SF Chronicle: Harrison running toward recognition

Washington State RB, not USC's stars, leads Pac-10 in rushing

Jake Curtis, Chronicle Staff Writer

Trivia question: Who leads the Pac-10 in rushing?  No, it's not USC's Reggie Bush. It's not the Trojans' LenDale White or UCLA's Maurice Drew either.  Hint: The player in question is second in the nation in rushing, at 166.8 yards a game, and he is one of three players with more than 1,000 yards this season.  Still drawing a blank?  He is the only Division I-A player to have rushed for more than 100 yards in every game this season.  No help?  His 260 yards last week against UCLA was the highest rushing total by a Division I-A player this season.  Give up? It's Washington State's Jerome Harrison.  Who?  It's Jerome Harrison, a 5-foot-10, 200-pound senior, who will be on display at Cal on Saturday night. The Bears are certainly aware of the danger Harrison presents, but even they may be hard pressed to name him, tending to refer to Harrison as "that running back" or "No. 1," his uniform number.  Why does Harrison remain unknown?  He received virtually no preseason hype, failing to rank among the top 50 running backs in any preseason report. 2. In the Pac-10, running backs Bush, White, Drew and Marshawn Lynch get all of the attention. 3. The Cougars are just 3-3, including 0-3 in the Pac-10. 4. WSU is in Pullman, Wash., a long way from any media center.  "I know that now," Harrison said.  WSU coach Bill Doba figures Harrison will never get much recognition, noting that Harrison was not even the Pac-10 player of the week despite getting the highest Division I-A single-game total of the season.  Folks east of the Rockies know virtually nothing about him, and although Harrison is not thirsting for publicity, sometimes it bugs him that so few people have heard of him.  

"Some nights it does, I'm not going to lie to you," he said. "You see ESPN talking about all the other running backs, and it kills me inside sometimes."  The frustration soon subsides, though, and Harrison uses it as motivation. Being overlooked runs in the family. His father, Jerome Persell, was a star at Western Michigan, finishing second in the nation in rushing and scoring in 1976, behind only Heisman Trophy winner Tony Dorsett. But Persell was not among the five running backs who finished among the top 10 in the Heisman voting.  Harrison began his college career at a similar level, spending his freshman year at Eastern Michigan. He decided after one year it was too close to his Kalamazoo, Mich., home and was set to transfer to Grand Rapids, Mich., Junior College until a friend suggested California junior-college football was better. So he spent two years at Pasadena City College and wound up at Washington State.  "We got a whole lot more than we thought we were going to get, I promise you that," Doba said. "We thought we were going to get a backup to Chris Bruhn and we thought we had a punt returner and kick returner. We weren't good enough coaches or smart enough to realize until (after) about five or six games what we did have."  Harrison sat out the first three games last season while waiting for his junior-college transcripts to be approved and played sparingly in the next three. He broke out with 247 yards against UCLA in the ninth game, the first of nine straight 100-yard games.  Harrison set a goal of 1,800 yards rushing before the season started, and it doesn't sound so ridiculous now. He's on track to break the school single-season rushing mark of 1,637, set by Rueben Mayes.  Becoming known nation-wide will be more difficult.