COLLEGE FOOTBALL : Abdul-Jabbar (or ‘You Know Who’) Is Center of Attention : UCLA: Even the Stanford public-address announcer is overwhelmed by Bruin tailback’s performance.

The name is almost the same, and similar athletic greatness may not be far behind for running back Karim Abdul-Jabbar of UCLA’s football Bruins.

With this football Abdul-Jabbar, everything seems to start with his name, which is a Muslim near-match of his basketball-playing fellow Bruin Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And the fact that the football Abdul-Jabbar wears the same No. 33 that the basketball Abdul-Jabbar did while becoming perhaps the greatest ever in his sport is not lost on people.

But Karim is fast establishing an identity that needs no help from Kareem.

Saturday, in a ball-carrying performance that led UCLA to a 42-28 victory over Stanford, Karim Abdul-Jabbar looked like a slam dunk for future stardom. He carried the ball 42 times, gained 261 yards and scored four touchdowns.

For Stanford fans in the crowd of 45,075, his name became as familiar as a guy named Joe. Near the end, the public-address announcer identified one of Abdul-Jabbar’s runs with: “You Know Who.”

It was quite a compliment. But there were others, many others.

Said his coach, Terry Donahue: “This guy just took over the game. It had to be one of the greatest performances I’ve seen in my coaching career.”

That’s a career that is in its 20th season with the Bruins.

Said UCLA center Mike Flanagan: “Amazing doesn’t quite do it justice.”

Said All-American tackle Jonathan Ogden: “He’s the greatest back I’ve ever blocked for. At the end, he was going so well, and we were going so well, that we would just line up for a play and you could feel that it would just work perfectly.”

And his father, Naim Shah, so joyous on the field afterward that he was nearly reduced to uncontrollable babble, said: “This was his greatest game. And now he’s exhausted. He carried the ball 42 times in 102-degree heat.”

Well, not exactly 102, but paternal exaggeration was understandable in the wake of a performance that stood as the third-best rushing day of all-time by a UCLA back, following games of 274 by Theotis Brown and 266 by Gaston Green.

In fact, in this case, the son kept a slightly better perspective on things than the father.

“The big thing was winning, as it always is,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “And I sure hope this isn’t like the last time up here. That time, we got back to LAX and, as soon as we got off the plane, I threw up.”

That was 1993, when he gained 187 yards against Stanford and was known as Sharmon Shah. Now, two years later, his stomach seemed just fine and his coach was mentioning him alongside other great Bruin backs such as Freeman McNeil, Eric Ball, Brown and Green.

“I don’t like to make comparisons, because that always hurts somebody else’s feelings,” Donahue said, “but this guy today was something special, something I haven’t seen often in my years here.”

Clearly, like the familiar name he carries of a man he has yet to meet, Abdul-Jabbar stood tall in Stanford Stadium, where even the Stanford band and its mascot tree were cast in the shadow of his great performance.

As Flanagan said, “After a while, you’d watch what he was doing out there with almost disbelief.”

Were this sort of collegiate performance to continue for the remainder of UCLA’s schedule, there will be additional disbelief if Abdul-Jabbar does not turn pro, even though he has a season of eligibility left. If, or when, that pro career blossoms, it will be interesting to see if continued stardom makes the name Abdul-Jabbar a sports household word again.

And if the best-known spelling becomes K-A-R-I-M.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Running Man

Karim Abdul-Jabbar became the seventh UCLA back to rush for more than 200 yards: *--*

Player Year Car. Yds Theotis Brown 1978 26 274 Gaston Green 1986 33 266 Karim Abdul-Jabbar 1995 42 261 Freeman McNeil 1980 29 248 Chris Alexander 1992 35 227 Eric Ball 1985 22 227 Gaston Green 1986 39 224 Theotis Brown 1976 35 220 Kevin Williams 1991 30 210

*--*

Note: Abdul-Jabbar also broke his UCLA record for carries in a game. In 1993, he carried 40 times against Stanford. His four touchdowns tied the school record held by five others.