He Knows How Fast They’ll Be Forgotten

Gather around, young warriors girding for Saturday’s USC-UCLA game. Pause in your preparations to fulfill a dream, change a career, define a life.

There is this shoe salesman you should meet.

Before that, he was a paper plate salesman.

Before that, a quarterback in Italy.

Before that, a bit player in “Forrest Gump.”

Before that . . . well, there was this football game in which he threw for 385 yards and three touchdowns, leading UCLA to a 38-37 victory over, who was that again?

Oh, yeah. USC.

His name is John Barnes. And he wants to tell you something:

“This weekend could be your one shot. Live it out, but just don’t make a big deal of it. Because in the end, nobody cares.”

*

For the first time in a long time, John Barnes was actually spotted in a crowd recently at a football game in Washington.

A woman thought he was Seattle Seahawk quarterback John Friesz.

“I kept saying no, and she kept not believing me, and I finally said, ‘Would I lie about something like this?’ ” he recalled.

It is important that John Barnes be recognized again this week, amid the steady beat of advancing drums hyping a game again being referred to as “ultimate.”

If so, how can one of its most improbable stars so quickly become one of its most forgotten?

Not that Barnes minds.

“I love my life,” he said. “I can’t stand sitting around guys in a bar talking about what they could have been in football, how they got cheated, all that stuff.”

How can he not be saying the same thing?

In 1992, in a matter of weeks, he rose from a fifth-string walk-on to the starting huddle where he directed a dramatic fourth-quarter comeback against USC.

A senior at his fifth college, he was a guy who had only been in school for four months, a vagabond who eight months earlier was begging for a spot on the team by trying out in a blazer and wing-tip shoes.

He spent his only spring practice holding a tackling dummy. He had started only three times before the USC game, and only then because the Bruins were devastated by injuries.

Next thing he knows, he is throwing a 90-yard touchdown pass to J.J. Stokes with 3:08 to play, giving UCLA the victory in its biggest game of the year.

And to never again take a snap in this country?

To never again walk into a restaurant, as he did afterward, and be surrounded by so many well-wishers he had to leave to catch his breath?

To never again be assured that you will be welcome behind your own bench?

This fall, Barnes was denied a sideline pass to the Bruins’ game at California, where his brother Pat plays quarterback.

“It seemed they thought I would be spying for my brother,” Barnes said. “C’mon. UCLA is my school, man. I will never sell out. I was disappointed in them.”

John Barnes, not cheated?

“No way, man,” he said. “For one game, I let it all hang out, I took it for everything it was. But then, it was over. Life goes on.”

And what a life his has been.

He realized immediately afterward that USC-UCLA was not like one of those college football rivalries were heroes become senators and scores are carved into trees.

“After a game, I drove to a gas station, got out of the car, somebody handed me a $5 bill and said, ‘Five dollars on number 5, please.’ ” he recalled. “The guy thought I worked there. I went from big man on campus to ‘Five on five.’ ”

Although he had used up his eligibility the previous four years in small schools from Oregon to Mission Viejo, Barnes remained at UCLA for a year after his heroics to get his degree.

Then, after learning about acting while talking to former UCLA student Mark Harmon, he landed a bit part in “Forrest Gump.”

“I was the chump standing next to Forrest on the kickoff return, the one who said, ‘Hey, Forrest! Forrest! Run!’ ” he said. “My only line.”

An indistinguishable chump, at that. He remembers his first date with a woman he wanted to impress. When he saw a Gump videotape on her floor, he figured he had his chance.

“We were watching it, and I was talking about what great supporting actors they had,” he said. “But when it came to my scene, she didn’t say anything.”

He rewound it and played the scene again. And again.

“Finally, I freezed the frame with my face, and walked up to the TV and pressed my real face against it. And finally she said, ‘Hey, isn’t that you?’ ” he said. “I said, ‘Well, actually, it is.’ ”

Then it was off to Italy, where the Torino Jaguars offered Barnes a chance that the NFL would not.

With just a few minor adjustments.

“Like linemen smoking cigarettes during the game,” he said.

And:

“Female referees running around with long, flowing hair coming out of their caps.”

And:

“Wine before games, and cheerleaders that were so bad they quit at halftime.”

Barnes had so much fun, however, that he finished the season with a separated shoulder. Then he returned home with an offer to sell items for a packaging company.

For years, he had sold himself, so why not something else?

“And I tell you what, I was the best darn paper-plate salesman around,” he said.

He recently moved into distributing and selling sports shoes. You can reach him at any one of four phone numbers, but call early and often, because he’s always on the run.

“The sun comes up in the morning and the guy who sits in bed, he isn’t the guy who gets things done,” he said.

Just don’t look for him at Saturday’s USC-UCLA game. He will be attending his brother’s big game with Stanford instead.

“No big deal,” he said of the monumental Rose Bowl clash that will break hearts and create legends and change society as we know it.

“I’ll just go next year.”