A Bold and Record-Setting Trojan

Hear Kareem Kelly out before you judge him.

USC’s record-setting freshman receiver says he picked the Trojans because he wanted to sign with a “mediocre” program.

“I made that statement because I didn’t want to go to a school that was already on top, because they already have the recognition of being the best. Everybody knows about them,” Kelly said.

“I wanted to come to a school like SC, because the program is on the verge of uprising. We have great players, and there’s a possibility we can make things happen here.”

Those words might rankle every Trojan fan who remembers the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Kelly doesn’t: He was born in 1981, and he has a valid point.

USC hasn’t won a national championship in his lifetime.

“I wasn’t even thought of in ‘78,” Kelly said.

“Florida State, Miami, Alabama, those were the teams I looked at as powerhouses when I was coming up as a little kid.”

He’s still not much more than a kid, but Kelly’s drive to help lift USC (3-4, 1-3 Pacific 10) to prominence has begun with three 100-yard receiving efforts in his first seven games, and he is drawing comparisons to Lynn Swann as he shatters R. Jay Soward’s freshman receiving records.

Everybody worries about making USC great again. Kelly just wants to make USC great.

Instead of forever looking backward, he’s looking forward.

His 34 receptions this season are already a USC freshman record, with five games remaining, and he is only one catch behind Soward this season.

His 632 yards--another Trojan freshman record--lead the team, and his average of 90.3 yards a game ranks 24th in the nation and third in the Pacific 10 Conference, trailing only Stanford’s Troy Walters and Arizona’s Dennis Northcutt, both among the nation’s top five receivers.

At the moment, it all feels hollow.

“That doesn’t even matter to me right now,” Kelly said after USC’s third consecutive loss--and the second in which the Trojans have blown a 21-point lead. “I just care about winning right now.

“I felt if this year wasn’t the turnaround year, it would definitely be next year. I thought it would probably be this year, but evidently it wasn’t. You know, we have an opportunity to be one of the better teams in the country if we still stick together, still believe in our coaches, still are willing to be better.

“It’s hurting everybody right now, not just the seniors, because it’s their last year. It’s hurting me too, because I came from a winning program. We only lost four games, and that was in four years.”

In Kelly’s junior year at Long Beach Poly, his team went undefeated and won the Southern Section Division I championship. Last season, Poly lost only once--to Santa Ana Mater Dei in the title game.

“I know the game is played different here in college,” Kelly said. “I knew there’d be a couple of losses, but not as much as we’ve lost now.”

Kelly could have been elsewhere. Florida State, Ohio State, Tennessee and Florida all came calling during his senior year at Poly, where he was a track star as well.

“I didn’t want to go to a school like Florida State that has the Peter Warricks and everything, because a person like myself probably wouldn’t get looked at as much,” Kelly said.

In the end, he didn’t even visit the East Coast powers, and signed with USC.

It’s easy to forget how short the historical perspective of a teenager is.

If there’s a defining USC moment in Kelly’s memory, it was when the 1995 team won the Rose Bowl.

But in recent years it has mostly been--well, he put it best--mediocre.

“I really didn’t watch SC too much growing up, but the team that stands out most to me was the 1995 Rose Bowl championship team, the team Keyshawn Johnson played on,” Kelly said. “Keyshawn’s my inspiration.

“I heard a lot about SC, all the great players that came out of here--Johnnie Morton, and a former Poly athlete, Willie McGinest. Junior Seau. Players like that were the players who made me look at SC. And my cousin Rashard Cook playing here [their mothers are sisters] had a big influence on me.”

Kelly doesn’t know all the USC lore, but he hears the stories, and he recognizes that there was a time when even an 8-3 season could be considered a disappointment.

“If they thought that was a bad season, I wonder what they think about this season,” he said. “But we can’t worry about what people say. They don’t know what goes on in the meeting rooms or the team rooms. We can’t worry about what they think. We’ve got to look out for each other.”

The praise for Kelly isn’t likely to stop any time soon.

“I didn’t know anybody compared me to Lynn Swann,” Kelly said. “I don’t think I should be compared to him or Keyshawn. They’re on a higher pedestal.”

Just like those USC teams of old.

“It would feel better to win, as opposed to have 200 yards a game,” Kelly said.

“I mean, winning is the most important thing to me.”