Big man on campus
It didn't seem likely that Ricky Rosas would become an important part of the USC football team, but that's exactly what has happened.
November 22 2007
One world is dirt streaks on concrete walls, barred doors and muted dreams.
The other world is cardinal and gold in glittering cases, open doors offering endless hope.
Every morning during the football season, Ricky Rosas leaves one world for the other world.
Every morning, he leaves his East Los Angeles home to catch bus No. 720, then transfers to bus No. 754, then jumps out near the Vermont Street entrance to USC.
The trips takes 90 minutes but spans a universe.
He leaves home as a developmentally disabled teen who could not finish high school.
He arrives at USC as the football program's magical, mysterious Ricky.
He is 4 feet 8. He weighs 91 pounds. He doesn't have a driver's license. He doesn't have money. He can't sign his name.
But around USC, nobody's name has been chanted more. Nobody has been hugged more. Nobody has been loved more. Nobody is richer.
"It's funny how the hugest of guys take care of the littlest guy," Ricky says.
In one world, there are struggles to live with three others in a house with one tiny bedroom and a primitive bathroom. His mother sleeps on the couch, his sister on the floor, Ricky on a bare mattress under a rickety bunk bed.
In the other world, there is the triumph of a job, handing out water at practice, picking up lunch for the coaches, shredding old game plans, Ricky on the sturdy foundation of importance.
In the one world, he has a sister who struggles with an artificial leg, a mother who can't find work, two small disability checks to cover their expenses, microwave soup at the lean end of every month.
In the other world, he has a title: Special Assistant to the Head Coach.
Ricky Rosas, 18, shakes his head.
"It's amazing how far you can move up in life, you know?" he says.
Pete Carroll shakes his head.
"How can I do this?" he says, repeating a question. "How can I not do this?"
After a recent USC practice in the middle of the most angst-ridden season in Carroll's tenure as coach, quarterback Mark Sanchez stays on the field to take extra snaps.
With the kids from the neighborhood.
As Sanchez is tossing passes to squealing 10-year-old boys, Carroll takes a break from serious football talk to smile.
"You see that over there?" says the coach. "That's what we do. That's who we are."
A year ago, it was into this community connection that Ricky Rosas walked, a vulnerable Los Angeles kid peering over the wall at Los Angeles' most powerful football program.
Today, Rosas is running, chasing down running back Stafon Johnson after practice to show him some photos.
"Slicky Ricky, how you doing, man?" Johnson says, lifting Rosas high off the ground. "This here is my man! This here is the program!"
Underneath a dirty white USC cap, wearing a soiled red USC sweatshirt, Rosas beams.
The cap was given to him by one of the players. So was the sweatshirt. So, too, were his black shoes.
"Only the pants were mine," he says proudly. "I'm part of this here, you know?"
The average fan wouldn't know. During games, Ricky walks the sidelines but has no responsibilities. He's swallowed up in shoulder pads and is never seen on TV.
"But to us, he's everywhere," running back Stanley Havili says. "He's like our little brother."
If you've attended practice or hung out at Heritage Hall during the day, you've seen him.
Ricky is the tiny guy leaning against a wall during Carroll's mid-day news conferences, the coach's quiet companion, although he once corrected a reporter's fact and drew a huge cheer from Carroll.
"Ricky, my man!" a jubilant Carroll shouted into the microphone.
Ricky is the hurried guy carrying big Carl's Jr. bags up the stairs to the coaches before practice, hanging out around their offices for anything else they need.
"If something has to be done quick, it's like, 'OK, get Ricky,' " says Jared Blank, the Trojans' director of player personnel.
Ricky the swaggering guy during practice, hanging out by the Gatorade table, chatting with bystanders as if he were the coach.
"You look over at Ricky during practice, he puts a smile on your face," Johnson says.
Ricky is the thankful guy being hugged after practice, by Carroll, by players, by anyone who wants to soften the previous hour's brutality with a moment of kindness.
"It's a good thing for our players to come in contact with people from different backgrounds, different places," Carroll says. "They learn how to reach out now, maybe they'll continue doing that later in life."
The reach for Ricky began three seasons ago, when he was a struggling sophomore at Garfield High, too small to play sports after his growth was stunted by childhood bone cancer, stuck with a learning disability that turned school into torture.
