These Devils are doing it

Sporting News, The, Oct 21, 1996 by Scott Bordow

"I pretty much gave up," Keith says. "I was mad at the world for what happened to him. He was my idol. When he went down, we both went down."

That's when Marc gave Keith a kick in the butt, so to speak.

"One day he just told me `You need to start playing football.' He told me the truth, that I wasn't trying at anything, that I was being a lazy slob," Keith says. "It's kind of weird, but everything changed right then. This was my older brother telling me what to do, just like before. I listened to him."

He still does. Poole, who led the Pac-10 in average yards per catch (18.8) last season and has caught 21 passes for 397 yards and eight touch-downs this season, is probably as big a fan of Marc as Marc is of Keith and the Sun Devils. Marc enrolled at ASU in January 1995 and hopes to one day take over the family's home construction business.

"The good thing about this relationship is that it does go both ways," Marc says. "It's not just me looking up to Keith because he's the big football player. What's special is that he needs me as much as I need him."

Plummer. Roque. Poole. Freedman Rodgers. Each has brought something special to ASU, a talent, an attitude, a resolve that has the Sun Devils in the national title picture for the first time since 1986.

"That's the main reason Juan, Keith and I came here," says Plummer of his fellow seniors. "We've all put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this. A lot of tears, actually.

"But that's what we want to do, go down in history. People are always talking about the 1987 Rose Bowl (22-15 victory over Michigan) here. I'd love to erase that memory and let it be the 1997 Rose Bowl team."

Scott Bordow is a columnist for the Tribune Newspapers, based in Mesa, Ariz.