GLORIOUS DAY LIVES ON NO ONE HAS LET ANTHONY DAVIS FORGET AFTERNOON HE BEAT IRISH.

Byline: STEVE DILBECK

It was just one afternoon, another college football game played out on a Saturday at the Coliseum 30 long years ago. Only it changed a life forever, if not lives.

Anthony Davis has never needed a reminder, but they're always there. Always waiting, always with another surprise.

``Seems everyone I talk to was there,'' Davis said. ``I met one woman who said, 'I was pregnant and when you brought that kickoff back, and you induced my labor.'''

Then there is the woman who emerged from the darkness outside the top of the tunnel following the game, brandishing a crucifix and placing it directly in his face.

``Nobody does that to Notre Dame,'' she said. ``You have to be the devil.''

And there are the people who will see him, smile, point and simply say:

``Notre Dame.''

If ever one player was identified with a single game, it is Anthony Davis and the USC-Notre Dame game of 1974. Davis set all kinds of NCAA records as a Trojan, should have won the Heisman, enjoyed a long professional career.

Yet it is always about Notre Dame that afternoon, when USC fell behind 24-0 to the Irish only to stage the most remarkable comeback in college football history.

When Davis scored four consecutive touchdowns. When USC scored 55 unanswered points against the No. 1 defense in the nation. When eyes were left so disbelieving, that even to this day, it seems hard to imagine it was seen.

The Trojans rode the stunning 55-24 victory into the Rose Bowl, beat Ohio State and captured the national championship.

It all turned on that stunning afternoon, and Davis doesn't need a calendar to know what time of year it is. His phone always starts ringing before the Notre Dame game, even more this year on its 30th anniversary.

Davis, the former San Fernando High School star, is 52 now. He lives in Irvine, has owned a construction company for years and has lived almost an entire life since that Saturday afternoon.

And still ...

``I don't know an athlete in America that gets interviewed every year like me,'' he said. ``It's been like this for me for 30 years. Every month in November or December, for a full week the press talks to me.

``I don't care where I am in the country, they find me. Once in 1985, I was up in Stallion Springs, 50 miles outside of Bakersfield, and they found me at the construction site. I couldn't believe it.''

But disbelief has always been a part of it. A comeback that seemed part magic, now part legend.

Unbeaten Notre Dame had simply dominated the afternoon. Rolled out to a 24-0 lead with 53 seconds left in the half.

Then quarterback Pat Haden led a lightning drive, hitting Shelton Diggs with a couple of passes before Davis scored on a 7-yard swing pass.

Still, it was 24-6 at the half, and the Irish seemed firmly in control. Davis had cut his left palm in the second quarter and missed most of the coaches' talks at the half while in the training room. He heard head coach John McKay address the entire team at the end.

``All of a sudden, he said, 'They're going to kick the ball to A.D., and he's going to bring it all the way back,''' Davis said. ``Just like that. I looked at him like he was a crazy man.''

The Trojans were already on the field when Davis left the training room and entered the tunnel just behind the entire Notre Dame team.

``One of them turns and yells, 'We're going to kick the ball to Davis, and we're going to kick his (butt),' '' Davis said. ``I come from the streets of Pacoima. You want to kick my (butt), bring it on.''

Davis had scored six touchdowns against Notre Dame two years earlier, and the Irish hadn't kicked to him since. He pulled his kickoff team together and alerted them to expect a return.

The first kickoff sailed out of bounds. After a 5-yard penalty, the next kickoff came end over end to Davis.

``I hadn't seen one in two years,'' he said.

There was a key block from Ricky Bell and another from Mosi Tatupu in the wedge. He started left and ran down the sideline right in front of Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian.

``That's the only time collegiately or professionally, that I felt a crowd,'' he said. ``It was like running through butter.

``It was like me running through something, the vibrations were that strong. They were actually hitting my body.''

The touchdown electrified the Coliseum crowd of 83,552. If at the half the Trojans doubted their ability to come back against the Fighting Irish, they had a sideline of believers now.

Something almost otherworldly was about to unfold.

``I was the match to the wood,'' Davis said. ``I lit the inferno. It was crazy.''

Big play followed big play. A crushing tackle by David Lewis on the ensuing kickoff. A 6-yard scoring run by Davis. A fumble recovery led to a Davis 4-yard run and a USC lead, but things weren't about to ebb.

``It was the damnedest thing I ever saw in football,'' McKay said 20 years later. ``I've never seen anything like it. Every time we got the ball, we scored. I don't know why every time we got the ball we scored. I'm sure some of my assistants understand why we scored. But I never did.

``I remember telling the coaches up in the press box, 'Come on down and witness this thing. I don't know what the hell's going on. I think it's pretty good.'''

The floodgates were open, and there was nothing Notre Dame could do. Haden threw two TDs to McKay's son, J.K. McKay, and another to Diggs. Charles Phillips intercepted two passes, one for a touchdown.

USC scored 55 points in less than 17 minutes.

``It was like they played on Saturday, and we came back on Sunday with whole other guys,'' Davis said. ``It was crazy.''

Davis played on two national championship teams at USC. He went on to play in the NFL, the WFL, the CFL and the USFL.

Yet he is forever identified from that Saturday afternoon, a day he rushed for only 56 yards from scrimmage, a day that altered his life forever. Starred in a game now spoken of in reverent terms.

``I didn't have a true perspective of the game until I got out of football, and then realized how it affected people,'' Davis said. ``I knew it was dramatic, but the way people talk about it now, they consider it phenomenal.

``I figured, 'Well, somebody's going to do something the same way I did.' I remember talking to a reporter years ago and asking him why reporters keep calling me about that day. And he said, 'When somebody else duplicates that performance, then we'll stop talking to you.'''

USC plans to honor Davis Saturday during the halftime of this year's Notre Dame game. He realizes now he will always be USC's Notre Dame killer, and that's OK, too.

If that day had never happened?

``I would just be a guy who went to a great school and played in a great rivalry, and that would have been it,'' he said. ``I would have faded into oblivion.''

Instead, fame from that game has helped him become partners in Jewelry by Arsa, a downtown store that manufactures diamond ``USC No. 1'' jewelry. It helped him launch his own clothing line, ``A.D. 28.''

And it left him with a lifetime of glory.

``It's been great for me,'' he said. ``How many athletes can be talked to for 30 years about something they did? Some guys have long careers, they're walking around, and you don't even know who they are.''

For a precious few, the phone is forever ringing.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) no caption (Sports Illustrated magazine)

(2 -- color) no caption (Score Board)

(3 -- color) Anthony Davis poses in one of his cars, with the door reflecting one of his runs while he was at USC.

(4) It's been 30 years since Anthony Davis' kickoff return started USC's comeback from a 24-0 deficit against Notre Dame.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

Box:

No. 1 USC vs. NOTRE DAME