USC’s Linebacker Lands Star Role in Cotton Club

When a guy named Marcus Cotton showed up on a USC football field two years ago, the university’s first reaction was that somebody was putting them on.

It was as if someone named Babe Gehrig had showed up at the Yankees’ spring training. The wags wondered if the Trojans had an O.J. Merriwell on the string, too.

The name was an amalgam of two of the most famous names in USC history--running backs Marcus Allen, the school’s most recent Heisman Trophy winner, and Cotton Warburton, the darling of the pre-historic--or at least pre-Heisman--set at the famous school.

It seemed like a name made in heaven for a USC backfield. The PR department couldn’t believe its good luck. It was a name that looked like six magazine covers. A name that could win the Heisman all by itself. A name that would look perfect in cardinal and gold in the middle of a card stunt.

And the man looked the part. Marcus Cotton went 6 feet 4 inches and 220 pounds and had a smile wider than Moon River. What the movies refer to as star quality.

The end zone, it was freely predicted, would be the land of Cotton. USC would be in high Cotton, and the living would be easy.

And then came the catch: This Marcus was not a running back. He didn’t want the football, he wanted the guy carrying it. Or throwing it.

Marcus the second was, of all things, a linebacker!

Now, linebacker is not one of your glamour posts at USC. It’s not big at Hollywood and Vine. Or the lunch crowd at Ma Maison. Linebacker is kind of a steel mill position. Lunch-pail and hard-hat football. A hard sell.

It is Hollywood’s view that to be a football hero, first you got to have the football. A linebacker is just a guy who holds the horses, dies in the second act.

The consensus was, Marcus needed a new agent. With a name like that, he needed above-the-title billing, which linebacker was not. Linebacker is a supporting player, one of those guys where the public recognizes the face but not the name.

Linebackers are usually guys who come with crew cuts and high cuts and who growl a lot. They are kind of anti-heroes. They louse up an otherwise ideal script by flattening the star--the quarterback. It’s like shooting John Wayne off his horse in the first reel. A black-hat role.

But the history of film drama--and real life--is fecund with the stories of villains who rose to become heroes. Bogart comes to mind. Cagney. Edward G. Robinson.

And Marcus Cotton.

This 100% Cotton, who wears a gold chain with that on it in case you wondered, has no polyester and has given a new dimension to the once blue-collar job of linebacker.

He steals the picture, so to speak, week after week. He gets the best kind of critical acclaim--word of mouth. If it were a sneak preview, all the cards would come back: “Who’s the good-looking guy who keeps dumping on the star all night long and why don’t we see more of him?�

He’s going to make it a part for Redford. Before Cotton, linebacker was considered a post for this faintly lunatic guy who always seemed to be swooping on the play out of the clouds. The operative word for their style of play is blitz, to give you an idea, and they regarded anybody who would go from Point A to Point B without going through somebody as a wimp.

Marcus Cotton brings a little style to the role. He gives it a little panache. In the first place, he smiles a lot.

“He laughs at you is more like it,� grumbled a rival player in the locker room the other day. Cotton always looks as if he has some private joke no one else is in on.

Linebackers, as a class, are bad interviews. They take the field in bad humor and come off it the same way. Not Marcus. He always looks as if he’s having the time of his life. His first trip to Disneyland.

Quarterbacks are funnier than W.C. Fields to him. He finds quarterbacks quaint and halfbacks hilarious.

There are those who think linebackers come from a long line of people who drink blood and sleep in coffins. But Marcus is as gregarious as a politician, as chatty as a housewife at a Laundromat. “I like people,� he says, “except when they’re carrying a football.�

Linebackers usually are as uncommunicative as industrial spies. Cotton even talks on the field. He keeps up a running commentary on his opponents’ play. Usually, he finds it leaves a lot to be desired.

Linebackers, historically, are supposed to be indifferent to statistics. Not Marcus. He remembers every tackle he ever made. “I had 18 against Washington Saturday and 23 against Baylor last week,� he recalls easily.

He has had no fewer than eight deflected passes, throws the quarterback couldn’t get off because Marcus volleyballed it out of play. “I’ve got a 42-inch vertical jump,� he explains sunnily.

He’s got 51 tackles and 3 quarterback sacks, too, he’ll remind you.

“Do I want to play in the Rose Bowl?� he echoes. “I want to play in the Rose Bowl, win the national championship and make the Bob Hope All-American team.�

Presumably, he’ll see about the White House--or the State House--later.

No defensive player has ever won the Heisman. Marcus does not propose to break the mold. Not that he doesn’t want to win it. “You cannot call the way I play defense, “ he protests.

Marcus likes to think of himself as the star. And the tailback gets the hero’s best-friend role. The part where everybody goes out for popcorn.