College Drop-Offs

There was this high school football game in 1997. Santa Margarita beat Tustin, 55-42, for the Southern Section Division V championship.

Santa Margarita had this quarterback named Carson Palmer who, at 6 feet 5, stood out among the other players. And his arm made people come out and watch practice. His arm made people show up before the game just to watch him throw in warmups.

Tustin had this tailback named DeShaun Foster, and he was faster than the other players. He was 6-1 and ran with such ease that defenders didn’t miss tackles. They were simply run over by him.

It is still talked about, this game.

“People come up to me all the time and ask about that game,” Tustin Coach Myron Miller says.

“Yeah, I still hear about it,” Santa Margarita Coach Jim Hartigan says. “All the time.”

In that game, Palmer completed 19 of 30 passes for 413 yards and five touchdowns. Miller says those stats should have been better. “Probably five or six passes were

perfectly thrown and flat-out dropped,” he says. “Perfectly thrown passes. It was a shame.”

Foster ran for 378 yards, scored six touchdowns and also played every defensive down as a safety. “The kid was amazing,” Hartigan says. “He was on the field every play and our kids were running off the field, tongues hanging out and saying, ‘Coach, we just can’t catch him.’ And these were good players, on both teams.”

This show in the high school title game? What a buzz it caused, what anticipation it brought to Southland football fans when, two months later, Foster signed with UCLA. If we were lucky, this show would be repeated four more times, Palmer flinging passes for USC and Foster running unstopped for UCLA. Two great individual rivals would add lore to one great team rivalry.

Greatness predicted. Expectations raised.

It is time for the USC-UCLA football game again.

Palmer was benched last week against Washington State. Foster has been injured, and also publicly embarrassed after a police incident involving marijuana.

And so the memories of that fall evening three years ago, the night when Foster was so exhausted he crumpled to the ground at the end of one 50-yard run, taken down not by a defender but by cramps, the same night Palmer threw every pass so perfectly that defenders in the right spot could not touch the ball because the ball was meant only for the receivers, those memories already seem sepia-toned, something to talk to the grandchildren about.

Palmer won the starting quarterback job at USC in the ninth game of his freshman season. He was only the second true freshman to earn that job (Rob Johnson was the other). Foster gained 673 yards, most by a UCLA freshman and was a first-team All-American freshman.

UCLA won the rivalry game that year. Foster had a 65-yard touchdown run and scored four times in the Bruins’ 34-17 victory. Palmer wasn’t bad himself, completing 28 of 43 passes for 252 yards and a touchdown. What fun the next three years would be.

By the end of their freshman seasons the talk was nonstop about Palmer and Foster. It wasn’t a matter of if but when--would it be after the sophomore or junior seasons that Palmer and Foster leave school early for the NFL? Wouldn’t it be great, the talk went, if these two Orange County kids were Nos. 1 and 2 in the Heisman voting? It could happen.

Greatness predicted. Expectations raised.

Then Palmer suffered a broken collarbone and sat out most of his sophomore year. Foster sprained an ankle badly, missed chunks his sophomore season and heard people question his work ethic. Sophomore seasons frittered away. Teams in disarray.

Their third seasons on campus arrived. Palmer was healthy. Penn State was beaten and Trojan fans started making Rose Bowl plans. Foster gained 187 yards and scored three times against Alabama in the season opener. Hurrah they said at UCLA. The Bruins were heading for the Rose Bowl for sure.

But this has not been a season of superlatives for Palmer or Foster. USC fell apart, and Palmer, the golden boy, got yanked last Saturday against Washington State. With 10 touchdown passes and 16 interceptions, no Heisman talk for Palmer.

Foster’s reputation was tarnished when he was cited for having marijuana, and continuing injury problems have some NFL scouts wondering about his durability. With 887 yards and 11 touchdowns, no Heisman talk for Foster.

If the talk two years ago was to be believed, Palmer and Foster should be winding down their college careers now. Two years ago, fans expected Palmer and Foster to be Heisman hopefuls pointing toward the pros as first-round draft picks.

“After they both had great freshman years,” says Hartigan, Palmer’s old coach, “it seemed like everybody thought Carson and DeShaun would run away with the Pac-10. But both have had some stumbling blocks along the way.”

Adds Miller, Foster’s old coach: “There’s a lot more to being a star at the college level than at the high school level. I still see the same star quality in DeShaun. But now he gets almost all his yards after contact. I see defenses keying on stopping DeShaun.

“Also, I don’t think DeShaun realized, after his first year, how hard you need to work. He does now. He’s one of the strongest kids at UCLA. That’s from hard work.”

Allen Wallace, a magazine editor and respected high school football recruiting expert, lives in Laguna Beach and remembers the game. “It was an unbelievable night,” he says. “Every time each one of them had the ball, something great happened. It was the highest level of high school football. It was fantastic to see, two fantastic kids, both very big guys, these athletes who were dominant both mentally and physically. You walked away from the field that night thinking that whoever got those kids was recruiting very well.

“But nobody should be predicting how kids will turn out. With DeShaun, pound for pound, I’d still take him over any running back in the Pac-10. I still think he could be a superstar in the NFL.”

About Palmer, Wallace says, “it’s a more complicated case. You can’t discount the coaching situation at USC and what that’s doing. When you look at Carson early in the season, I think he was trying to do too much. He is, literally, trying to be a Superman but, holy Moses, this is a tough situation.

“When I look at Carson, I’m reminded a little bit of the Ron Powlus case. The expectations of being quarterback at Notre Dame combined with some injuries ultimately guaranteed almost complete failure.”

Miller says he would not be surprised at all if, on Saturday, Foster and Palmer star again. But Miller didn’t say he would expect it. Few do.

Expectations gone. Greatness put on hold.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.

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The Big Game

Attendance was estimated at 7,500 when Santa Margarita and Tustin met in the 1997 Southern Section Division V championship football game at Cal State Fullerton.

But many more people probably now claim to have seen what was a classic scoring shootout between players considered to be the best in Southern California at their positions.

Santa Margarita won, 55-42.

The teams combined for 1,062 yards, 588 by Santa Margarita.

DeShaun Foster finished the 1997 season with 3,398 yards rushing and an average of 10.5 yards a carry. He ran for 55 touchdowns and scored 362 points--both Southern Section records--on his way to winning The Times’ Glenn Davis Award, given annually to the top high school football player in Southern California.