BATTLE FOR THE ROSE BOWL: USC vs. UCLA : THE BIG PLAYS OF ’87 : Peete Was Involved in Both: Saving Tackle on Turner, Winning Pass to Affholter

Erik Affholter, the slow, quick, sure-handed USC receiver who scored the winning touchdown of last year’s UCLA game on a long pass, can tell you about a bigger play than that.

“In the same game, (USC quarterback) Rodney Peete made the biggest play I ever saw,” Affholter said the other day.

“He ran the fastest 89 yards in history to catch the guy who intercepted his pass. It was the Great Coliseum Quarterback Chase. I’ll never forget it.”

A cast of thousands will never forget it. Dramatically, Peete gave chase in the last 10 seconds of the half, overtaking UCLA defensive back Eric Turner as time ran out.

Many others have made stirring plays for USC in the last 100 years--Johnny Baker’s field goal to beat Notre Dame in 1931 will possibly always rank first--but nobody ever saw a play like Peete’s.

There you had a quarterback running down a defensive back to prevent a 100-yard touchdown, saving the game that put USC in the Rose Bowl.

“Mr. Ed pursues Secretariat. A dachshund after a greyhound,” a Los Angeles writer commented the next morning. “Thwarted by a quarterback, an insult worse than injury.”

Nonetheless, the game still had to be won. The Bruins would have led, 17-0, if Turner had scored. But they were still on top at halftime, 10-0; in the third quarter, 13-0, and in the fourth, 13-10, when Affholter’s controversial, staggering catch made it the Trojans’ day, 17-13.

Peete, the noblest Trojan of the late ‘80s, had thrown that ball.

So Peete’s fingerprints and footprints were all over the two key plays of one of the strangest big-time football games ever played:

--Peete grabbed Turner’s face mask as he wrestled him to the ground. “I’m glad (the officials) didn’t see that,” the Trojan quarterback said of what should have brought a penalty against USC, and probably a gimme field goal for the Bruins, who would have improved their halftime lead to 13-0.

--Affholter was possibly out of bounds on his big play in the fourth quarter. How long did he juggle the ball before he had it? Until he fell out of the end zone? The Bruins thought so.

Even stranger, 4 other touchdowns were scored but nullified by penalties in that game, 3 of them USC touchdowns.

The Trojans, in fact, outplayed UCLA so consistently that they wasted 35 points and still won. They lost 3 touchdowns on penalties, 1 on a goal-line fumble, and another on Eric Turner’s goal-line interception.

In the end, of course, it was just another thriller in the long UCLA-USC series, a series that will be continued in the Rose Bowl Saturday, with the Rose Bowl and perhaps the Heisman Trophy on the line.

Most of the principals of the historic 1987 attraction were expected to play Saturday; however, Peete has the measles and his participation is now questionable.

If Peete can play, both of USC’s big playmakers will be back.

Also back are both of the role-playing Bruins--cornerback Marcus Turner, who covered Affholter in the fourth quarter, and free safety Eric Turner, no relation, who intercepted Peete’s pass on the goal line.

In last year’s game, UCLA’s Troy Aikman completed 11 of 16 passes for 171 yards, with no touchdowns and 3 interceptions. In the second half alone, Peete completed 12 of 15, finishing with 23 of 35 for 304 yards, with 2 fourth-quarter touchdowns.

Player continuity is a way of life in the pros, but not in college football as a rule, and particularly not in big games.

Nobody expects to see the like of this again.

On the other hand, nobody expected to see a quarterback running down a defensive back last year. And wrapping him up by the face mask. And getting away with it.

With Rodney Peete, you never know.

THE CHASE

All summer, when football fans mentioned Peete’s big defensive play in the UCLA game, he told them that as he ran along the sideline chasing Eric Turner, he took a peek at the time clock--and slowed down.

If he’d caught the guy with 1 or 2 seconds remaining, he said solemnly, the Bruins could have kicked another field goal.

Is Rodney really that fast?

“Who knows?” he asked the other day at USC.

An experienced sprinter, he said his only priority at that instant was to keep the Bruins from scoring again.

“I’ve never had an interception returned for a touchdown,” he said. “I wasn’t about to let it happen in a UCLA game.”

Eric Turner says he has felt no embarrassment at being run down by a quarterback.

“I’m an optimist, and I look at this whole thing as an optimist,” Turner said at UCLA. “My interception stopped a (USC) touchdown from being scored. Everybody forgets that.”

It was Turner’s third interception of a season in which he returned one 54 yards for a touchdown against Stanford.

“The Stanford quarterback didn’t have track skills,” the UCLA safety said. “He over-pursued.”

In the Trojan game, Turner made his interception with only 14 seconds remaining in the half, after Peete had driven USC to first and goal at the UCLA 5-yard line.

