Only the Route to Lincoln Was the Same : Rodgers Tries to Live Up to Legend; Taylor Tries to Live Down Preconception

The son of the most famous football player in University of Nebraska history stood ready to receive the kickoff in the opening game of his freshman season in front of his father, a sellout crowd and a national television audience.

The player was Terry Rodgers, the second son of Johnny Rodgers, who earned his Heisman Trophy fame by doing just this--returning kickoffs and punts as no college player had done before and none has done since.

The place was rockin’.

“As soon as they kick the ball, the stadium starts to tremble,” Terry Rodgers said. “It’s so loud.”

Big game. Big Red. Big noise.

If you think you know the rest and can stop here, you don’t. Read on.

Rodgers didn’t score, didn’t even touch the ball, didn’t want to; he was too nervous.

“I had big butterflies,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Just don’t kick me the ball. I’m scared.’ When I didn’t get the ball, I was glad. I ran right up in the middle of the wedge. It was fun, but it was scary.”

A year later, Rodgers laughes easily at the memory of his timid debut. He rubs his right knee. The swelling from the arthroscopic examination of two days before is subsiding. Rodgers, the 1985 San Diego County high school player of the year from Sweetwater High School, is finished for this season.

Hardly a storybook start to a new chapter in the Rodgers legend at Nebraska. But then, Terry is different. He will tell you so, so will his dad.

“We don’t spend much team reminiscing about my career,” Johnny Rodgers said last week. “We talk about what he can do now, not what I’ve done. We’re not into old newspaper clippings; we’re into creating new ones.”

Same field, same night, same game, same uniform, a different former San Diego high school star. Steve Taylor, once of Lincoln High School, made his Nebraska starting debut at quarterback as a sophomore. He completed 10 of 16 passes for 130 yards and 2 touchdowns and rushed 12 times for 139 yards and 2 touchdowns as the Cornhuskers defeated Florida State, 34-17.

Taylor went on to lead Nebraska to a 10-2 record and capped last season by being named the Sugar Bowl’s Most Valuable Player. This season, he has helped propel Nebraska to an 8-0 start, a consensus No. 2 national ranking and a Nov. 21 collision course with Oklahoma to determine the top team in college football.

In the process, he has stirred talk that before his college career is over next season, it might be necessary for room to be found in the Nebraska trophy case for another casting of the same award that Terry’s father won in 1972--the Heisman Trophy.

“I’ve got to keep it in perspective,” Taylor said. “Maybe that is something for next year.”

Taylor, who will lead the Cornhuskers against Iowa State Saturday, might have the future on his mind, but all Rodgers can do for now is watch and wait.

Rodgers is making adjustments. So is Taylor. That is what leaving Southern California to play football at Nebraska is all about. The change is more than the weather, and the temperature already is dipping below freezing with regularity. It’s new friends, new surroundings, enormous attention; and for Rodgers and Taylor, their own special battles.

For Rodgers, the challenge is following his father to the school that made Johnny Rodgers a college football legend. His bloodline bleeds Big Red.

“I kind of thought about going somewhere else,” Rodgers said. “But anywhere I went, it would be the same. They would know who my dad is. I would always be Johnny Rodgers’ son.”

For Taylor, the challenge had been choosing a university where a black high school quarterback who throws the ball would get a fair chance to become a college football quarterback who throws the ball.

“People are always thinking if you’re a black quarterback all you can do is run the ball,” Taylor said. “They think, ‘He can’t throw the ball. He doesn’t have the mental ability or the arm.’

“We are stereotyped. All I can do is show people what I can do. That’s the only way things can get better.”

Rodgers and Taylor have come to Nebraska to prove their points to themselves and to the doubters. For exposure in college football, there aren’t too many places better.

They take their image of a college football hotbed seriously in Lincoln, but not too seriously. The joke in town is that the proof that the university is more than a football factory can be found in the big, red, neon “N” that is anchored to Memorial Stadium and illuminates the nighttime sky; it stands for knowledge.

