After Much Doubt and Pain, a U.S.C. Star Feels at Home
By PETE THAMEL
Published: December 31, 2004
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 30 - Every night, as if hearing chimes on a grandfather clock, Camille Jarrett could count on her phone to ring at midnight.
Her 17-year old son, Dwayne, had left New Brunswick, N.J., to play football for the University of Southern California with a brash attitude, predicting immediate success and telling his mother she would not have anyone to nag about taking out the garbage.
But when he arrived at Southern California in late June, just days after his high school graduation, Jarrett found himself lonely and homesick. So every night when the free minutes started on his cellphone at 9 p.m. Pacific time, he would call his mother.
By the time training camp started in early August, Jarrett was begging his mother to let him come home. He missed her lasagna. He missed having his grandmother down the street. He missed home so much that he even called his grandmother and aunts to have them lobby his mother to let him go back.
"He'd call and whine and whine, he just drove me crazy," Camille Jarrett said in a telephone interview.
Camille Jarrett demanded that her son stick it out at U.S.C., as he endured what Trojans Coach Pete Carroll called "classic homesickness." As No. 1-ranked U.S.C. prepares to play No. 2 Oklahoma on Tuesday in the Orange Bowl, the Bowl Championship Series title game, Jarrett, his mother and his coaches are glad he stuck it out.
Now 18, Jarrett is the youngest member of the team and also one of the Trojans' most tantalizing talents.
He led the team with 50 receptions and 12 touchdown catches, and at 6 feet 5 and 195 pounds is already considered a front-line N.F.L. prospect.
But before he flourished, Jarrett needed his nightly pep talks from his mother, whom Carroll lauded for being able to keep Jarrett at Southern Cal. "In his mind," Carroll said, "he was gone a couple of times."
The calls home melted Camille Jarrett's heart. Dwayne was born when she was a 15-year-old high school freshman.
She raised him with the help of her parents until she graduated from high school and soon after moved out on her own.
From there, Camille Jarrett made sure Dwayne stayed grounded.
She worked hours that enabled her to be around as much as possible, making sure he was not running the streets. She enrolled him in sports programs to keep him active and surrounded him with family for role models. She talked openly with him about sex, drugs, girls and smoking, making sure they could discuss anything.
"There's a branding that young black boys get, especially in urban areas, especially when the mom is so young," Camille Jarrett said.
"People say: 'You have a young mother, she doesn't know anything. She's not going to raise you any better.' "
When Dwayne was 7, he predicted while playing basketball in front of his grandmother's house that he would play in the N.B.A. Sports engrossed him; Camille Jarrett remembers Dwayne having an amazing capacity for players and statistics.
He discovered football not long after, and his passion shifted.
He blossomed into a star at New Brunswick High School, and suitors from around the country flocked to recruit him.
"He was like Randy Moss without the attitude," New Brunswick Coach John Quinn said he told recruiters.
Jarrett picked U.S.C. over Ohio State after the Trojans' star receiver, Mike Williams, was his host for his official visit. Comparisons of the two because of their similar builds became inevitable.
After Williams was ruled ineligible to play this season by the N.C.A.A., the onus of the offense fell on Jarrett, whose struggles adjusting to college mirrored his early struggles on the field. Jarrett had what he calls "the dropsies" in U.S.C.'s first four games and did not find his groove until he caught the winning touchdown pass in the defining game of U.S.C.'s season, a 23-17 victory over California on Oct. 9.
Form there, Jarrett settled down on the field and settled in off it.
"I think him being homesick affected his overall game a lot," the receivers coach Lane Kiffin said. "He told us, 'You guys haven't seen as good as I really am.' And he was right."
By the Arizona game on Nov. 13, Camille could see the difference while watching the Trojans on television. Jarrett caught two touchdown passes and celebrated with a swagger.
Right around then, he told his mother to scrap her plans to move West to be with him.
And as Jarrett finished with a strong kick that included 102 receiving yards and 2 scores in a blowout of Notre Dame, the calls were less frequent and his tone was much more positive.
And as he prepares to play for the B.C.S. title, Jarrett knows he could not have gotten to this point without his mother's support from the other end of the phone.
"She definitely told me to stick it out and stay out here," Jarrett said. "I think as it went along, it got easier for me. I can go back home now and not feel a certain way when I leave there now."
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