Reason to Strut : USC’s Deon Strother Goes From Troubled Youth to Football Star and Good Student

In the fall of 1979, 7-year-old Deon Strother moved to Oakland with his mother.

The broken marriage of his parents in Saginaw, Mich., where his father was a General Motors assembly-line worker, had split the family. Too young to fully understand, Strother reacted by becoming a problem.

“I had to have someone to blame, so I blamed my mother” said Strother, now 21 and USC’s starting fullback.

“I was very unhappy, I didn’t like being in Oakland, and I made life as difficult as I could for my mom. I got in trouble at school, I got in trouble in the neighborhood. . . .

“Finally, she sent me back to Saginaw. When I was a 10th grader, after I settled down, I was sent back to Oakland.

“After I apologized to my mom for all the trouble I’d caused her, we got along fine.”

These days, Strother, a senior, is not only one of USC’s most productive and versatile offensive football players, he is a better-than-average student.

He has a 2.7 grade-point average, having switched his major from industrial engineering to business administration.

“Some of my first teachers in Oakland, when I was getting into a lot of trouble, they would be amazed to see how I’m doing in class today,” Strother said, laughing.

The only trouble Strother causes now is when he charges out of USC’s backfield to apply crunching blocks, catch a pass or get what’s needed on third and two.

Said Coach John Robinson: “Deon is a real football player, in the sense that he would fit into any era of football. He can do almost anything out there and loves to play.”

He even seems to like the pain of playing.

Since the 31-9 defeat by North Carolina in the season opener, Strother has walked around campus with an ice pack taped to his right shoulder.

“If you ain’t sore, you ain’t played,” he said.

And Strother likes playing so much that he will even play where he doesn’t really want to play, as he proved last spring.

“At first, I was overjoyed when I heard John Robinson was going to replace Coach (Larry) Smith,” he said.

“I knew he was a running coach, and that I figured to get a lot of carries at tailback. Then, in spring practice, he started running me out of the fullback spot. He said he wanted to see me there.

“Well, I’d been a tailback all my career. All through high school (at Skyline High in Oakland). And at SC, I’d been waiting three years to start at tailback.

“Then Robinson called me in one day and started talking about me playing fullback. He said Dwight (McFadden) looked really good to him at tailback, but that he wanted me in the game at the same time.

“I told him that was fine, that I wanted to contribute any way I could.

“But I really wasn’t happy about it. I thought: ‘Oh, man, fullback! All that blockin’ and poundin’. And I’ll never touch the ball. . . . ‘

“In high school and under Coach Smith here, the fullback never touched the ball.”

Strother, 6 feet and 205 pounds, does indeed take a pounding. But he is touching the ball a lot, and so he doesn’t mind the pain so much.

“I’m second on the team in receptions to Johnnie Morton, and he’s setting records,” he said. “And I’m third in carries. Yeah, I’m happy.”

Strother has 15 carries for 75 yards and 15 receptions for 144 yards.

Strother is on a pace to catch 60 passes. Last season, two USC fullbacks caught a total of three.

Mike Riley, USC’s offensive coordinator, marvels at Strother’s multiple skills.

“He’s so versatile and so reliable and so easy to coach,” he said.

“To me, he defines the term football player. There isn’t anything he doesn’t do well. We’ve had series where he’s made a key block, gotten us yards up the middle on a run, and caught a key pass.

“If we need one key block on a play, Deon’s who we look to. He’s also an outstanding pass blocker.”

McFadden, the starting tailback, broke his ankle in the North Carolina opener and was lost for the season. Since then, Robinson has said he has been tempted to switch Strother back to tailback.

“I don’t think we’ll do that,” Riley said.

“It is tempting because he runs well enough to play tailback, but it would hurt us for him to be out of the fullback position. We’re adding fullback run plays to the play book every week now.”

Strother hopes to land a job in an NFL backfield next year “with a team that has room for a back who can do a lot of things.”

Said Robinson: “He’ll be drafted by someone. He has a good chance to play in the NFL.”

Strother wants to use his NFL earnings to start a business that is slowly taking shape in his imagination.

“I’m intrigued by how big commercial properties, like high-rises, get financed,” he said. “Real estate really interests me, but I don’t mean pounding ‘Open House’ signs into the ground on Saturday mornings.

“So I like the idea of having my own real estate business. But I also like some phases of engineering, like systems management. I like projects where you do things like make existing computer systems more efficient.”

The season of ’93 has already been more productive for Strother than last season.

The week before last season’s opener against San Diego State, he suffered a sprained ankle.

“It was terrible,” he said. “It was six weeks before I could take off the boot and throw away the crutches.”

He suited up halfway through the season but had no more than four carries against anyone until he had 12 for 38 yards against Notre Dame.

Maybe he should switch to defense.

“Some schools recruited me as a strong safety,” said Strother, who had 110 tackles, including nine sacks as a linebacker his senior season in high school.

But on defense, Strother said he felt himself becoming part of a certain madness.

“Defensive people are basically crazy,” he said, laughing. “They see themselves as a pack of loose dogs, running around. There’s more discipline and control to offensive football.”