The “N” is the most recognizable element in Lincoln’s modest skyline. Lincoln, the state capital with a population of about 172,000, is the governmental and educational center of the state, which has a population of about 1.6 million. San Diego County alone has population of about 2 million.

Nebraska football is housed in Memorial Stadium, one of college football’s mostly oddly configurated shrines. Of its 73,650 seats, more than 40,000 are located in the end zones. Not the best place to view a game, but in Nebraska, few complain. It is the only ticket in town, in a stadium that on game days becomes the state’s third-largest city.

“People in San Diego don’t know you like they know you here,” Terry Rodgers said. “It’s totally different. They know you play football for Nebraska. They’ve got the roster at home on the wall. They know who you are and, chances are, they know what you look like.”

Players, especially ones as notable as Rodgers and Taylor, find it difficult to go anywhere in the area without being recognized.

“It will get to you if you don’t watch out,” Rodgers said. “Sometimes I just go to my room and watch TV to get away from it all.”

Rodgers was born in Nebraska, but he left before he reached school age. He grew up in San Diego with his father. So returning to Nebraska was something of a homecoming. He has grandparents in Omaha, Neb., where his father and mother were reared. His mother lives in Denver, close enough that she can occasionally visit.

“I can still go up to Omaha and get a nice home-cooked meal,” he said. “But I’m getting a little too old to keep asking my grandparents for money.”

There is a lot about life in Southern California that Rodgers misses--the beaches, the sun, his friends. But he is adapting to life in Lincoln. There is a focus about being at a place like Nebraska.

“It’s a different pace here,” Rodgers said. “It’s good to get away from all those distractions in San Diego. With football and school, there’s not much more to do (here). You can go out occasionally. But there’s no beach, though you can go to the lake sometimes.”

The feeling is somewhat different for Taylor. He didn’t grow up in San Diego. He moved to San Diego to attend Lincoln because Ray Hooper, his coach at Edison High School in Fresno, took over as coach at Lincoln before his junior season.

Hooper became Taylor’s legal guardian, and Taylor became his starting quarterback. Taylor misses little about San Diego. He is adamant in listing his hometown as Fresno, not San Diego.

“I changed where I was from because people were always saying I was from San Diego, and I’m not from there,” Taylor said. “You can say I went to high school there. But I’m from Fresno. It’s only right that I say that.”

Part of Taylor’s insistence stems from a less than happy stay at Lincoln. Because he moved in and took over at quarterback, there was resentment among his teammates. Taylor has never gotten over that scar.

“Some people didn’t appreciate Steve at first,” said Patrick Rowe, a former Lincoln teammate and now a freshman wide receiver at San Diego State. “He was an outsider. It took some guys awhile to get used to him. They wanted him to prove to them he could play.”

Taylor did not help himself in his first game at Lincoln when he threw a crucial interception and the team had to rally to tie Madison.

“I was an outsider,” Taylor said. “I wasn’t a city boy. I really didn’t try to be one. I didn’t want to be one. They thought I was different because I had my hair cut short. I was from up north where wearing short hair was the thing. I knew I was different, and I knew I was going to be somebody. So it didn’t bother me. I felt good about myself. If I didn’t feel good about myself, I would have been in a lot of trouble.

“Some players were mean to me. They didn’t want to respect my talents.”

But some people did, mainly people from some of the nation’s best college football programs.

“I graded the high school quarterbacks myself,” Nebraska Coach Tom Osborne said. “I looked at all the film and rated him the highest of the ones I saw. I liked the way he threw, and although they didn’t run many options at Lincoln, I could see he could run the ball. I figured running the option was something he could pick up once he was here.”

It didn’t take him long. In a program in which almost every freshman is redshirted, Taylor went from starting quarterback on the junior varsity team to a backup on the varsity in four games. He showed promise when he came off the bench in the fourth quarter of the 1986 Fiesta Bowl against Michigan. He rushed 10 times for 76 yards and 1 touchdown as he helped the Huskers cut a 27-14 deficit before they lost, 27-23.

