A Score Subject : High school football: Oxnard’s Turner and Taylor attempt to shrug off their failure to meet SAT minimum.

Johnel Turner and Bryant Taylor dodged and darted toward nearly two miles in total offense as Oxnard High seniors last season.

Taylor, at 6-foot-2 and 215 pounds, is a powerful, explosive fullback who was juggling scholarship offers from the University of Miami to Southern California.

Turner is a fiery and fleet option quarterback who had narrowed his choices to Colorado and Nebraska.

Together they led one of the most explosive attacks in the area. Appropriately they were nicknamed TNT.

In 1989, for an Oxnard team that went 7-3, Taylor gained 1,436 yards in 228 carries (6.3 avg.) and scored 15 touchdowns. Turner completed 40 of 107 passes for 680 yards and seven. He also ran for 748 yards in 116 carries (6.5 avg.) and scored 18 touchdowns.

“Two incredible athletes,” said a coach from one of the nation’s top-ranked Division I teams. “Any coach would love to have them in his backfield.”

But Taylor and Turner weren’t quite as proficient in the classroom. Both failed to reach the minimum 700 score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

After a season in which they had been nearly unstoppable, TNT was defused by Proposition 48. Incoming freshmen at Division I schools who fail to reach 700 on the SAT lose their freshman year of eligibility.

“Man, I was embarrassed,” Turner said.

Taylor and Turner, however, will try to brush off the setback when they play for the East in the Ventura County Lions & Coaches All-Star game at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Thousand Oaks High.

Their dreams of carrying a football in front of 50,000 fans have been interrupted by the reality of carrying textbooks on Moorpark College’s secluded campus. The pair will attend Moorpark and play for the defending Western State Conference champion Raiders. They plan to transfer to a Division I school and play football after obtaining an Associate of Arts degree in two years.

The scenario disturbs Jeff Turner, Johnel’s uncle. Jeff Turner, 33, was a younger brother of Johnel’s father, Dwight, who died in a 1982 automobile accident.

Jeff Turner attempted to fill some of the void left by Dwight’s death. Although he lives in San Diego, he never missed an Oxnard football game. And he was equally interested in Johnel’s grades.

Jeff Turner graduated from Arkansas State with a bachelor of arts degree in business administration. His other brother, Barry, graduated from Wilmington College.

The anger in Jeff’s voice is clear when he considers Johnel’s SAT scores. Jeff, on numerous occasions, had offered to help Johnel with preparations for college.

“I did not want my nephew to be a Prop. 48,” he said. “I did not want him to be another great black athlete who didn’t make it.”

Yet that emphasis didn’t always penetrate Johnel’s stubbornness.

“He’d tell me I had to do this, and I had to do that, and I’d say ‘Yeah, whatever,’ ” Johnel said. “I never really worried about it. I should have.”

Jeff and Johnel admit Johnel could have put forth more effort in the classroom.

“It’s nobody’s fault but mine,” Johnel said.

But Jeff and Johnel also criticize Oxnard High for what they claim is its failure to prepare Johnel for the SAT.

“When he was a sophomore, he had 23 absences in biology and he had a B,” Jeff said. “Another time he had three Ds, a C, and an F, and they were talking like he was magna cum laude!”

One recruiter was appalled by Oxnard’s passive attitude.

“(Johnel) didn’t have a chance, academically,” he said. “It was embarrassing, as a recruiter, for me to even be there.”

Oxnard Coach Jack Davis, however, criticized Turner and Taylor’s attitude.

“We spent more time tutoring those two guys,” Davis said. “Personally, I don’t think Taylor wanted to go anywhere. If he did, he would have taken the test again. We scheduled him for the ACT (American College Test) and he didn’t show up.”

Johnel and Taylor, however, have tried to turn the embarrassment into a learning experience.

“I’m disappointed, but that’s life,” Taylor said. “You just have to go on.”

That path leads to Moorpark, which already has turned one Proposition 48 casualty--former Hueneme High star Freddie Bradley--into an All-American.

But Johnel and Taylor said their play on the field isn’t as much of a concern as their work in the classroom.

“Discipline is going to be the key,” Johnel said. “I want to see how much I have.”

Moorpark Coach Jim Bittner said they will have plenty of opportunity to measure their self-discipline.

“We’re very blunt about what they have to do and make sure they get it done,” Bittner said. “After talking with them, I think they realize that if they’re going to go on and play Division I football, this is their shot. This is the road they have to travel.”

Bittner said that road won’t be paved to accommodate the two standouts.

“They’ll be fighting for their lives like anyone else. They know that practically every four-year college coach in the country will be throwing that film up on the wall, and they don’t want to look bad.”

The pair contend that Proposition 48 might have helped them in the long run.

“It scared me in the right direction,” Johnel said. “There’s a whole bunch of would-haves and could-haves, but it’s time to figure out how bad we want to play Division I football.”