Stiff-Arm Competition

If you want to talk about Tailback U, consider who could have been a USC tailback too:

Ricky Williams.

"I really wanted to go to SC," Williams said the other day as he sat at his stall after practice with the Miami Dolphins.

Maybe there would be eight Heisman Trophies to put under glass in Heritage Hall instead of seven, if not for a few fateful days in 1994.

That was when Williams, a young recruit from San Diego, became totally smitten with Austin, Texas, and increasingly skeptical about his chance to start right away at USC.

The rest is Texas history, and in 1998, Williams brought a stiff-armed bronze back to Austin to give the Longhorns a second Heisman to match the one Earl Campbell won in 1977.

For all the storied tradition of running backs at USC -- from Mike Garrett to O.J. Simpson to Anthony Davis, Charles White and Marcus Allen and now Reggie Bush -- the truth is that for a stretch of the not-so-distant past, USC had the reputation, but Texas had the reality.

USC's running game faltered to a low ebb in the 1990s, briefly falling to last in the nation in the NCAA statistics. The Trojans had only one 1,000-yard rusher from 1991 to '98, Delon Washington in 1995.

Williams chose Texas, and since 1995 the Longhorns have had a 1,000-yard rusher every season for the last 10 years -- a streak that matches the longest in USC history, when Davis, Ricky Bell, White and Allen put together 10 in a row from 1972 to 1981.

"I don't think we have to choose sides in this one," Texas Coach Mack Brown said. "I don't think we have to say SC has great backs so that means Texas doesn't.

"We have our list of backs, but their list is pretty good too, now. You start talking about O.J. and Charles White and Marcus Allen. There's some good folks.

"If you ask people about running backs, you think they aren't going to go back to Chris Gilbert and Earl Campbell and Roosevelt Leaks and Ricky Williams and Hodges Mitchell? [Eric] Metcalf. Cedric Benson.

"No one can leave us out of the running back deal. But they've got two that have shined this year, and one of them just won the Heisman."

USC's turn as Quarterback U -- Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart claimed the Heisman in 2002 and 2004, respectively -- might be far from over.

But the revival of its running game under Pete Carroll was made emphatic this season by Bush and LenDale White, the first pair of 1,000-yard rushers in USC history.