COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’95 : He’s the Key : USC’s Johnson Is Big, Fast and Can Catch the Ball. But Can He Avoid Trouble With the NCAA?

Players laughed, shrieked with joy and snapped one another with wet towels.

That was the happy aftermath in a steamy dressing room at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas last Jan. 2.

A good college football team, USC, had just played a great game, crushing Texas Tech, 55-14. Yet the Trojans’ coaching staff wasn’t sure if it should laugh or cry.

The best athlete on the field that day, Keyshawn Johnson, had played wide receiver about as well as it can be played. And then, for USC, the realization set in that it might also have been Johnson’s final college game.

He played that day with grace, speed and exuberance . . . and with a special kind of arrogance that sharply defines this athlete, just as it did a champion in another sport, Muhammad Ali.

He caught eight passes for 222 yards, a Cotton Bowl record, and three touchdowns, another Cotton Bowl record. Had John Robinson not reined in his starters in the third quarter, Johnson might have had a 300-yard game.

And when it was over, when he and his teammates ran up the tunnel to their dressing room, he confronted a Texas Tech player, who before the game had advised Johnson not to perform any Heisman Trophy poses during the game.

“Don’t ever give me a personal challenge like that,” Johnson said, pointing at him.

Naturally, he had done the pose, after his first touchdown had given USC a 27-0 lead. End zone spectators responded by booing and throwing tortillas at him.

He loved it, of course.

But USC coaches late that afternoon wondered if they’d seen Johnson in his last Trojan game.

Robinson and his staff could only imagine the worst as they watched their team celebrate. Johnson, they figured, had just climbed a round or two in the NFL draft, if he chose to leave USC early.

“After the Cotton Bowl, I figured it was 50-50, whether he’d stay or not,” said Mike Sanford, who coaches the wide receivers.

“Coach [Robinson] and I talked and we felt we were obligated to give Keyshawn the best information we possibly could, to help him make a decision. We didn’t feel we should recruit him to stay, even though it was in our best interests that he stay. We felt if we did that, then he wouldn’t trust us.

“We put together all the pluses and minuses for him in a package, put it on the table and told him it was his decision.

“His mom was fully involved in everything. She sat in on some meetings. Obviously, getting his degree this year was important to them.”

To cut the tension, Johnson became a tease in the days before his Jan. 9 announcement that he was staying.

Center Jeremy Hogue remembers him autographing a football and saying, “Who knows, this may be my last autographed ball as a Trojan.”

And Johnson enjoyed unnerving the coaches by sometimes saying, “Well, you know, I really don’t like going to class that much . . . “

As much as he joked about it, Johnson was not having an easy time. At a high school football banquet in December, he told the players being honored he was remaining in school. Two days later, he was still asking friends, “What do you think I should do?”

“Coach Sanford and Coach Robinson really helped me,” Johnson says now. “They gave me everything I needed to make my own decision.

“I did some NFL research on my own. I talked to Bobby Beathard [general manager of the San Diego Chargers] and Norv Turner [coach of the Washington Redskins]. They didn’t try to point me in one direction, they just told me to make sure I considered everything, then decide what was best for me, not what anyone else wanted me to do.

“One thing they did tell me was that if I got hurt this season, I’d be judged pretty much on what I did last year, so that was a factor in staying.”

When Johnson awakened on decision day, Jan. 9, he still hadn’t made up his mind, he said. A news conference had already been scheduled for him at USC.

“I picked up the phone and called my brother, Michael, and said to him, ‘I’m going to stay in school.’ And that was it. It was done with.”

Johnson, Robinson and Sanford agree that he will be roughly a top-10 draft pick next spring with a season similar to last year’s, a top-five with a better one.

But how much better can Johnson be than he was on Jan. 2?

John Goodner, Texas Tech’s defensive coordinator, wondered that too.

“It was a classic case of a big, fast guy with great hands being covered by small cornerbacks,” Goodner said.

“He just created mismatches all day. In the film, our corners were in proper position to cover the guy--they played well--they just weren’t big enough.

“Receivers like Keyshawn Johnson are the reason why every college coach in America is looking for tall corners, kids who are tall yet quick-footed enough to cover big, fast guys. And they’re scarce. We’re huntin’ for ‘em, but we can’t find any.”

Johnson returned to a football team that is easily the best of Robinson’s teams in his second term at USC . . . and to a Pac-10/NCAA investigation into whether or not he illegally accepted money from a sports agent.

The investigation has also inquired about a $15,000 bank loan Johnson took out to pay for a $1-million insurance policy covering him against a career-threatening injury in his senior season. The NCAA, which permits such insurance policies, has asked Johnson to submit loan papers.

Through it all, Johnson has never wavered, according to his position coach.

“His concentration throughout the NCAA thing is phenomenal,” Sanford said. “To watch him perform on the practice field, you wouldn’t know what kind of pressure he’s under.”

Indeed, Johnson has gone from a relatively obscure junior college transfer a year ago to magazine cover boy.

And he is, in every measure, a better player, Sanford said.

“He’s bigger, stronger, in better condition and he understands defenses much better than a year ago,” he said.

In Manhattan Beach, there’s a sand dune with Johnson’s name on it.

Last summer, during preseason training camp, Johnson burned up his thigh muscles during his first experience with two-a-day workouts and caught only one pass in the first two games, not playing at all in a loss at Penn State.

Late this summer, Johnson and several other players were taken to the sand dune by conditioning coach Jim Strom.

“In two weeks, we went from six [repetitions] to 12 reps, up and down, up and down,” Johnson said.

“It was miserable, exhausting. I couldn’t even keep food down at first. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was even getting dizzy spells. But it paid off. My legs are tired now, but they don’t hurt.”

The 6-foot-4 Johnson, who played at 205 pounds last year, is noticeably more muscled through the shoulders and began training camp at 215 pounds.

He seems primed and confident for a run at three of Johnnie Morton’s school records: 88 catches, 1,520 yards and 14 touchdowns, all in 1993. Last season, Johnson had 66 receptions, 1,362 yards and nine touchdowns.

Sanford said, “I don’t want to take anything away from Johnnie Morton, but Keyshawn is not only the best receiver I’ve ever coached, he’s the best receiver I’ve ever seen.”

Robinson hopes that along with Johnson’s improved conditioning and strength, there will also be an improvement in deportment. Robinson got on Johnson’s case more than once last year for on-field demonstrations, the most flagrant of which resulted in a 15-yard penalty in USC’s 61-0 rout of Cal.

Afterward, Robinson said, “I told him if he ever did that again, his funeral would be at 4 o’clock the following day.”