Glare of the Spotlight Lingers Too Long : College football: After scoring winning touchdown against UCLA last season, USC receiver Morton found negative side of celebrity.

Johnnie Morton made the winning catch last year in USC’s 45-42 victory over UCLA at the Rose Bowl.

And you might think the instant celebrity that accompanies such a feat would delight Morton, who until that day was a virtually unknown second-year freshman.

But that is hardly the case.

“It’s not like I wish it didn’t happen, but I just wish people would forget about it right now,” Morton said as USC prepared to play UCLA again Saturday at the Coliseum.

“I don’t want to keep looking back. I want to look at the present and the future.

“Sometimes it’s a pain to keep hearing about it.”

Those who saw the catch with 16 seconds to play probably will never forget it. Less than three minutes earlier, with 3:09 remaining, Morton had made what he assumed at the time would be the winning catch, taking a pass away from cornerback Dion Lambert in the end zone to give USC a 38-35 lead.

But UCLA scored with 1:19 left for a 42-38 lead.

When USC got the ball back, quarterback Todd Marinovich completed passes of 27 and 22 yards to senior Gary Wellman, setting up the winning play.

As USC lined up at UCLA’s 23-yard line, Morton was flanked left. He saw Lambert directly in front of him and safety Michael Williams stationed off to his right, lined up on the left hash mark.

UCLA’s No. 1 safety, Eric Turner, was on the sideline, having left the game because of an elbow injury during the third quarter.

The play called for Morton to run an 18-yard comeback route, but when Morton saw the way Lambert and Williams were aligned, he knew the Bruins would be vulnerable to a corner route.

He winked at Marinovich, who had reached the same conclusion.

“It’s just such a basic defense,” Morton said. “They didn’t disguise it at all. I saw the corner wide open, so I winked at Todd. He looked back at me like he was going to throw me the ball. So I just kind of knew he was coming to me.

“I just ran the pattern and he threw the ball in a great spot. You have to make catches like that, so I just made it. That was about it.”

Actually, there was a little more to it than that.

As Morton cut toward the corner, Lambert slipped and fell.

Morton slipped, too--the turf was soft and loose at that point in the game, he said--but didn’t fall.

Williams gave chase, but was unable to prevent a leaping catch by Morton in the far left corner of the north end zone.

“At the time, it seemed like practice,” Morton said. “I didn’t even think of it as a big game.”

Soon, his feelings changed.

Mobbed by teammates in the end zone, he was besieged later by reporters in the locker room.

“It was just ecstasy,” he said. “People kept calling me all through the night. It was something like I couldn’t believe. I realized what had happened, but it was hard to believe I did it.”

When the cheering stopped, however, Morton realized that, unless he fulfilled his potential, he might be remembered only for one play.

“I wanted to make everyone forget about it, do so many good things this year that they wouldn’t even talk about that anymore,” he said. “After a while, I just wanted to put it behind me because I don’t want everyone to talk about that for the rest of my career.”

With 46 receptions for 594 yards, he is USC’s leading receiver and has been one of the few constants in a passing attack that has been mostly inconsistent. He had nine receptions against Stanford, eight against Cal and Washington.

But Morton hasn’t scored since Nov. 17, 1990--the UCLA game.

“That’s bothered me,” he said.

Morton came to USC from South Torrance High, where he caught 60 passes for 951 yards and nine touchdowns as a senior.

Until his senior year in high school, Morton was a UCLA fan. But when the Bruins didn’t pursue him until late in his final season at South Torrance, he was “insulted.”

For now, he is concentrating on football, looking toward the future and definitely not living in the past.

“It will be more of a big deal later on in life, when I’m not playing football anymore and I’m looking back,” he said of his role in last year’s UCLA game.

“Right now, I have so many years ahead, I just want to put that on the back burner and look ahead.”