Hard to Get

The boy loved to play tag, or any other game that involved running, spinning, laughing as he dodged his friends. Sometime around the fourth grade, he asked his parents whether he could try football.

“He was a tall, slim kid,” his mother says. “I was like, ‘Oh, he’s going to get hurt.’ ”

His father gave permission but recalls, “In practice, he didn’t look like much.”

Reggie Bush ran for almost 300 yards and five touchdowns in his first Pop Warner game and could not, for the life of him, understand why everyone was so surprised.

“I was playing a game I loved,” he says. “A game I was supposed to play.”

Ten years later, Bush still seems a bit mystified by the commotion he generates.

As tailback and designated big-play man for No. 1-ranked USC, he hears people fuss over his cutback runs. Long touchdown catches. Turn-on-a-dime punt returns. He has been called the most exciting player in college football.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I just feel like I can make plays.”

The 19-year-old sophomore is not much for talking to reporters. After games, he would rather search out his parents, finding them in the locker room or calling on his cellphone if he is on the road.

He has an important question to ask. Same thing he asked when he was a boy. Kind of odd, given his star status.

“Always,” his mother says. “He always asks.”

The Rules

To understand, it helps to know a little about where Bush came from.

His mother, Denise Griffin, is a deputy sheriff who developed her sense of right and wrong as a child. She explains, “My parents were so strict. You had to say ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘Yes, ma’am.’ You did not talk back.”

LaMar Griffin had similar ideas about raising kids. Though he is not Bush’s biological father, he married Denise 16 years ago and is the only father Bush has ever known.

Their townhouse beside a freeway near San Diego is a religious home. God comes first, and the boys -- Bush has a younger brother, Jovan -- were always given rules.

“Not too strict, but they stayed on top of us,” Bush says. “I had to do my homework and clean my room. Chores every weekend.”

If his sons tried to leave for school before making their beds, LaMar says, “I would chase after them and make them come back.”

When it became clear that Bush was a prodigious talent, with the possibility of great things in his future, LaMar sat him down for what would become an oft-repeated admonition.

“You have to make a decision in your life,” the talk always began. “You want to set yourself apart? You’ve got to do things the right way.”

That meant staying humble, working hard in practice. It meant helping opponents up after a tackle, patting them on the helmet. It meant staying out of trouble, and as a high school security officer, LaMar knew something about that.

“I told him over and over,” he says.

The teenager who enrolled at Helix High quickly impressed coaches with his physical skills. Donnie Van Hook, an assistant then, recalls Bush’s running the 100 meters in 11.4 seconds as a freshman. In tennis shoes.

“This kid is going to be the best football player from San Diego County since Marcus Allen,” Van Hook told the other coaches.

It wasn’t just Bush’s speed and moves. It wasn’t just the numbers he put up, rushing for more than 2,200 yards as a junior, scoring 27 touchdowns and making everyone’s All-American team as a senior. The young man had a certain quality about him.

He was so quiet that some classmates took him for arrogant. His coaches and teammates knew better.

“He showed his emotions by how he played football,” Van Hook says. “What he would do, instead of getting wild, jumping up and down, he would just play harder.”

Denise recalls an incident when her son was a junior. Bush was doing homework at the kitchen table while she watched the evangelist T.D. Jakes on television in the living room.

“T.D. was talking about being anointed for a purpose,” she says. “I didn’t think Reggie was listening.”

He got up from the table and walked into the living room.

“Mom, that’s what I feel like,” he said. “I’ve been anointed to play football.”

For all the yards he gained at Helix, all the times he led his team to victory, the game that sticks in Van Hook’s memory is a defeat.

It was the final game of Bush’s high school career, an upset by Oceanside in the playoffs. Just as when he was young -- when he played all day, came home exhausted -- Bush ran until he collapsed with cramps.

His parents were there to take him home, but, slumped in the locker room with an intravenous needle in his arm, he pleaded with coaches.

“Please hold the team bus,” he said. “I want to go home with my teammates.”

The Game

Everyone knew the star recruit out of Helix wanted to play for Tyrone Willingham at Notre Dame. They knew he was interested in Texas. USC wasn’t even on his list. But LaMar prayed over the matter and told his son, “I think we’re going to miss something if we don’t check USC out.”

