at Davis, where he played receiver alongside his brother Duane, a fullback, Gross took a pre-med course load, packed with classes like biochemistry and calculus, and excelled. If he chose, he could have gone to medical school. But during the final quarter of his college career, he had the nagging feeling that being a doctor wasn’t for him.

The decision to eschew med school for graduate school was tough to break to his mother, an educator who was tickled her son was going to be a doctor. Grandison said it was the lowest he ever saw Gross at Davis. But sports, he decided, was his calling.

‘I could do it, but I always feel like if my heart’s not in it, I know I’m not going to do it as well as I can do something,’ Gross said of becoming a medical doctor. ‘For me, it was at a C level. For me to be able to do something, I need it at an A level. This is what I want to do.’

That’s how he describes the decision to accept the head spot at Syracuse. He had chances at a long list of other schools – including Brown, California and Washington – but never felt comfortable accepting or interviewing.

Syracuse just felt right to him, and that’s what has brought him here, behind the desk in the office with the view of the Carrier Dome he likes so much.

Gross has since taken his wooden box of rings out of his office and to a display case at his home. Somewhere, he owns another box. It is empty. The space inside is reserved for more rings, the ones he plans on winning at Syracuse.

Someday soon, he promises, it will be full.

‘I found a formula (at USC) that matches up, just like you might know how to cook a good pasta,’ Gross said. ‘I see this place, and it’s sort of like a gold mine. I worked my ass off to get it good at USC. There’s no reason that everyone here can’t do that. We won a lot of championships there. We can do it here, too.’

Published on May 4, 2005 at 12:00 pm