Mighty Mouth : NFL Draft Provides Latest Forum for Keyshawn Johnson, Whose Self-Proclamations Are as Bold as His Talents

Through the smoke, lights and god-awful blare around this Los Angeles street kid who would be king, there has appeared a question.

It first peeked out this month in Manhattan, somewhere between Keyshawn Johnson’s afternoon in a $575-a-night hotel suite and discussions about creating his own cartoon, and an evening appearance before autograph seekers in Times Square.

As the wide receiver thought about the likelihood that the New York Jets would make him the first pick in Saturday’s NFL draft, he told a reporter:

“If Earv wasn’t playing, I’d already own L.A. . . . New York would be cool too, I guess.”

Earv?

The question edged further into view this week, on Johnson’s return trip to New York, this time to announce a major shoe endorsement deal.

The invitations to the gathering were printed in the form of a key chain proclaiming that the shoe manufacturer “has signed the key to the future of football.”

The news conference occurred at the same sports bar to which Johnson donated his USC jersey despite never having played a game in New York.

No queries were taken about football. Only shoes.

Afterward, as Johnson was surrounded on 45th Street by fans who somehow recognized him out of uniform, he told another reporter:

“They know. Just like we know singers and actresses, they know.”

Singers and actresses?

One day before Saturday’s draft, the question has come into full view, as bold as the newly formed Keyshawn Inc., as brash as the post-draft celebration he has already scheduled for West Hollywood’s House of Blues.

It is this:

What on earth is Keyshawn Johnson going to be like once he actually does something?

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Barring a final-day trade, the Jets will draft Keyshawn Johnson on Saturday simply because he is the best player available who has never dragged his girlfriend down a flight of stairs and beat her.

In the draft’s 61-year history, he will be only the fifth receiver selected No. 1 overall.

The Jets will spend about 10 minutes celebrating.

Then they will sigh.

“He does talk too much,” said Dick Haley, Jet personnel director, who quickly added, “but he’s never gotten in trouble over it.”

The rest of the league’s personnel bosses will spend about 10 minutes in a jealous rage over losing a 6-foot-3, 220-pound sprinter who can halt breaths and change games.

Then they will think about such things as Johnson’s recent appearance on ESPN. While watching a tape of receiver Tim Brown being beaten by cornerback Dale Carter, Johnson said, “That won’t happen to me.”

They too will sigh.

“You’d rather not have a guy come off like that,” Mike Allman, Seattle Seahawk personnel director, said of Johnson’s pre-draft schtick. “But we are in America, aren’t we? Kids can say whatever they want.”

Another club executive said none of this would have been issue two months ago, noting, “You would have said, ‘He’s cocky, big deal, just look at Michael Irvin.’

“Now, people aren’t saying that.”

Johnson says he doesn’t care what people think or say.

“I’m not going to be something I’m not,” he said this week. “I’m from the inner city, this is a big deal for me, I’m just having fun.”

He laughed the infectious laugh that has won over dozens of influential players and coaches who have helped him on the long road from South Central L.A. to Broadway.

“People who say, ‘He’s arrogant, he’s cocky,’ they don’t complain when I’m scoring touchdowns or winning games,” he said. “I’m not going to be some old cranky guy who doesn’t like people.”

So exactly who is he? Besides the playmaker who set a Pacific 10 Conference record this year with 102 catches and was most valuable player in the Rose Bowl with 12 catches for 216 yards?

There are no clear answers.

One day during this pre-draft process, he claimed no knowledge of a shoe contract while saying, “We want to leave business affairs outside of all this. Everybody wants to know about it, but we don’t want to talk about it. This is about football.”

Two days later, he was on the podium with the shoe people in New York, talking about everything but football.

Before this season in a magazine article, he did not deny that his rocky childhood included a three-year stint beginning at 13 when he sold drugs. He was eventually arrested on charges of possession of a concealed weapon and marijuana and cocaine, landing him in a California youth facility for nine months.

But this week he denied any involvement in drugs and refused to discuss his past.

“It’s something we don’t talk about anymore,” he said.