The USC coaches hastily arranged a visit, and Reggie was pleasantly surprised by what he saw. He had dinner with quarterback Matt Leinart. He liked the way the Trojan players flew around the field in practice.

Slowly, he began to change his mind. His mother says, “He just fit there.”

Not that it would be easy when he arrived in the fall of 2003. The roster was loaded with offense, including another heralded freshman tailback, LenDale White. LaMar and Denise say it took some time for their son to grow accustomed to sharing the ball.

White says they all had to adjust. “We had to be friends,” he explains. “If we weren’t, it would never have worked out.”

This season, White and Bush have emerged as a study in complementary running styles, the so-called “Thunder and Lightning.” White squares his shoulders and runs downhill. Bush runs wild.

“We feed off each other,” Bush says. “He makes a big play, and I’m anxious to make a big play.”

Their styles are just as different off the field. White is vocal, emotional. Bush is quiet. White tells a few secrets about his buddy.

The Reggie Bush who seems so unassuming may also be the team’s snappiest dresser, his closet stocked with jeans, hats and about 30 pairs of sneakers.

“Top model of the year,” White says. “If Reggie doesn’t look good, he doesn’t feel like Reggie.”

Which makes Bush, so quick on the field, exasperatingly slow out the door. He will not leave his apartment until everything is perfect. Hair, clothes. Those sneakers are kept clean as new, every pair.

Bush flashes half a smile.

“Everybody gives me a hard time about that,” he says.

People tell him to cut down on primping because it can make him late. Bush has found another solution.

“Now, I just start getting ready earlier,” he says.

The Question

Sharing the offense with Leinart and White, not to mention all the young receivers, Bush does not have the gaudy statistics of other top backs around the nation. He has compensated with the kind of plays that make him a fixture on “SportsCenter” and perhaps the single biggest reason USC remains undefeated going into its regular-season finale against UCLA on Saturday.

Three long touchdown catches fueled a comeback against Virginia Tech. A dizzying punt return set up the winning score at Stanford. Another punt return, this one for a touchdown, helped defeat Oregon State in the fog.

In all, Bush has scored four touchdowns on the ground, seven through the air, two on returns and has even passed for one.

“He has that speed to where, even if you think you have him, he can give you a little juke and he’s gone,” Washington State linebacker Pat Bennett says.

Virginia Tech Coach Frank Beamer adds, “He can turn a game around in a hurry.”

With 1,846 all-purpose yards this season, Bush is in the neighborhood of a school record set by Allen in 1981, the season he won the Heisman Trophy. Still, Bush does not fully appreciate the hype his play has generated, the fans who crowd around, his name mentioned among Heisman candidates.

“It’s kind of sneaking up on him,” running back coach Todd McNair says. “He still doesn’t realize who he is.”

To Leinart, he’s “flashy in how he plays, not a flashy guy.”

And when Coach Pete Carroll says Bush is “a treasure,” he means more than yards per carry. He is referring to a star who, despite being nicknamed “the President,” has retained a large part of his innocence.

Like a boy playing the sport he loves.

So, after each game, Bush still seems uncomfortable talking about himself. He still seeks out his parents.

Doesn’t matter if he has scored three touchdowns or run for 100 yards. They know what he will ask. The same question he has always asked.

“How’d I do?”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Game-Breaking News

Key touchdowns scored by USC’s all-purpose sophomore tailback Reggie Bush this season:

*--* Date Opponent Scoring Play Time Made Score (final) 8/28 Virginia Tech 53-yard reception* 1:55, 3rd 14-10 USC (24-13) 9/18 Brigham Young 66-yard run 2:03, 2nd 14-3 USC (42-10) 10/16 Arizona State 52-yard pass to D. 2:15, 2nd 35-7 USC Jarrett (45-7) 10/30 Washington State 57-yard punt return 7:22, 1st 21-0 USC (42-12) 11/6 Oregon State 65-yard punt return* 12:27, 4th 21-13 USC (28-20) 11/27 Notre Dame 69-yard reception 3:06, 3rd 27-10 USC (41-10)

*--*

* Game-winning score