COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’95 : USC’s Garrido Can Cast His Own Shadow : College football: With Boselli no longer around to eclipse him, the right tackle is counted on to do the Trojans’ heavy lifting.

Even among giants on a football field, he’s gigantic.

But on the USC campus, Norberto Garrido makes most classmates look like sixth graders. He has an enormous stride, walks fast and gets double-takes as he zooms along, eating up pavement.

Garrido is 6 feet 7, seems taller and weighs between 325 and 330 pounds.

And he’s not fat. He’s slim-waisted and easily the strongest Trojan.

Years in the weight room have produced shoulders that would seem to compel him to go through doorways sideways. And that’s just where Coach John Robinson first laid eyes on him--in a doorway.

Robinson had just been hired in January, 1993, and was meeting returning players.

“The first thing I noticed when he walked into my office was that he filled up the doorway,” Robinson said. “I liked him immediately.”

And that was two years ago, when Garrido was only 290 pounds.

Now, entering his senior season, the right offensive tackle finally steps out of the shadow of Tony Boselli, his former teammate, mentor and role model.

Moreover, Garrido finds himself on a team with aspirations higher than the top of his helmet.

Garrido watched the 6-8, 320-pound Boselli turn two years of concentrated weight training and a banner senior season into becoming the NFL’s second draft pick.

“I had a great relationship with Tony. We kind of fed off each other,” Garrido said. “He helped me on the field a lot with technique stuff, like footwork and reading defenses. So on the field, I looked to him.

“But Tony was a late-starter in weight training. He really didn’t take it as seriously as I did until before his junior year. So I helped him in the weight room. He never beat me in the bench press, but by the time he left last year he was catching up.”

Garrido, who has benched 455 pounds, met Boselli in the team’s weight lifting “liftoff” last year. Garrido lifted 450, Boselli 435.

And his best, 455 pounds, Garrido believes, is enough.

“My training focus from now on will be maintaining the strength I have and improving my on-field football techniques,” he said.

Garrido spends spring and summer free time trekking or mountain biking trails in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. And he also enjoys trips out of San Diego in search of 200-pound yellowfin tuna.

Robinson says his quiet right tackle has developed into a major player because he was driven to be one. And having the perfect role model helped.

“The standard of greatness for his position was right there next to him, every day at practice,” Robinson said. “He never had to go to the film room to watch someone else.

“Now, he’s gone from a novice two years ago to a point where his understanding of football and his self-confidence have soared. At pass blocking, he’s as good as you will find. When he gets his hands on you [on a pass play], it’s over.”

It was over early for USC opponents, even when he was a sophomore. Garrido played exceptionally when the Trojans routed Houston, 49-7, two years ago. Afterward, the Houston defensive coordinator, Tony Fitzpatick, said: “Garrido is a bulldozer. He manhandled one of the strongest guys on our team all day.”

And in USC’s 45-28 victory over Arizona last year, one of the big name defensive players in the Pac-10, defensive end Tedy Bruschi (6-1, 255), spent a long afternoon trying to get around Garrido.

Recalled Trojan center Jeremy Hogue: “Go look at the game film. Betto threw Bruschi around all over the field.

“He sets the standard for hard work on this team. His improvement from ’93 to ’94 was phenomenal. Now, he’ll show the nation this year how good he really is. With his size and work ethic, there are no limits to his potential.”

Garrido seems to disregard pain. Regular visitors to USC practice can’t recall him visiting the trainer’s station, where there is often a line of players needing treatment.

“Nothing bothers him,” offensive line coach Mike Barry said.

“He plays with stingers, sore necks, back pain. . . . He never takes a day off.”

Garrido had two troublesome foot injuries his freshman year that put him on and off crutches for eight months. But that, and missing most of the Stanford game last year because of flu, is the sum of his absenteeism.

Barry, asked to compare Garrido to Boselli, called Boselli a smoother, quicker athlete and Garrido a more explosive, powerful player.

“If they played each other on opposing basketball teams, Tony would score a lot of points and Betto would foul out early,” Barry said.

“His great strength is his great strength. On run blocking, if he gets a hand on you, he’ll move you.

“Two years ago, he was a blank tape. He had no understanding of defenses. He kind of knew how to block, but he really just tried to overpower people. He had no concept of using his feet properly.

“But his work ethic has just been amazing. He doesn’t want to be good, he wants to be perfect. Now, he goes up to the line of scrimmage and he not only knows what the defense is doing, he knows exactly what we want to do with it.”

In 1993 the quicker Boselli was moved from right to left tackle, to better protect quarterback Rob Johnson’s blind side and also to open the starting right tackle slot for Garrido, who has been there ever since.

The success was easy to predict. His high school coach at La Puente Workman remembers the first time he saw Garrido.

“It was a soccer game of eighth graders at La Puente Park,” recalled Brad Manning, now a vice-principal at La Puente Wilson High.

“Norberto was about two feet taller than anyone else. At first I thought it was a coach playing with his athletes.

“Everyone thought it was pretty funny at the time, but when he came to Workman his freshman year at 6-3 and 240, the rules said he was too young to play varsity football.

“We all knew he’d be a big-time player some day. You could see the kid worked hard and was coordinated. By his junior year he was 6-6 and 250 and playing both ways for us, at nose guard and offensive tackle. We tried him at tight end, but he couldn’t catch the ball.

“In his senior season, he was a dominant player at nose guard. He loved driving the center right into the quarterback.”

Manning also remembers Garrido as a hard-working student, for whom good grades didn’t come easily.

In the Garrido family, English is the second language. Norberto Jr. and his two sisters, Caroline and Sandra, and 12-year-old brother, Moses, learned Spanish at home, English in the neighborhood and school.

In 1969, Norberto Sr. had decided he and his wife, Rosa Maria, would never achieve the life they wanted in Mexico City, where he was first a tailor and then an upholsterer. The family home is in La Puente.

At 46, Norberto Sr. is a supervisor at a City of Industry firm that makes sofas. All of his children were born in the United States.

The younger Garrido’s marriage proposal was in plain English. Before last season’s Oregon game, Garrido had arranged for “YASMIN, WILL YOU MARRY ME?” to appear on the Coliseum message board minutes after the game.

He could have picked a better game.

Oregon won, 22-7, but Yasmin Davidds, who was graduated from USC last year, accepted anyway. They plan to marry in June.