Most mothers of top prospects spend weeks on the phone with reporters who wish to celebrate their offspring, but Johnson’s mother, Vivian Jessie, would not return calls for this story.

Johnson had already said that Jessie and the rest of his immediate family (two brothers, three sisters, girlfriend and 6-month-old daughter) were off-limits.

None of which surprises anyone who really knows him.

Friends and former coaches agree that Johnson is a genuinely friendly, kind kid whose exuberance should not be mistaken for innocence.

In transforming himself from a USC street rat who would sleep on players’ couches into a millionaire corporation, Johnson worked the streets as well as the cornerbacks.

He knows all the angles, they say, and who’s to blame him for using them when he has little else?

He scored an 11 on the Wonderlic learning potential tests given to all NFL prospects--the average is about 21. Yet many consider him brilliant.

“He’s an operator,” said Jack Epstein, longtime Southland football figure and Johnson’s coach for one season at Palisades High. “He’s a salesman.”

Said Paul Knox, Johnson’s coach in his senior year at Dorsey: “I always felt Keyshawn has been grooming himself for this day. I remember once a big-time college recruiting coordinator called me and said he had talked to Keyshawn that week. I said, ‘How do you know him?’ He said, ‘Keyshawn called me.’ ”

Ever the enigma, Johnson showed up at Palisades High directly from the youth camp driving a new car with new clothes.

“Never wore the same clothes twice, always driving different new cars,” Epstein said. “I told him once, ‘Leave that outfit in my locker, because I know I’ll never see it again.’ ”

A year later he talked his way onto the powerful Dorsey team by hanging around practice, baiting the receivers.

“One day I said, ‘You think you can do better, get your shoes and come on,’ ” said Darryl Holmes, a Dorsey assistant. “Well, he had his shoes in the trunk of his car. He got in the huddle, and he never left.”

Holmes brought Johnson to West Los Angeles College in 1991, where Johnson spent three years, mostly because he was kicked off the team his second season.

The reasons did not surprise anyone who knew him.

“He was on both offense and defense, and sort of playing each side against each other,” said Holmes, an assistant there. “To be honest, he could be a bit of a cancer.”

Many with the school wanted to immediately cut him out.

“They thought he was just one of those guys who would just run his mouth and never amount to anything, never go to school. . . . They wanted to run him off,” Holmes said.

But Holmes and Coach Rob Hager stuck behind their wonderfully talented, if frustrating, charge.

They were rewarded with more than the memorable touchdown catch that ended with Johnson running to the concession truck behind the end zone for a cold drink.

There was also the day, after halftime, when Johnson led the team through a tunnel of Bakersfield College band members before the Bakersfield players could get there. Johnson and his friends even jumped through a Bakersfield banner that had been stretched across the field.

“They were booing us like crazy, and what happens? Keyshawn catches a 90-yard touchdown pass and shuts them up,” Holmes said. “My favorite memory.”

By the time he was preparing to enter USC, Johnson was ready for the spotlight.

Jeff Fellenzer, local recruiting consultant, remembers the time Johnson gave an inspirational, foot-stomping speech to mother Sue Fellenzer’s class of Long Beach fifth-graders . . . before he had ever put on an USC uniform.

“But there he was, telling those kids to watch for number 3,” Fellenzer remembers. “And afterward, he was mobbed.”

So it will happen again Saturday, on a New York ballroom floor, with Jet fans howling for their new hero.

And down in Houston, former Trojan Jeff Fisher will sigh.

The Oiler coach remembers when Johnson was a ballboy and neighborhood pest, hanging around player apartments, dipping into their refrigerators.

Fisher pulled Johnson aside during the recent scouting combine in Indianapolis. He offered two words of advice: Chill out.

“If he handles himself right, from an image standpoint, he has a chance to be successful,” said Fisher, who would not discuss specifics of their conversation. “But he has to choose the right road.”

Several hours after their meeting, Johnson arrived at the Oilers’ interview room and was introduced to Houston General Manager Floyd Reese.

“I understand you and Jeff go way back,” Reese said, pointing to Fisher.

“Yeah, I used to carry his stuff around,” Johnson said with a smile.

Johnson paused.

“But now, he’s going to be carrying my stuff around.”