He won the starting job in spring practice before his sophomore season and has matured into one of college football’s premier quarterbacks. He has shown an ability to pass (tying the school record with five touchdown passes against UCLA) and run (finishing the 40-yard dash in 4.54 seconds). He has rushed for 6 touchdowns and thrown for 13 more. He has rushed 85 times for 455 yards, an average of 5.4 yards per carry, and has completed 46 of 93 passes for 802 yards with 5 interceptions.

” . . . You want to put the ball in his hands 30 or 35 times a game,” Osborne said. “Whether he throws it or runs it. He will make something happen.”

Taylor has become most deceptive when he runs. He moves across the field fluidly, hardly appearing to lift his feet off the ground. He dispels the myth that high knee action makes a great runner. Ask coaches and teammates to describe his style and one word repeats.

“He just kind of scoots,” said Broderick Thomas, Nebraska’s all-Big Eight defensive end and Taylor’s good friend on the team. “Scoots, that’s what he does, he just scoots. It’s really hard to tackle people like that because you never know where they are going. Their feet never come off the ground, but they’re still moving.”

Mention scoot to Taylor, and he just laughs. Something about the description strikes him as funny. Although he is proud of his running ability, he would rather talk about passing. That is what a quarterback is supposed to do well, and that is what Taylor wants people to understand he can do.

Being accepted for his passing ability is central to his desire to be taken seriously as a black quarterback. For those who believe it is no longer an issue, Taylor makes it clear it still is very much a question in many minds. He raises the point himself.

“I hate people saying you can’t do this or you can’t do that when I know I can throw the ball as well as anybody,” he said. “It has nothing to do with being black. It’s just a matter of learning the offense. Our offense is complicated. It’s not run right, run left or throw right, throw left. We’ve got a lot of reads, just like a pro offense. It took me awhile to understand that, get used to the receivers and the defensive backs.

Taylor said he patterns himself after Turner Gill. It was Gill who made the black quarterback accepted at Nebraska, and it was Gill who would took time out the day before his wedding to meet with Taylor on his recruiting visit.

“He wanted to see how I felt, me being a black quarterback and coming to Nebraska from Texas,” said Gill, now a shortstop in the Cleveland Indian organization.

“He wanted to know about the black and white situation on campus. How I felt about being away from home. If this was the right place and the right coach for him.

“Steve wondered about being a black quarterback, but at Nebraska it doesn’t matter what you are, black, white, Mexican. Football is No. 1. The Nebraska football team is in the spotlight.”

Taylor said he was tired of being recruited by coaches who were less than sincere about testing his abilities as a quarterback.

Said Osborne: “Some coaches said they were recruiting him as an athlete and that they would give him a look as a quarterback. But he had a feeling after not too long, he would be playing something else.”

Terry Rodgers wanted something else. Despite all the comparisons with his father, he wanted to make his own mark at Nebraska. He wanted to play I-back.

Johnny Rodgers made his reputation as a wing back at Nebraska. Terry wanted none of that.

“My dad said he didn’t like playing wing back,” Terry said. “He didn’t get the ball enough.”

So Terry tried a different position--I-back--the one that former Nebraska player Mike Rozier used as a springboard to his Heisman Trophy in 1983. While he shunned his father’s former position, Terry did covet something else his father made famous. He wanted his number, and he got it, even though it had been retired after the 1972 season. The red No. 20 jersey with Rodgers stenciled on the back still resides in the Nebraska trophy case, but another version lives on the back of Johnny’s son. Only this season, Terry will not wear it.

He tore some tissue behind his right knee in the final preseason scrimmage in August. When the injury did not satisfactorily respond to medical treatment, an arthroscopic examination was conducted two weeks ago. The examination found no extensive damage, but Rodgers will not play this season. Osborne said the injury may help Rodgers because it will give him time to add bulk to his 5-foot 7-inch, 160-pound frame.

But it was a deep disappointment to Rodgers, especially coming in a spring game in which he scored three touchdowns. Rodgers came to Nebraska with impressive credentials from Sweetwater High School, where he set San Diego County career records of 3,764 yards, 360 points and 56 rushing touchdowns.

