Road to 1991 Perfection: Turner KO'd USC Player on a Kickoff

Darius Turner was a Southern California native who wanted to do well against USC, especially when playing that team in Los Angeles. A University of Washington fullback and a special-teams player, Turner knew a bunch of the Trojans when everyone took the field in 1991 at the Coliseum.

Plenty of trash talk ensued.

A chilling moment of silence presented itself, as well.

On a kickoff, Turner hit an approaching Trojan as hard as he hit anyone that season. There was jubilation and despair, all at once.

"I light him up, I knock fire from this dude," he said. "I'm excited and he's on the ground with his arm locked out, and he was concussed. I started to panic."

Turner hauntingly described a player in a full concussion mode. The extended, shaky arm was a clear indicator. That guy would need to be helped from the game.

While that Trojan survived intact, USC did not, losing to the eventual national champs 14-3 in the low-scoring and hard-hitting encounter.

This is another in series of vignettes about the UW 1991 national championship team, supplementing the conversation for the pandemic-delayed season that begins soon. We're in week 9, which brought a showdown with USC in Los Angeles.

While Turner had his moments against the Trojans, he roomed on the road with fellow running back and SoCal product Beno Bryant, who had much to prove every time he played them, too. USC didn't recruit the little tailback. Bryant finished with a career-best 158 yards on 26 carries and scored both touchdowns.

Two years earlier, Bryant came to Los Angeles as a freshman for the UW-USC game, only to learn that his best friend, Kevin Copeland, died from a heart attack the night before during a Dorsey High football game. Copeland's father Ron, an Olympic sprinter and UCLA football great, died young, too, as did his grandfather. Sadly, congenital heart problems ran deep through this family

Bryant had convinced the youngest Copeland, a wide receiver who was considered one of L.A.'s top recruits, that he should join him at Washington.

"Beno's son has his best friend's middle name — Casey," Turner said. "I think that had an affect on him for that game. He also was a little pissed because USC never recruited him. He took care of his business that day."

To win multiple titles and advance to the Rose Bowl always meant you had to go through the Trojans to get there. This was a new feeling for Turner, who came to the UW as a highly regarded back, the fifth-highest rusher in his state as a senior, but hadn't experienced much team success.

"I had never been on anything championship in my life up to that point," he said. "My high school team, it never even made it to the playoffs in California."

Turner, now a successful businessman in Sacramento, fondly remembers his Huskies from Southern California bonding tightly away with the homegrown guys, namely wide receiver Mario Bailey.

Away from the field, they would always congregate at the south Seattle home of Bailey's mom, who would cook for them.

"Coach James used to say Mario was the most homesick kid he'd every coached," Turner said, "who only lived 20 minutes from the stadium."

In the second video, Turner describes his professional life. On Saturday in another vignette, Darius will talk about what the film "300" meant to him, in terms of Husky football, and about his famous nephew, another running back.

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