No Question About His Ability : And Maybe if Penn State’s Games Hadn’t Been so Lopsided, Ki-Jana Carter Might Have Won the Heisman Trophy

No matter where he goes, whether he’s with Dave Thomas of hamburger fame at the Heisman Trophy banquet or Bob Hope and the All-American team on national television or Goofy at Disneyland, Penn State tailback Ki-Jana Carter knows there are certain questions he will be asked by reporters, the first almost invariably having to do with his name.

His short answer is that kijana means young man in Swahili, which his mother discovered before he was born in a telephone call to Ohio State’s Black Student Union. The longer answer, provided by his mother, is that she first heard the name in a 1973 movie, “Shaft in Africa,” and that when she selected her son’s name for the birth certificate, Kenneth Ronald Carter, she asked that Ki-Jana (key-JANA) be added in parenthesis.

The next question usually is whether Monday’s game against Oregon in the Rose Bowl will be his last in a Penn State uniform or whether he will return to the university for his final year of eligibility. Again, his answer is prepackaged. He is eager to provide for his mother and younger brother in Westerville, Ohio, outside Columbus, but he is not prepared to make a decision until he discusses it with her and Nittany Lion Coach Joe Paterno after this season.

It is on the other question that he is most often asked that Carter, normally as sure of his feet off the field as on, stumbles. That is because it requires him, if he chooses to be honest, to overcome his natural tendency toward self-effacement and make a pitch for himself, something he prefers his play to do.

The question: Were you disappointed to finish second in the Heisman voting to another junior running back, Colorado’s Rashaan Salaam.

“No, it was not a disappointing thing because I thought he had a better chance of winning than I did after the year he had,” Carter says, responding quickly. “Everyone who has ever gained 2,000 yards in a season has won the Heisman. So I just went to the ceremony in New York to have a good time. I was glad to be there with the past Heisman winners, the Heisman committee and Mr. Thomas of Wendy’s.”

But as he sits at a table outside Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Disneyland, fielding another question from reporters gathered around him, Carter is clearly not paying attention, trying to decide whether he should interrupt. Even if everyone else is satisfied with his previous answer, he is not.

Finally, he adds: “But, you know, I was a little disappointed. There were a lot of games I didn’t play in the fourth quarter. If I had, I think I would have had a lot more yardage. He had a lot more carries than me, but he still had only 500 more yards and one more touchdown.”

The tone for Penn State’s season, and Carter’s, was set in the opening game against Minnesota, a 56-3 victory, in which he gained 210 yards in little more than a half before retiring. Of the Lions’ 11 games, they won eight by 24 points or more, earning them one of the highest laundry bills for the uniforms of second- and third-teamers in Division I-A history.

As a result, Carter carried the ball only 198 times, 100 fewer than Salaam. Carter gained 1,539 yards for an average of 7.8 per carry; Salaam gained 2,055 yards for an average of 6.9 yards per carry. Carter scored 23 touchdowns, Salaam 24.

So who had a better season?

“Rashaan Salaam may have gotten the Heisman, but Ki-Jana Carter is the best running back in the country,” NFL draft expert Joel Buchsbaum wrote in the current edition of Pro Football Weekly.

Oregon Coach Rich Brooks, whose defense will face Penn State’s multidimensional attack Monday, chose not to enter the debate, but there is little question of his admiration for the 5-foot-10, 219-pound Carter.

“He’s unbelievable,” Brooks said. “When you look at the films, it looks like he’s not going very fast, and it looks like the people he’s playing against aren’t very good tacklers. But you know he is fast, and you know they are good tacklers. He’s got deceptive speed and power. If he doesn’t beat you with one, he’ll beat you with the other.”

Oregon cornerback Herman O’Berry said the only running back he has seen who reminds him of Carter is the Dallas Cowboys’ Emmitt Smith.

“But Carter’s faster,” O’Berry said.

Comparing him to another Penn State All-American tailback, Paterno said: “He’s got tremendous acceleration. He can jump that thing outside quicker than anybody we’ve had since Curt Warner. But he’s also got more power than you would think for someone with his speed.”

Yet, even though Carter started eight games as a sophomore and led the team in rushing with 1,026 yards, Paterno was not an absolute believer, listing him only as candidate for the starting lineup alongside two other tailbacks on this season’s initial depth chart.

One reason is that he missed last spring’s drills while recovering from a knee injury, and Paterno had doubts about Carter’s willingness to play with pain. Another is that Paterno wanted to find out whether Carter’s newly discovered commitment to blocking and pass receiving during off-season workouts paid off. (It did.)

Still another reason, Carter says, is that Paterno wanted to motivate him, a drill the tailback has become familiar with since he entered Penn State as one of the nation’s most highly touted recruits in 1991.

As he was born and raised in the Columbus area, it was assumed, even by Carter for most of his life, that he would gravitate toward Ohio State.

Penn State?

“I hated the colors, and I hated the uniforms,” he told the New York Times. “They were just--plain. I knew Penn State was good. I just never cared about the team.”

But as the signing date approached, Ohio State was coming off a Liberty Bowl loss to Air Force, and there was doubt in Columbus about how long the Buckeyes’ coach, John Cooper, would be allowed to remain. Seeking a more stable situation, as well as an opportunity to play for a team that he thought might contend for the national championship, Carter decided that there were worse things than plain.

Carter second-guessed that decision during his first year on campus at State College, Pa., when he was in uniform for the first three games but did not play. That included an 81-0 victory over Cincinnati, after which Carter’s mother, Kathy, called Paterno at home to question his thinking. It is not for nothing that she named the nine-chair hair salon she owns in Columbus “S.W.A.”--Styling With Attitude.

Paterno explained that her son needed to mature and that he would be redshirted, an embarrassment to Carter when he returned home during the Thanksgiving break and had to answer questions about his stalled career.

If there were still any questions this season, he answered them when he carried 19 times for 137 yards in the Lions’ 63-14 victory over the Buckeyes.

“A lot of my friends who went to Ohio State questioned me, but I made it to the Rose Bowl before they did,” he says.

And, with a chance for a perfect season, he says he would not trade places with any other running back, not even Salaam.

“Me and him talked in New York,” Carter says. “He says he would give up the Heisman for a chance to win the national championship. It’s a team sport. I’d rather share that honor with my teammates than win an individual trophy.”

* A DESTINY FULFILLED: Jay Barker has developed nicely as the Alabama quarterback, a role he had been practicing for since he was 7. C4

* ONE GOOD TURN: Warrick Dunn of Florida State sets a fine example in dealing with his mother’s death by caring for his family. C6