Hoping to brighten his day, a neighbor drove him to a strange place known as USC, gave him a helmet to get autographs from these strange beings known as the national champion Trojans.
"I wasn't a USC fan, I never really followed college football," Ricky says.
But then, after practice, no less than Matt Leinart noticed Ricky, signed his helmet, told him a joke, won his heart.
"I thought the USC football field was a nice place, and I wanted to go back," Ricky remembers.
Two seasons ago he returned, and this time Carroll not only signed an autograph but convinced Ricky to throw him a pass. Then he gave Ricky an invitation.
"You are welcome here any time," Carroll said.
Early last season, his schoolwork in tatters, his confidence shot, his family unable to make sense of it all, Ricky returned to the one place that had treated him like somebody special.
Says Ricky: "I couldn't believe that Coach Carroll remembered me."
Says Carroll: "Ricky is not somebody you easily forget."
Carroll asked Ricky if he needed tickets. Ricky said he needed a job. Carroll said he would think about it.
They couldn't pay him, but it wasn't about money.
"I wanted to be part of this," Ricky says. "I would do anything they wanted."
Ricky noticed the heavily taped players fumbling around with Gatorade cups. He told Carroll he would hand them their drinks. Carroll shrugged and said sure. A job was born. A connection was made.
Ricky's mother, Michele, has never been to USC and knows nothing about the football team.
"But they are nice to him, and that is all I need to know," she says. "That is all I need to know."
His family sees him disappear each morning, then return each night wearing different clothes donated by players, his belly full of training table food, and they sigh.
"Whatever he is doing there, it is the biggest accomplishment of his life," his mother says.
His bed has no sheets, but he sleeps under a cardinal-and-gold afghan knitted by his mother.
The cluttered bedroom he shares with an uncle can barely fit a dresser, but on that dresser, under plastic, is the autographed helmet and an Orange Bowl football.
"When I talk about the USC football team, I finally say, 'Us,' " Ricky says.
With each passing week, the bond tightens.
During one pregame prayer in which the players hold hands, Johnson walked up behind Rosas and draped his arms around him, a move that Rosas proudly mimics today.
"That meant so much to me, Stafon making me part of the team," he says.
During one pre-practice meeting, when the players were trying to convince Carroll to allow them to practice without shoulder pads, they begged him to let Ricky make the final call.
"Rick-y! Rick-y! Rick-y!" they chanted.
Then, a couple of weeks later, the chant became a roar.
After a practice, Carroll summoned Ricky to the middle of the players' huddle to inform him he was going to join the team on the road in Oregon.
"Hey, why not? He doesn't take up much room," Carroll says with a grin.
Ricky says he quietly cried when he heard the news. He had never flown in a plane. He had never stayed in a hotel room. He had only dreamed of being part of something so big it would actually take him to another state.
"I was in shock," he says.
A member of the football staff drove him to a downtown department store to buy a pair of pants, a shirt and a tie. Another member of the staff was in charge of making sure he was buttoned and tucked.
He was so dazed on the plane, he fell asleep in a seat between two giant linemen.
He was further dazed when, upon arriving at the hotel, his roommates Blank and operations assistant Justin Mesa gave him one of the two beds.
"We had to do it that way," Blank says. "Ricky had never slept in a bed that big before."
Before the game, he walked the field while staff members took photos of him. You can see those photos today. He carries them around in his sweatshirt.
The images are of a tiny guy in a rumpled shirt and loose-fitting tie, standing in the middle of a giant pristine football field, David become Goliath.
"Look at me!" Ricky says. "Can you believe that's me?"
Look at the giant football program, leaning down to embrace the smallest among us.
Believe it's them. Believe that, of all steamroller victories in the Pete Carroll era, none can match the gentle daily touch his team applies to the neighborhood.
As much as Trojans fans were thankful for the likes of Reggie Bush and Leinart, they should also be thankful for magical, mysterious Ricky.
"I have to go," he says suddenly during an interview, standing up tall, straightening his dirty cap, adjusting his soiled sweatshirt. "Coach needs me."
Bill Plaschke can be reached at
[email protected]. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.
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