Booty dreaming big at USC

Don’t let the soft Louisiana twang, or the aw, shucks, laid-back demeanor fool you. John David Booty has a raging inner fire to go along with that strong right arm of his, and he’s determined not to become the answer to a college football trivia question 20 years from now.

You know the one — “Who was that nondescript quarterback who followed Heisman Trophy winners Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart at USC?”

Booty, who is coming off an All-Pac-10 season and a victory over Michigan in the Rose Bowl, harbors his own dreams for his senior year. They’re large ones, too. If you don’t believe it, check out the tattoo on his left arm. It reads: “Big Dreams.”

“Growing up my whole life, my daddy always told me you can do whatever you set your mind to do,” Booty says. “That’s what the tattoo stands for — dreaming big. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. But you have to try your best to make it come true. For me, it’s not hard. I’m living one of them right now.”

He is the quarterback of a multi-talented Trojans team that will enter the 2007 season ranked among the favorites to win the national championship. A likely Heisman Trophy candidate, he is coming off an 11–2 junior season, his first as the USC starter, topped off with a 391-yard, four TD-pass spectacular in the 32–18 win against the Wolverines.

“John David Booty has a chance to be the best player in the country,” says coach Pete Carroll, who should know a great quarterback when he sees one. “His performance last year surpassed our expectations.”

It was the Rose-colored showcase that really sealed Booty’s status, though. Even after throwing 25 TD passes and only nine interceptions in a 10–2 regular season, Booty was on rocky ground because the Trojans, up to their hip pads in high expectations, had lost to Oregon State and then, much to the chagrin of USC boosters everywhere, to UCLA. The loss to the Bruins was particularly grating because it cost Carroll’s team a spot in the BCS title game and ended with one of Booty’s passes being deflected then intercepted deep in UCLA territory, clinching the 13–9 upset.

The grumbling started immediately after that cross-town game. Maybe Booty shouldn’t be the quarterback. Maybe Mark Sanchez, another former prep All-American from the same Orange County pipeline as Palmer and Leinart, should get first call in the spring.

“I heard it,” Booty says. “It was never anything I’d felt. But people around here are spoiled a little. They’re not used to losing, and we hadn’t lost to UCLA in a while.” Ask him if he thought his Rose Bowl performance erased all those doubts, he smiles and says: “I hope it did. I think it was a huge game for me and definitely a big moment for the program. I know what I’m capable of doing.”

Booty came back this spring healthy and eager to show it. “He looks stronger and more self-assured,” Carroll says.

“Last year he was still feeling his way a bit,” says offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian, noting that Booty missed the 2006 spring practice with a bad back. “This year, you can see the difference in leadership. This is his team.”

Booty smiles when he talks about it now. “I feel great,” he says. “Last year, I had a lot of questions within myself to answer. I felt I could do it. But I didn’t know until I did it. Now I can relax and be more comfortable. There are more things I can focus on. You have to remember, it had been almost four years since I had played in an actual game.”

USC fans remember. It seemed like they had waited forever for this young man from Shreveport who had been lighting up the Internet recruiting chat rooms all those years. Booty, the younger brother of former LSU quarterback Josh Booty, became the starting quarterback at Evangel Christian Academy, a noted prep powerhouse, as a sophomore and won back-to-back 5-A championships, throwing for 8,474 yards and 88 touchdowns.

He would have been the most highly recruited player in the country had he stayed his senior season. Texas, Miami and Michigan were among the many schools already lined up to make him offers. But Booty shocked everyone by leaving before his final season to sign with USC. He later explained that much of it had to do with Evangel Christian Academy terminating his father, Johnny, both as quarterbacks coach and pastor at the First Assembly of God, the Pentecostal church that runs the school.

For Carroll and the Trojans, Booty’s arrival was a happy surprise, and their new passer quickly rose to No. 2 on the depth chart. The problem was that the No. 1 guy happened to be Leinart, who was just a sophomore. Amazingly, there were a couple of weeks early that year when Leinart looked shaky, and the coaches were talking about giving Booty a shot. But then Leinart came back from a first-half injury to lead the team to an emotional victory against Arizona State, and his career took off.

So Booty waited two long years, then felt certain he’d have his chance when everyone thought Leinart would forego his senior season to jump to the NFL. Funny thing about that, though; Leinart decided to stay, and the wait was starting to be interminable.

“He never complained, though,” says Ryan Kalil, the center who was his roommate. “He just has that easy disposition about him. I think it’s just that Southern in him, that Southern hospitality.”

Booty wasn’t feeling very hospitable after a serious back injury shut him down last spring, just when he was finally ready to take over as the No. 1 quarterback. Surgery was required, and Sanchez, who is bigger and has an even stronger arm, showcased his ability in practice. But Carroll, a coach who understood how much Booty had learned in three years of studying and observing both in games and meetings, felt the kid who’d waited so patiently deserved the first shot.

His teammates must have thought so, too. They named him a captain during fall camp, and he quickly assumed a strong leadership role. “He didn’t come out and say I’m competing for this job,” says Lane Kiffin, former offensive coordinator and current Raiders head coach. “He came out and said, ‘I’m going to start.’”

His first test was the opener at Arkansas, where the whole world wanted to see how he’d perform as Leinart’s replacement. Booty did fine. He zipped one NFL-like fastball into a tight spot in the end zone that only a diving Patrick Turner could catch. Then he found tight end Fred Davis with another pretty pass in the back of the end zone. USC cruised, 50–14. “I was thinking, ‘Hey, I can do this,” Booty says. Carroll was thinking the same thing. “After the game,” the coach says, “I was thinking he’s got it. This is what we were looking for.”

But at USC, the pressure never stops. Booty’s great performance at Oregon State was overshadowed when his last pass was deflected in a 33–31 upset loss. That dismal game against UCLA stirred more grumbles.

Happily for him, the Rose Bowl fixed all that, and now Booty can’t wait for a season bulging with promise. “This is why I’m here,” he says. “All other things aside, I came to play on a great team in a big city. We have some tough games, many of them on the road, and it will be a challenge. But I’m excited.”

He should be. Those dreams of his never seemed bigger.

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