There, the Trojan quarterback zipped a pass into a corner of the end zone--he thinks now that he was throwing to split end Ken Henry--but before the ball got there, it was deflected toward Turner by UCLA linebacker Marcus Patton.

“I saw (Patton) there,” Peete said. “I was trying to go over his head.”

Tipped passes are hard to judge and are often dropped, but Turner prides himself on his coordination and good hands.

“I was breaking on the ball,” he said. “And when Marcus tipped it, I said, ‘Wow! I’ve got it.’ ”

Heading from one end zone toward the other, he was instantly in the clear.

As the paper reported the next day: “Suddenly, a game-breaking moment was at hand, with Turner streaking down the sideline right in front of the USC bench.”

The streaking Bruin defensive back was thinking touchdown all the way.

“I saw the end zone, I had the daylight,” he said afterward. “I thought I was gone.”

But on the outside, here came Alysheba.

Or Peete.

“I knew Rodney was there,” Turner said. “I saw him the first time I looked back, and I knew he had the speed. I felt him closing.”

As he sprinted along, Turner turned to look at Peete three or four times more, and he thinks now that that’s where he made his mistake, throttling himself down.

“I learned from my high school track coach to never look back,” he said. “I just forgot.”

On the track team at Ventura High, Turner had been a 9.9 sprinter--9.9 for 100 yards. His 40-yard time is 4.56. Peete’s is 4.5--or better--and in this contest, moreover, Turner was encumbered by a football. Peete also had a slight angle on his quarry.

Thus their 100-yard race had only reached the 89-yard mark when Peete got there and pulled his opponent out of bounds, grabbing him first by the shoulders, and then the face mask.

“I had thought all the way that I could catch him--but I didn’t know when,” Peete said. “I didn’t want it to be in the end zone.

“I kept telling myself: ‘Don’t let him score.’ And when I think about it now, that’s what still goes through my head.”

THE CATCH

With 8 minutes left last year, the Trojans had a comfortable lead in the statistics, but the Bruins had a more comforting lead on the scoreboard: 3 points.

It was time for USC’s split end Erik Affholter to do something, if he had anything in mind, and at the decisive moment of the day, he did.

He ran a streak pattern--what some teams think of as a go or fly pattern--from the line of scrimmage straight up the field to the goal line, 33 yards away.

And there, although he isn’t the fastest split end in the county, he got open.

“Our call on that (play is) ‘3 streaks,’ ” said Peete, noting that the bench had called it on first down, when the Bruin defense might have been looking for a safe ground play on a Trojan drive that began at the Trojan 42.

“The position I play, I tend toward shorter routes,” said Affholter, explaining how a player with his lack of swiftness can get to an occasional bomb. “When we go deep, sometimes I catch them in single coverage.”

That happened this time.

“We ran it with Erik as my first read, but with Erik and (flanker) John Jackson and the tight end all running streaks,” said Peete. “That put them all in single coverage.”

But not intentionally.

“It (started as) more of a zone defense,” said UCLA cornerback Marcus Turner. “I wound up with (Affholter) when he came into my (zone).”

Said Affholter: “My job was to make (Turner) think I was going to take it inside. I tried to make him believe it, and when I felt he was committed, I took it outside.”

On a cinder track, Turner, the fastest Bruin defensive back at about 4.45 for 40 yards, would have pulled away from Affholter at 15 or 20 paces.

But on football fields, it isn’t always speed that leads a long-ball receiver to glory.

“The mark of a good receiver is decent speed and good routes,” said Turner, who is a clever finesse back in the mold of Cleveland Brown cornerback Frank Minnifield. “(Affholter) runs good routes.”

With one of them, Affholter beat Turner into the end zone, where he caught the winning pass.

Or did he?

This will be disputed, possibly forever, on the UCLA campus.

“Call it a freak play,” said Turner. “Maybe he caught it and maybe he didn’t.”

For, as the ball came down, Affholter juggled it.

“The ball bounced off the top of my shoulder pads,” he said.

“I tipped it,” said Turner, who might at least have grazed the ball.

In any case, the films show that it would have been a clean, noncontroversial touchdown if Affholter had taken possession cleanly.

Peete had thrown it that accurately.

But after it was bobbled--for whatever reason--there was an immediate controversy because of the perception by some that when he finally got control of the ball, Affholter was falling out of the end zone.

Said Turner: “I can tell you this much about it: When he gained (legal) possession, he was halfway out of bounds.”

Said Affholter: “On one replay, it looked close because the camera angle was behind me. On the (others) there was no doubt--unless you’re a UCLA fan.”

Affholter isn’t, but Turner is, and their rematch Saturday could prove memorable.

“Both teams have a lot of firepower,” said Affholter.

“But it will be a defensive game,” said Turner.

On their record in college football, the quarterbacks, Aikman and Peete--if he gets the chance--are ready for either.

Aikman is big enough to make the big defensive play.

And Peete, clearly, is fast enough. Is he ever!