Peete and Affholter: Catchy Combination : They Stand Out in a Crowd of Defenders When Doing a Trojan 2-Step to Goal Line

It may not be Astaire and Rogers, not quite, but in terms of sheer compatibility, Rodney Peete and Erik Affholter are fast becoming one of college football’s better dance teams. And why not? You wonder whether Astaire and Rogers ever spent as much time together as these Trojans.

Affholter, who went over the 100-catch mark early in Saturday’s 35-3 beating of Cal, has been catching Peete passes for 5 years, in season and out. They take debate classes together. They play golf together. And on a day one can’t hold up his end of the deal, the other does.

Saturday, in the fast-falling fog of the Coliseum, they seemed to be operating at peak performance. Affholter caught 5 of Peete’s throws for 92 yards before leaving with a twisted ankle in the third quarter. Peete, meanwhile, went on to throw for 305 yards and 3 touchdowns. Peete, we remind you, doesn’t throw just to Affholter.

Sometimes it seems that way, though. Of all of Affholter’s statistics (102 catches, 12 short of the USC record), the most interesting may be this: going into the game, 32 of his 42 receptions were for first downs, 12 of which came on third down plays. This indicates a certain faith on Peete’s part.

“When you’ve been together 5 years,” Affholter said, “you know what the other guy’s going to do. In the passing game that’s particularly important. When he’s scrambling, I know what he’s going to do. He knows where I’ll be.”

Affholter has made a bigger commitment than just to get open. This summer, when the players were asked to write down their goals, Affholter wrote that he wanted to secure the Heisman Trophy for Peete. “I’ll sell myself out for him, go over the middle, whatever it takes,” he said.

“Not every pass is going to be a bullet, so I have to catch the ones I’m supposed to and the ones I’m not. He looks for me in tight situations and I look for him. I need to be there for him, to make him look as good as he can.”

Peete is looking good, indeed. And this game, with all those compelling numbers (22 of 29 for 305 yards), will help the Heisman voters decide.

Peete, on the other hand, seems equally determined to make Affholter an All-American. There are a number of plays where he looks to Affholter as the designated receiver, a number more when he settles on his heavily covered buddy because he delivers the goods. “Nine times out of 10,” Peete has said, “if I throw the ball, he’ll get it. Anywhere.”

If they’re Tracy and Hepburn on the field, they appear to be a little like Abbott and Costello off of it. Both are communications majors (the televised half-time show was a taped feature Peete did on Traveler) and they found themselves in what Affholter describes as an “argumentation” class this summer. In fact, the two were one of the two-man teams arguing against mandatory drug testing.

“That was hard because both of us are in favor of it,” Affholter said. “Also, Rodney was not all that prepared. The baseball team was playing up in Fresno or something so I had to carry the load. But we won anyway.”

The two pick each other up all the time. But the heat’s not always on. Like this summer. There was class, and they managed to run routes for nearly 2 hours every day. But there was time for golf, one of Peete’s passions. The two managed to sneak away and play about twice a week at Brookside Golf Course, adjacent to the Rose Bowl.

The two young golfers found, moreover, that if a ball was badly sliced off the 17th tee, it might land inside the Rose Bowl, a property USC has not had much luck in gaining entrance to. “We thought we might break the jinx if a ball, badly sliced by accident you understand, ended up in the Rose Bowl,” Affholter said. “You’d have to slice it pretty bad. We might have sliced a few, gotten them in accidentally.”

Of course, it’s not all Peete and Affholter; if it were, USC would be easy to stop. As receivers coach Roy Dorr said, “Rodney Peete works well with all receivers.” Saturday six receivers caught three or more passes in a diverse attack. On the other hand, Affholter does get a lot of calls when the series or even the game is on the line. In last year’s game against UCLA, Affholter made a juggling 34-yard catch late in the fourth quarter to keep the upset going. “That’s not an accident,” Dorr agrees. “You go with your most consistent people.”

And that would be Affholter, whom he describes as having “great concentration, field awareness, and tremendous lateral quickness. He’s the type of possession receiver you look for.”

He’s the one Peete looks for, in and around the Rose Bowl. “I wonder what happens to those golf balls,” Affholter wonders. In 2 weeks, in the Pac-10 clincher against UCLA, Affholter will have a chance to look for them. Those, and all the other ones Peete delivers.