Perry Not Type to Sit, Watch

The scar begins on Rod Perry Jr.’s left kneecap and continues down about six inches. That’s his good knee.

The surgeons removed part of his left patellar tendon in September and put it in his right knee to replace his practically nonexistent anterior cruciate ligament. As a result, the closest Perry gets to a football field on Saturdays this fall is the sidelines of the Coliseum for USC home games. Road games this season, in what would have been his freshman year at wide receiver for the Trojans, are spent in front of the television set.

This past Saturday was the worst. He watched a big screen TV at his friend’s house when the Trojans played at Washington, the one trip Perry wanted to make more than any. That’s the school he lived near when his father, former Rams’ cornerback Rod Perry Sr., was an assistant coach for the Seattle Seahawks. It’s the school he most seriously considered attending if he hadn’t chosen USC.

He could only watch from 1,000 miles away Saturday as his team went scoreless for the first time in seven years, his athletic director made another damning noncommittal to his coach in a sideline interview and the USC receivers dropped pass after pass.

“That’s what makes me want to play the most,” Perry said. “That’s the most frustrating, watching when things aren’t going right. I could be catching passes.”

But then there are those times when it’s much safer to be in the living room. One moment, USC wide receiver R. Jay Soward is trying to catch a pass, the next he’s clocked by Washington safety Tony Parrish. When Soward came to his senses, he was on the Trojan bench getting asked how many fingers were being held up in front of his face.

“That would have been me,” Perry said. “Plays like that make you think.”

It doesn’t take much to start thinking about the danger of football, just a little time watching a sport where big men collide violently on every play and quarterbacks suffer concussions on a weekly basis.

“That definitely has me thinking,” Perry said. “I have nothing to do but think. But I’m not going to think about that when I play. I’ve never ever played with injuries in the back of my mind. As soon as I get back it’ll be business as usual.”

He watches the games from a different perspective now. He looks at the various hits, twists and turns a knee can take during a game and understands the effect they can have.

Perry saw the replay of Washington running back Rashaan Shehee’s knee bent to the outside in a game- and potentially season-ending injury Saturday and blurted out: “That’s MCL.”

Later the reports confirmed Perry’s diagnosis: Shehee had a sprained medial collateral ligament. If anything, the loss of Washington’s top rusher helped the Trojans’ chances to win. Perry couldn’t find a reason to be happy.

“Ever since this [injury], every time I see someone get cut blocked or a defensive player chops someone down, I say, “Oooh. I don’t like that,’ ” Perry said.

“I was watching something where they said there are actually more injuries because today’s athletes are bigger and faster. The ligaments can’t handle the muscle weight and the speed athletes are moving at, and the cutting.

“But the guys that play know what they’re getting into. You never like to see it happen, but injuries come.”

It all begs the question: why play a sport with such a high rate of injury? Especially when he has a chance at a professional career in baseball, where the careers last longer and the only occupational hazards are the occasional inside fastballs and run-ins with an outfield fence.

The Baltimore Orioles took Perry in the 37th round of the draft this year, and scouts have told him he would have gone higher--perhaps as high as the second round--if he were more committed to baseball and didn’t want to play college football.

“I have thought, ‘Maybe I should do what’s safer,’ ” Perry said. “But I’ve dreamed since I was little that I want to play both [sports] professionally--or at least get close. I’m not ready to throw those dreams away.”

Football is in his blood, he explains. He definitely inherited the athletic genes that helped his father make the NFL. He’s been through surgery before, and it wasn’t enough to convince him to stop. He first tore his anterior cruciate ligament as a junior in high school. He was running a reverse, made a cut and heard a pop.

He went through rehabilitation and came back even faster than he was before. The knee wasn’t a concern. His first game back, he was hit in the knee.

“I didn’t even know it until I watched the film,” Perry said. “I saw where that helmet hit me right in the knee. [During the game] I was just upset that the guy tackled me.”

His senior year at Mater Dei, the Monarchs won the championship. Perry was all-this and all-that. But his knee had never fully recovered from the first surgery. It bothered him during fall practice this year, and finally he elected to have surgery again.

When it was over the doctors gave him some stunning news. Everything he did his senior year of high school, all 78 catches and 1,493 yards and 19 touchdowns, he did without an ACL. It had degenerated.

Now he has a replacement, courtesy of his left leg (the doctors told him it would heal faster than if they took a ligament from a cadaver) and expects to begin running again on Dec. 10. He should be ready for baseball season next semester.

No rehab, no running in the pool. Just games. It will be a welcome relief after missing two of his last three football seasons.

“You want to be playing and having fun, being in front of people, scoring touchdowns, things like that,” Perry said. “My time’s going to come, next year. My time’s going to come in baseball. I just have to be patient.”

Perry has waited so much for most of the last three years, has been denied so often, that it’s excusable if he wants it all. He’s young enough to think he can get it. He’s optimistic enough--perhaps even naive enough--to think that John Robinson will be back as head coach, despite all indications otherwise. He’s watching, but he isn’t a fan. “I’m always a player,” Perry said. “Right now, it’s just a setback. I’m always a player until I’m done for good.”