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Committing his dreams to USC videotape
By BRIAN LANDMAN © St. Petersburg Times, published September 26, 1998 Not only did he admire their fakes and grace, he studied them. Then Soward would rush outside and try to emulate those moves so he, too, might one day elicit a "Wow. Did you see that?" from fans. "I remember one, "The Gift of Grab,' with Steve Largent, Jerry Rice, some of the best receivers ever," he said of the tapes his father routinely bought. "I saw how they ran their routes and caught the ball. It was just a thing my father did for me to help me when I was coming up, playing high school ball." Now, Soward, a junior wide receiver at the University of Southern California, could be the star of his own highlight tape. Entering today's game against Florida State, he's scored every 6.05 times he has touched the ball (21 touchdowns on 127 plays, which includes runs and kickoff and punt returns) during his electrifying career. And those touchdown plays have averaged 52.3 yards. Yet it was a shorter play that demanded what he called his most "outrageous" moves. As a freshman against Stanford, he reached behind to make a catch, then zigzagged through a hapless defense for a 33-yard touchdown. "I made five guys miss," he said breathlessly. Wow. Did you see that? Although USC coach Paul Hackett, a longtime NFL assistant renowned for his offensive creativity, is in his first year, he already has had that reaction to Soward (the R is for Rodney). After serving a one-game suspension for poor academic performance, Soward has caught 11 passes for 176 yards and two touchdowns, rushed four times for 73 yards and returned a punt for a score. "He just adds a whole other element to our offense because he has the speed and he has the ability to run with the football after he catches it," Hackett said. Rest assured, the Seminoles have held their collective breath watching tape of Soward. The usually staunch FSU defense struggled to slow North Carolina State's do-everything star Torry Holt a couple weeks ago, and coach Bobby Bowden said Soward appears faster. "It looks like it's going to be very difficult (to defend him)," Bowden said. Of course, the Trojans can say the same thing about FSU's multipurpose threat, Peter Warrick, despite the strength of their secondary, led by senior Daylon McCutcheon, and their omnipresent linebackers, particularly junior Chris Claiborne. "McCutcheon did a great job on us last year," Bowden gushed, "and Claiborne, I'm really impressed with him. We played against (Andy) Katzenmoyer in the Sugar Bowl last year, and this guy impresses me more. I'm not going to say one's better than the other; that's not fair. But (No.) 55 gave us a lot more trouble than 45 did when we played last year." For his part, Soward isn't concerned about one-upping Warrick. He just wants to win, which would bring the No. 18-ranked Trojans something far more rewarding than individual acclaim. "Out of this game, the main thing we're looking for ... is gaining back the respect that teams in the past had gotten," he said. "We're not really getting that respect, and teams aren't looking at us as a powerhouse football team, so we're going out to gain back our dignity and our respect." Coming close isn't enough. USC's been there, done that against FSU. The Seminoles nipped USC 14-7 in last year's season opener at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the first meeting between the tradition-rich programs. FSU could have lost had defensive back Brian Kelly, a second-round draft pick of the Buccaneers, not dropped an interception that he could have returned easily for a touchdown early in the fourth quarter. With that reprieve, Thad Busby engineered a 97-yard drive for the game-winning score. "I really haven't thought about the game too much this week," Soward said. "I'm not looking back in the past. As far as last year goes, we're a completely different team. The attitude on this team is we're going to go out and we're going to do it. We're expecting to win this year. That's something we really didn't do last year. We weren't really confident." That contagious attitude begins with Soward. "He's just an exciting player who's really the pulse and very much the heartbeat of our offense," Hackett said. "As he goes, and with his energy that flows, it affects everyone else on our offensive team. Quite frankly, we have sputtered a little bit, but R. Jay has been the great-impact, make-it-happen speed guy." Soward added: "I do feel that I'm that person on the team that gets things hyped up and gets people pumped up, because I'm a very vocal person and I like to have fun out there." You don't need tape to see that.
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ALLAHASSEE -- As a youngster, R. Jay Soward would sit transfixed in front of his television, mesmerized by videotapes featuring football's most feared big-play specialists.