But he has struggled in his first two seasons. He played sparingly as a freshman, carrying 27 times for 135 yards and 1 touchdown. He also handled limited kickoff and punt return duty. He was hurt by a series of fumbles that kept him on the bench for the most of the season.

“He fumbled a couple of kick returns and didn’t get back in for a month,” Johnny Rodgers said. “Then he fumbled (again) and didn’t get in for another month. At Nebraska, you don’t sit out the rest of the day, you might sit out the rest of the month.”

Still, in the fall, Osborne expected Rodgers to challenge for the backup I-back position behind senior Keith Jones. It was a bit of a comedown after Johnny had spent much of the previous spring touting Terry’s abilities and discouraging Terry from announcing that he would attend Nebraska until late April. By the time Terry got to Nebraska, he found quite a few players ready to challenge his advance billing.

“I got clotheslined a couple of times,” Rodgers said. “I thought that’s the way it is in college.”

Little about those early days at Nebraska were routine, however. Not only was he challenged on the field, but he had to face those curious to see the son of Heisman.

“There was a lot of publicity on the first day,” recalled Richard Bell, a Nebraska wing back from Muir High School in Pasadena. “Everyone was taking pictures of him.

“Terry was kind of forced to be good because every step he took there was someone watching him. He handled it well. A lot of guys couldn’t do that. It didn’t bother him as much as it might have bothered me.”

But the injury has helped to make for a rather quiet season for Rodgers.

“When he was being recruited, it was a big deal,” Osborne said. “But now that he is here, the novelty of Terry being Johnny’s son has worn off a little bit.”

Terry has had little problem establishing his own personality, separate from his father. Johnny’s flamboyant reputation preceded Terry, but, except for some trademark suspenders and well-coiffed hair, he has shown none of Johnny’s flair.

“I’m a maverick; Terry is just a nice guy,” Johnny said. “He doesn’t have my point of view on quite a lot of things, and I don’t try to give it to him.”

Johnny has had legal troubles but says he has tried to insulate Terry from them. Johnny was sentenced to 180 days in the county jail in February for pointing a loaded gun at a cable television technician who came to his home to turn off service because of non-payment. Rodgers, who has served part of his sentence, is free on $35,000 bail and has appealed his conviction to the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego, according to court records.

“One thing about Johnny,” Terry said, “he can take care of himself. He’ll find a way to get back on top. It was kind of tough for a while, but I had a feeling he was going to get out of (jail). He just has a way of doing things.”

The circumstances are serious, but Terry can still smile at the thought of his father testing the system. It was if to say through all his troubles, the old man is still something special.

Night has fallen in Lincoln. The neon “N” shines bright above the stadium, and Taylor is on his way home from practice.

There is still a fall breeze blowing as he ducks into his customized car as he heads down 9th Street toward the edge of the business district.

Taylor is at home in Lincoln.

“It’s a lot more like Fresno than San Diego was,” he says. “That’s why I like it here. I’m not a city person. I don’t like the city. There’s a wild bunch there, a wild bunch.

“It depends on what you’re into. If you’re into partying a lot, you’re not going to make it at Nebraska. So Taylor has found acceptance and adulation at another level--in the small-city, big-time atmosphere of Nebraska football.

That sometimes means facing embarrassing publicity, such as in January, when Taylor pleaded no contest to charges of driving left of the center line and giving a false report to the police in connection with an incident in which he accidentally struck a teammate, who was crossing the street. He was fined $100 plus court costs.

“I’ve told him that he should watch what he does because people are going to be watching him,” Gill said. “Everyone in town knows he is the Nebraska quarterback. It’s football in Nebraska, and that’s it.”

None of which seems to bother Taylor. When his teammates return to their hometowns in the summer, Taylor is apt to stay put in Lincoln except for a week or so back in California.

“I don’t see how he does that,” Smith said. “I don’t care if I was from South Dakota. I’d have to leave here. I can’t take it. But I leave here in the summer and come back, and Steve, same old Steve, is still around here. I can’t see how he does it.”

Maybe because he likes it.