LOS ANGELES--Eighteen University of Southern California (USC) football players--all members of the 1980 Rose Bowl championship team--have failed a special crash course in speech communications because they cheated, their work was very poor, or they did not attend the crash course at all.

Administrators told the players they had to take the class after it became public that they were receiving credit in advanced debate courses that they never attended.

The academic adviser to the football team and the debate coach lost their jobs earlier this spring after disgruntled debaters protested that football players--including Heisman Trophy winner Charles White--were enrolled in speech courses supposedly open only to members of the debate team.

The USC student newspaper, the Daily Trojan, reported last month that federal work-study funds were misused in the cooperative arrangement between the debate and football teams. The Trojan said advisers to the teams forged federal documents and invented a program in which debaters tutored football players to earn work-study funds. Debaters never actually tutored the players, however.

J.D. Crouch, a member of the USC student senate, has proposed a student honor code, largely "because of recent violations of academic integrity, such as the football scandal involving the speech department."