Not One Born Every Minute : USC Fullback Terry Barnum Looks to His Family for Love, Guidance and Support

Terry Barnum, unexpectedly a productive player in his first year of playing offensive football at USC, tried putting his season in perspective recently.

He talked about his parents, brothers and sister.

It was they, he said, who brought him to this dance.

“There is one thing that’s even greater than being a Trojan, and that’s being a Barnum,” he said.

“I’m really grateful to my family. I have parents who are both at home, they don’t fight with each other. . . . Their children are more important to them than anything. Every day, that helps me.”

The 5-foot-10, 190-pound junior will start at fullback against Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl on Monday--a circumstance no one at USC would have predicted last summer.

For two years, Barnum was a reserve in the secondary, playing mostly on special teams. But in spring practice before this season, he was moved to offense and has become an effective receiver. He is second on the team to Keyshawn Johnson (58 receptions) with 33 catches for 283 yards.

Barnum’s first reception for the Trojans was a big one. In a 37-27 victory over Baylor at the Coliseum Sept. 24, he caught a sideline pass from Rob Johnson and turned it into a 52-yard gain. It set up a touchdown that gave USC the lead for good.

Barnum caught six passes for 77 yards in that game.

“We cried that night, when Terry made that play,” recalled his mother, Liz.

Said his father, Usher: “For two years, we were there for Terry, when all he was doing was running down on kickoffs. That was a great day for all of us.”

Terry Barnum’s transition from defense to offense was unexpectedly easy, and it happened in a way that the Barnums can laugh about now. But last spring, they were stunned by John Robinson’s reaction.

“I’d reached the point at USC where I thought I might be a backup secondary player the rest of my career,” Barnum said.

“I was beginning to think like: ‘Well, I was a great high school player and that’s probably going to be it.’

“But I talked to my parents and told them I wanted to ask Coach Robinson for a chance to play offense.”

Usher Barnum recalls it this way:

“We had a family meeting, by conference call. We got Terry’s older brother, Usher, Jr., on the phone in Washington, and his sister, Kim, in Massachusetts.

“The entire family was involved. We wrote down every possible argument Terry should make in his presentation to Robinson. And we wrote down every possible rebuttal Terry should make, if Robinson resisted the idea. There were several conference calls.”

Thoroughly programmed, Barnum made an appointment to see Robinson.

In his office, Barnum asked the coach if he could play offense.

Replied Robinson: “Sure, fine.”

Barnum, slightly stunned, headed for a pay phone.

“Dad, he said OK,” Barnum told his father.

“You mean, that’s all he said?” Usher Barnum asked. “We didn’t have to make any of those conference calls?”

“Right.”

When spring practice began, Barnum had a strategy.

“My focus in spring was to leave no doubt in the coaches’ minds which side of the ball I belonged on,” Barnum said.

“I tried to get better on every play, make no mistakes and show them I could block.”

Barnum’s blocking has impressed the coaching staff as much as his pass catching.

“Terry is a very fundamentally sound blocker,” said Mike Riley, USC’s offensive coordinator.

“And on any average blocking assignment, he’s outweighed maybe 30 pounds. Sometimes he’s blocking down linemen. He’s small, but he’s compact and powerful. And he knows how to get low and use leverage on bigger guys.

“What he is, really, is courageous.

“And he’s so smart, you tell him something once and that’s it. If he doesn’t grasp it immediately, he can figure it out.

“Terry was the key to the midseason escalation of our offense. At the time he started catching passes for us, we weren’t really doing anything offensively very well.”

It wasn’t certain in the spring whether Barnum would play tailback or fullback, so over the summer he asked for another meeting with the coach.

“I asked Robinson what would have to happen for me to play, and he said: ‘Keep fullback in the back of your mind.’ I took that to mean I could play fullback or I could stand on the sideline and watch.”

Barnum arrived at USC in 1991, expecting to play offense after running for 1,150 yards as a tailback his senior year at Mission Hills Alemany High.

“When Larry Smith recruited me, I had the understanding I was coming in as an offensive player,” he said.

