It's Not Just A Run Of Luck

Since the early 1960s, the University of Southern California has been winning football games and influencing polltakers with a modern folk hero known as the USC Tailback. According to his legend, the USC Tailback is a colossus who carries the ball 40 times a game and cannot be stopped with conventional weapons. Alexander the Great did not scorch as much earth as the USC Tailback. Elton John has not made as many records. The USC Tailback rushes for around 1,000 yards a year and goes on to make all the All-teams and, eventually, a million dollars in the pros. His aliases are Mike Garrett, O. J. Simpson, Clarence Davis, Anthony Davis, Ricky Bell and Charles White. Two of the above—Garrett and Simpson—won Heisman Trophies. Two others—Anthony Davis and Bell—were runners-up. White is certain to come close, if not this year—in which he has performed such eye-opening feats as to run for 199 yards against Alabama and 201 against Stanford, is averaging 140 yards a game and is well on his way to breaking the rushing records of all his predecessors (131 yards with three more regular-season games to be played)—then surely next season, when he will be a senior.

The USC Tailback has come to be what the Notre Dame quarterback (Bertelli, Lujack, Hornung, et al.) used to be: the glamour player-position of football. He is an almost lineal figure, like royalty. Rival coaches refer to the wellspring as the "USC Pipeline" and contend they could be big winners, too, if only they could tap it.

USC Tailbacks have certain common denominators. They are all black. They are all tough. The first time a USC coach saw Clarence Davis play, Davis' front teeth were knocked out early in the game; he had his gums sewed up at halftime, and was back on the field for the second half. O. J. Simpson once rushed for 220 yards on a sprained ankle. Ricky Bell, taken from a game when his shoulder popped out of its socket, jammed it back in place and complained to Coach John Robinson, "Why did you take me out?"

They all come from urban Los Angeles, except Simpson, who grew up in urban San Francisco. Clarence Davis went to George Washington High and Garrett attended Roosevelt High; Anthony Davis and White went to San Fernando. All six were raised in low-income neighborhoods, in what sociologists call a "matriarchal environment" (i.e., their fathers weren't around much). They all make it sound as if they were turned from lives of crime by discovering it was more fun to flatten opponents with end sweeps than with shivs. Simpson says he used to rumble and snitch hubcaps. Anthony Davis wears a permanent chevron on his elbow from a knife wound. White tells of a neighborhood park so tough he got beat up "just going there to have fun."

But none of them remembers ever missing a meal, and all recall a fairly stable home life, with responsibilities. Responsibility, another common thread. But in the end the only similarity that counts is that all six of these remarkable men can run like hell.

If anything, the dissimilarities among the USC Tailbacks are more revealing. Or, at least, more interesting.

To begin with, the six vary greatly in size and style. Garrett and Anthony Davis were tiny as tailbacks go (in the 5'9", 180-pound class); Simpson, the "ideal," was 6'2", 207 as an undergraduate; the menacing Ricky Bell, 6'2", 220. Like Clarence Davis, White is of medium build (5'11", 185), not split as high as Anthony Davis, but with a running style he copied watching Davis in high school. Under way, the strides of these two become so elongated they appear to prance like drum majors.

Garrett, on the other hand, was a land crab who could scuttle almost as fast as he could run. Simpson, who was a world-class sprinter, was a sliding, gliding type who emerged from holes almost upright. If Simpson's battle hymn was a medley of pace and acceleration, Ricky Bell's was an anvil chorus. Simpson you would enter in a Grand Prix, Bell in a demolition derby. "Bell makes 'em pay for every inch," a USC coach used to say. Bell ran like what he was: a linebacker playing tailback, and he made frightening sounds. His USC teammates called him "Mad Dog," and growled when he carried the ball.

As personalities, the six are equally disparate. Garrett, the first of the line, was sensitive and introspective. Simpson was outgoing and affable but, like Garrett, a conservative dresser in T shirts, jeans and sneakers. Anthony Davis was a vision in double knits and hats with B-47 wingspans. White, though Davis' idolater, prefers a quiet evening at home with his girl friend. His apartment, he says, is intentionally situated four miles from the campus hubbub, "in an old-folks neighborhood."

Clarence Davis barely said a word. Anthony Davis never stopped talking. C.D. was so uncocky before his first start as a USC Tailback that he lost 11 pounds the week of the game. A.D. in the same situation blithely predicted he would be better than O.J. In turn, White was so confident that he said he wanted to win "a couple of Heisman Trophies." Bell didn't think he was going to be better than anybody and, though the most punishing runner of all, "was a frightened man" according to Coach Robinson.