Titan Quarterback’s Unusual Dream Team? Cal State Fullerton

When Trendell Williams signed a letter of intent in January, 1991, to play football at Cal State Fullerton, he told Coach Gene Murphy it had always been his dream to play for the Titans.

Murphy didn’t know what to give Williams first--a playbook or some smelling salts.

A dream to play at Fullerton, which had gone 1-11 in 1990? Yeah, and Little Leaguers all over the country went to bed with visions of Cleveland Indians dancing in their heads.

“He didn’t believe me,” Williams said. “He thought I was pulling his leg trying to get a scholarship.”

But this was no joke or attempt to score brownie points.

Williams grew up in the same Compton neighborhood as Daren Gilbert and John Nevens, who both starred at Dominguez High School and became standouts on Fullerton’s 1984 team, which went 11-1, the best record in school history.

Williams’ friendship with the two players drew him to several Titan games in 1984, and Fullerton’s high-scoring offense and hard-nosed defense turned Williams, then 14, into a Titan fan.

“I had always followed them after that, and to me they always did pretty well up until 1990,” said Williams, a former Dominguez High and Los Angeles Valley College quarterback. “I had a real close bond with those players, especially Nevens. He told me how great it was playing there.”

Williams wasn’t sure if he would get the chance to see for himself. He was being recruited by several schools, but Fullerton didn’t show any interest until mid-January, 1991.

“They heard I hadn’t signed, and I took a trip there the next weekend,” Williams said. “That Monday, I was a Titan.”

But for how long? The following week, the school announced it was considering an athletic department recommendation to drop football.

The program was in limbo for nine days until university President Milton Gordon decided to keep Division I-A football. But in the meantime, Williams and several other recruits were released from their letters of intent.

Many left. Williams stayed, and his persistence has paid off. The 22-year-old junior will be starting his second game at quarterback tonight when the Titans take on UCLA in the Rose Bowl.

“I could have left, but I like to stick to my commitments,” Williams said. “I committed here, and I decided to stick with it through thick and thin.”

Literally.

The thick: Williams was a chunky, six-foot, 210-pounder during a redshirt season in 1991.

Most of the extra weight gravitated toward Williams’ thighs and hips. He became the butt of a few jokes. “Coach Murphy used to say he could always pick me out in a group because of my rear end,” Williams said.

He got down to 205 pounds for spring practice in April but was unable to win the starting quarterback job. Coaches told him he would have to improve his quickness to have a chance of running the new option offense.

The thin: Williams reported to fall camp at a more trim, more athletic-looking 190 pounds. He was quicker. He was faster. He had a better grasp of the offense.

He won the starting job and had a respectable debut, running for 78 yards and two touchdowns and passing for 93 yards in the Titans’ 28-7 victory over Cal State Northridge last Saturday.

“He worked his butt off over the summer,” Murphy said. “The difference in his play from last spring to this fall is like night and day.”

In three years as a high school varsity starter and parts of two as a community college starter, Williams had run a variety of offenses, but never an option. No wonder he seemed confused last spring.

“I was lost,” he said. “I wasn’t comfortable with the offense, and I had doubts about it.”

But the more he ran it, the better he got. He still needs work, as the Northridge game will attest--Williams fumbled once on a keeper, then a shaky handoff to fullback Tim Ryan resulted in another fumble, and a poor pitch to Reggie Carter led to another--but he has shown promise.

Williams was quick enough to get outside on several runs and showed some elusiveness in the open field. On one play-action pass, a 34-yarder to Carter in the fourth quarter, Williams stirred memories of a play that Damon Allen ran so successfully during the 1984 season. The quarterback runs an option to the right side, then takes a quick two-step or three-step drop and throws.

“There were some flashes of Damon Allen,” Murphy said, “but he doesn’t remind me of him yet.”

Comparisons to Allen, who went on to become a star in the Canadian Football League, are a long way off for Williams, and consecutive games against UCLA and Georgia next week could stunt his growth.

But Williams has shown the potential to excel as a college quarterback, a position most coaches didn’t think he could play at the Division I level.

A series of shoulder injuries--he separated it as a high school sophomore, then again after his senior year, and aggravated it once more during his sophomore year of community college--and some serious doubts about his throwing arm raised the same question among college recruiters: Would you play defensive back?

But Williams had never played defense and wasn’t interested in a switch.

Oregon State was one of the few Division I schools to pursue him as a quarterback, but Williams told coaches there he wasn’t interested in running the wishbone. Now the Titans are.

“It’s funny how that worked out,” Williams said. “It was probably a gamble for Fullerton to take me--I had just had shoulder surgery in December, 1990--but once they made an offer, I jumped at it. And I’m happy I stayed.”