“He put me on defense in my very first practice and that’s where I stayed.”

In high school, football was only one of many activities in which excellence was encouraged.

“In my home, it was understood that sports was just part of the package of life,” Barnum said.

“If we got poor grades, Mom and Dad yanked us off the team, not the coach. In high school you need a C average to compete, but the Barnum family eligibility standard for sports was 3.0.”

Said Usher Barnum: “What we were looking for with all our kids was A’s and Bs. Cs were unacceptable. If Terry brought home a B in something like calculus, that was OK. One time he brought home a B in religion, and that was a problem for us.

“I said to him: ‘Religion? Religion is hard? What’s this all about? What happened?’ ”

Recalled Terry: “That was my junior year. Mom and Dad got in the car and went straight to school, to talk to my teacher. In those days, they even had home phone numbers for all my teachers.”

Today, Barnum has a 3.57 grade-point average, eighth-highest on the team. He also made the Pacific 10 Conference’s first team All-Academic team.

Terry, 20, was a surprise baby for Usher and Liz Barnum, now both 50. They live in Chatsworth.

Terry’s sister, Kim, 32, is a school teacher in Sharon, Mass. Usher Jr. is a 31-year-old Naval intelligence officer in the Pentagon. And Eric, 28, just passed the bar exam and works for a Santa Monica law firm.

“Terry was a gift to all of us,” Eric said. “If he’s spoiled, we all did it.”

It’s a family with split loyalties in USC-UCLA weeks. Eric is a UCLA graduate and sits on the UCLA side when USC is the foe, but he said he cheers for his brother.

Liz Barnum talked about the 31-19 UCLA victory last Nov. 19.

“We waited for Terry outside the USC locker room,” she said.

“And when I saw Eric greet his baby brother, when I saw the look of hurt on both their faces, I just. . . .”

She cried. And now she was crying all over again.

The Barnums are fans of two head coaches, Robinson and UCLA’s Terry Donahue.

“There’s a lot of respect for Terry Donahue in this house,” Liz Barnum said.

“When Terry decided on USC, he called Donahue and told him. And Donahue talked to him for 20 minutes, wishing him well. He was very nice. The Notre Dame assistant coach who recruited Terry wasn’t at all nice about it, and even got angry on the phone.”

Barnum’s parents are often asked for advice on parenting.

“Our kids all turned out great, and now we’re enjoying the fruit,” said Usher Barnum, a quality planning manager for a firm that makes aluminum cans.

“Not long ago a friend was telling me about some problems his son was having. I asked him: ‘Well, did you tend your garden? Did you fertilize it? Did you weed it?’

“I mean, I look back on all those hot afternoons when I watched Terry run track. And Liz, all those hours making Halloween costumes. Parenting is hard work.

“My kids all had an 11 o’clock curfew. There were extensions, but there had to be a conversation about it first. I told my kids, I don’t want them out late at night and bored someplace.

“And above all, I didn’t want them ‘hanging out.’ I don’t know what ‘hanging out’ is, but I know I don’t like it. What could be out there after midnight that could possibly be more enjoyable than being at home with your family?”

The Barnum home was a mini-school.

“Our dining room table was a study table for neighborhood kids,” Liz Barnum said.

“They had to sit there and do homework. They weren’t allowed to talk, but I’d make snacks for them.”

Usher: “We did things a little backwards. After our kids were born, Liz stopped working and stayed home. And when they started school, she went to school with them.

“She worked at the snack bar, and our kids saw her as much as their teachers. We were in the PTA and the booster club.”

Not much has changed with the Barnums. This semester, while on vacation, Usher spent a day at USC with his son, attending all his classes with him.

Soon all their children will be on their own, but Liz Barnum said she and Usher still cling to one rule.

“When any of the kids are at home visiting, we still have the rule that we must all sit down and have one meal together, at home,” she said.

“It’s when you come together as a family, and talk about your day. Even when they were all in school, if one child didn’t come home until 8, then that’s when we had dinner together.

“I still insist on that.”