Fast Friends : Trojans’ Hannah Hopes to Match the Medal Won by Quincy Watts, but He Also Wants a Shot at NFL

Every day that senior Travis Hannah spends at USC is better than the first.

Hannah, a flanker in football and a quarter-miler in track, arrived from Hawthorne High in 1988 to find that he had been assigned to share a room with Quincy Watts, a bitter rival from Taft High in Woodland Hills.

Hannah despised Watts. And Watts couldn’t stand Hannah.

Their animosity had grown since the day 2 1/2 years earlier when Watts led Taft to the state track championship.

Standing on the victory podium, Watts looked down to see Hannah shouting at him, telling him that the championship would be won by Hawthorne the next year.

“It was just a lot of talking back and forth,” said Hannah, who helped Hawthorne win state titles the next two years.

So, two days after his mother had dropped him at USC, Hannah was back home in Inglewood.

“He said, ‘I’m going to stay here because Quincy is my roommate and I don’t want to be in the same room with him,’ ” said Hannah’s mother, Juanita Butler.

“It was a mess--very childish--but that’s how they felt.”

Hannah returned after a few days, but he and Watts tried never to be in the room at the same time. At dinner, they sat at opposite ends of the

cafeteria.

But before a mediator had to be brought in, a curious thing happened to the reluctant roommates.

They became friends. Then best friends.

“Like brothers,” Hannah said.

Said Watts: “It goes way beyond being best friends. We’re inseparable.”

Hannah’s mother is “Mom” to Watts. And Watts’ father, Rufus Watts, is “Pops” to Hannah.

Hannah and Watts have become one another’s biggest supporters.

They are so tight that, when Watts was interviewed after winning a gold medal in the 400 meters at the Barcelona Olympics, he looked into the camera and shouted a message to his friend, who was home in Los Angeles watching on television.

“He’s the one who has been there with me,” Watts said. “He knows exactly what I’ve been through.

“Last season, when we crossed the finish line, I’d look back at him and we’d hug each other and say, ‘Nice job.’ This time, I crossed it by myself. I couldn’t hug him, so I acknowledged him on TV.”

It is Watts’ belief that if Hannah hadn’t devoted so much time to football, he would have joined Watts in Barcelona.

“He could have been just as good as me,” Watts said.

Hannah, though, has not decided which he would like more, a career in the NFL or a gold medal.

He’d like both.

The fastest Trojan will come highly recommended to NFL scouts by Mike Sanford, who coaches USC’s wide receivers.

In a different situation, Sanford said, the 5-foot-8, 160-pound Hannah would be a featured performer, catching 50 passes a season. At USC, however, Hannah is the No. 3 receiver behind Curtis Conway and Johnnie Morton. He has caught 15 passes for 195 yards.

“His only drawback is his height, but he has so many overriding characteristics that make him a guy that could play in the NFL,” Sanford said. “The first is speed. The second is general athletic ability and catching ability.

“He has become a detailed, disciplined receiver. When he first came here, he was just a fast guy running around out there. He’d try to run a 15-yard route and he would be going so fast that it would take him until 18 to 20 to stop and get turned around.

“He’s gotten a lot better at controlling his speed and using his speed properly.”

Hannah, chasing Watts to the finish line six times, enjoyed his best track season last spring.

A former state champion in the 400 meters, he ran a personal-best 45.17 seconds in the event during the semifinals at the NCAA championships.

He was fourth in the final.

At the U.S. Olympic trials, he was eliminated in the quarterfinals.

Making it to the Atlanta Games in 1996 is a goal, Hannah said. But his mother, a former sprinter at Tennessee State, said that football is her son’s passion.

Because Hannah suffered from asthma, his mother wouldn’t let him play football until he got to high school, which was also when he took up track.

“He has always been a very aggressive little boy,” his mother said. “He has always been the type of child (to say), ‘I don’t care if I have this problem. I can overcome it by doing whatever I want do to.’ He has always been an overachiever.”

And in football, Hannah seems to have more to prove.

“Everyone thinks, ‘Travis is too small to play football,’ ” he said. “But it ain’t a matter of size. If you’ve got a big heart, you can get in there and play.”