LOS ANGELES — She’d had the magic number circled in her mind all afternoon, and yet the play in which Woody Marks hit that elusive 122 was so resounding that his mother Tameka forgot all about any milestone until her phone started blowing up.
The USC senior entered last Saturday against Nebraska needing precisely 122 rushing yards to hit 1,000 on the season, a tidy number that carried worlds of weight for a 5-foot-10 back long determined he could hang as a workhorse. And on a fourth-and-one on a slow-moving late drive, Lincoln Riley dialed up a speed-option for Marks, who took a pitch and whizzed 34 yards up the sideline.
His mother, who served dinner every game day for her son’s high school football teams back in Atlanta, got the text while sitting in the stands at the Coliseum. Suddenly, as Marks finished the carry and trotted back over to the sideline, he heard his mother screaming.
It was only until a couple days later, when Marks called his mother, that he found out why she was yelling such bloody murder.
“He knew it wasn’t nothing bad,” Tameka Marks said, “because he knew I was too happy.”
Through early-season wins and midseason collapses, through cross-country trips to Big Ten country ending in heartbreak and a litany of injuries and off-field developments, Woody Marks has been a rock-solid constant in this USC season. He entered Saturday’s game “a little bit under the weather,” as Riley described, a victim of the flu bug that’s swept through the Trojans’ locker room for a week. For a moment in the second quarter, he came up limping, physically unable to put weight on a leg for a moment after taking a handoff for 20 yards.
He hardly missed any time and walked away from Nebraska with a career-best 146 yards on the ground on just 19 carries – and, yes, an 1,000-yard season, the first by a USC back since the 2017 season.
“I mean, it’s not a shock that the guy plays the way he does every week, because he works every day,” Riley said postgame against Nebraska, smiling in sheer pride. “He’s the same guy every day.”
“He comes to compete, and so, game day’s really no different, than just – it’s something you just come to expect out of him,” he continued, “and he’s answered the bell for us all year long.”
Woody Marks came to USC to prove, above anything, he could be that bell-cow. He’d spent four years in a tumultuous Mississippi State program, a lead back in a Mike Leach scheme that didn’t quite emphasize the ground game. He had film as a pass-catcher out of the backfield.. He needed film as a featured back. And hitting 1,000 yards, as Tameka put it, was “very meaningful,” a direct return-on-investment from his move to Southern California.
He’ll face another tough test Saturday, a kid from the South dropped in the midst of a crosstown Los Angeles rivalry, facing a Bruins front that’s only gaining momentum and ranks tied for seventh in the country in rushing yards allowed per game. But Woody Marks has seen this Big Ten story before, and walked away wholly unfazed. He ran for 100 yards on 13 carries against Michigan, whose run defense sits at 11th. He ran for 111 yards on 20 carries against Penn State, whose sits at fifth.
“It’s just, like, I’m a ballplayer,” Woody Marks said after a win over Rutgers in late October. “So, I want the ball in my hands, so. Just to do anything that can help us win, I’m willing to do it.”
It’s paying off, as Tameka told the Southern California News Group that they’ve been talking to “a lot” of NFL scouts in the final year of her son’s eligibility, a stream of collegiate evaluators calling to let them know they’d watched Marks and leaving positive reviews.
“We keep telling him every day, just, keep doing what you doing,” Tameka said of her son. “And you getting everything that you set out, that you work for.”
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Rose Bowl
TV/radio: NBC (Ch. 4)/AM 570
