It Turns Into a Sunny Day for Trojans

While the All-American boy was having an All-American game for USC’s football team Saturday, the California surfer dude wasn’t doing badly, either.

Indeed, in the Trojans’ 48-17 rout of Arizona State at the Coliseum, a star might have been born, and it wasn’t Carson Palmer. Quarterback Palmer has been a star, and been a fizzle, on and off for three years now, and his 295-yard, three-touchdown effort against the Sun Devils swung the pendulum back to star again.

No, this new twinkle in the Trojan sky is named Sunny Byrd. If you are an ardent USC fan and have never heard of him, don’t feel bad. You are in the majority.

Byrd is a 23-year-old senior. When he entered the game at tailback in the final minute of the second quarter, the ball on Arizona State’s three and USC’s lead a shaky 14-7, he had never carried the ball in a game for the Trojans. Until Saturday, his last moments of any sort of stardom had probably been as a senior at Manhattan Beach Mira Costa High, where he rushed for 1,336 yards and scored 17 touchdowns. That was 1996 and he was an all-conference selection.

He then spent three years at El Camino College, not even playing football his freshman year, then transferring to USC for the fall of 2000 and taking a redshirt year. When he left Mira Costa, he was 170 pounds and said he didn’t think he was good enough to play in college. And he didn’t mean USC. He meant El Camino.

So his path to Saturday’s stardom is certainly a road less traveled.

USC has its star running back, but Sultan McCullough has been battling a stomach injury and was along the sidelines again in the first half because of that.

Still, had it not been for an incident this spring during practice, it is unlikely that Coach Pete Carroll would have even thought of tossing a rookie backup fullback into the breach as the main ground-attack weapon for keeping the defense honest in support of Palmer’s passing.

That spring incident occurred one day when Carroll was out of fullbacks for scrimmage. Everybody was injured, and so, for that matter, was Byrd.

But Byrd spoke up, said he could go, and kept pressing when Carroll hesitated because of Byrd’s still-healing knee injury. Finally, Byrd persuaded the coach, and ended up playing in the entire scrimmage.

Somewhere, in the back of Carroll’s mind, that memory remained, especially as he talked to his assistants about wanting more line-banging from his backs, rather than fancy darts and dips.

So when Byrd was beckoned late in the first half, he entered not as a 170-pound kid from Mira Costa, but as a 220-pound battering ram. He is five years and thousands of hours in the weight room removed from Mira Costa.

So, on his first carry as a Trojan, he juked inside and then circled to his right for a touchdown. Easy as that, and USC led, 21-3.

Carroll liked what he saw and on the way out of the tunnel before the second half told Wayne Moses, his running backs coach, that he wanted to ram Byrd into the line as many as 10 times in the second half.

Byrd’s evening ended with 1:13 to play, his 20th carry and team-leading 63 yards rushing already recorded, the victory well assured and him flat on his back, exhausted and cramping.

When he got up and was helped off the field, the Trojan faithful, most of whom had never heard of him two hours before, gave him a huge ovation. As he neared the sideline, there was Carroll, five yards out onto the field, greeting him, right hand extended.

And then the fun began.

Suddenly, the player teammate Charlie Landrigan calls a “fun-loving California surfer kid,” was sitting where the stars sit, at the head table, next to Palmer, meeting the press and answering questions that, in most cases, added up to: “Who the hell are you?”

It was a hoot. Byrd, blond and square-jawed, muscles rippling in his cutoff T-shirt, told how he surfs as much as he can and even hits the waves during the football season on the bye week.

“I get out any chance I can get,” he said. “It is kind of healing out there.”

What about your name, your family, he was asked. Why Sunny?

“My parents are hippies,” he said. “My younger sister is named Coral, my brother Jade and my older sister Niaja.”

OK, so what are your parents’ names, he was asked?

“Pat and Lisa,” he deadpanned.

Turns out that Pat and Lisa, though leaning a bit in their sartorial approach to Grateful Dead T-shirts, are employed, respectively, in the carpet-cleaning business and as a midwife at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

It also turns out that they are around for most of the games and, most likely, were as thrilled with their son’s performance as were the majority of the 43,508 in attendance.

“He works hard, and he can play,” said Landrigan. “He earned this. This was a game just waiting to happen for him. He’s always smiling, always has his head up, no matter what is happening. He is the Sunshine Boy.”

Not to mention a pleasant surprise for Trojan fans, who badly needed one.