MORTON PROMISES NO TRASH TALK, JUST A WIN.

Byline: Kevin Modesti

Chad Morton wore something in cardinal and gold when he took a stroll in the sand at Playa del Rey recently, and a trash collector recognized him as a USC football player, all 5-foot-8, 185 pounds of him.

``You better beat them this year!'' shouted the man with the pointed stick and the garbage bag.

He was talking trash to the right Trojan.

Morton is on record guaranteeing that USC will beat ``them'' - UCLA - Saturday at the Coliseum. The senior tailback has been guaranteeing it since August.

``It's sickening,'' Morton told a Sports Illustrated writer back then, referring to the Bruins' eight-year winning streak against USC. ``But I guarantee this year we are not going to lose.''

Morton repeated the prediction when he sat before dozens of reporters at the Pac-10 media day.

``The coaches don't like us to talk like that, but I think that what this team needs is a little confidence,'' he said then.

Given how much has transpired in the three months since then - little of it inspiring confidence - Morton could be forgiven if he crawled back off that limb this week and joined the majority of prognosticators in saying the game between a couple of inconsistent teams is impossible to forecast.

But he hasn't backed off one inch.

``I'm sticking to it,'' Morton said Tuesday afternoon in Heritage Hall. ``I'm still guaranteeing a win, even though our season hasn't gone the way we'd have liked.''

The guarantee is ear-catching for two reasons.

First, Morton is not the brash sort. The conversation with the sanitation worker is the closest he'll ever come to trash talking.

Morton says he does not engage in verbal smack on the field. As 22-year-olds go, he's pretty polite.

``I help people up,'' he said. ``People help me up.''

Second, considering the temptation for athletes to draw attention to themselves with flimsy guarantees - after all, they never have to pay off - such predictions are surprisingly rare.

Joe Namath guaranteed a Jets victory in the 1969 Super Bowl. Pat Riley guaranteed a Lakers championship repeat in 1988. Muhammad Ali guaranteed any number of wins. Namath's and Riley's guarantees came true, and Ali's usually did.

Evander Holyfield guaranteed a third-round knockout the first time he fought Lennox Lewis. Forced to go the distance in a lucky draw, Holyfield fell into the same category as George Bush, whose guarantee was no new taxes.

The only guarantee anybody can remember in the USC-UCLA series happened in 1984. Fired up by the Trojans' upset victory over top-ranked Washington the week before, quarterback Tim Green blurted out to writers, ``We're going to whup the Bruins!''

After the Bruins won 29-10, one of them remarked, ``That was the best whuppin' we've ever had.''

Morton recognizes he'll be the butt of jokes, as Green was, if USC loses.

``We have to back it up, or we'll look like complete idiots,'' he said Tuesday.

We will or I will?

``If we don't (win), I'll take the fall for everybody,'' he said.

But Morton said he considered the possibilities before he spoke up last summer.

``It was well thought out, definitely,'' he said. ``It wasn't just something I thought would be nice to say.

``My parents tell me, `Don't do stuff to get them (the Bruins) all fired up and make 'em play even better than they are,' '' he said. ``But I'm not trying to put their players or coaches down, I'm just trying to build up our team. . . . I think it has got everybody going a little bit.''

Will the pressure Saturday be on USC's players, who want to be the ones to end the streak, or on UCLA's, who don't want to be the ones to let it end? Bruins coach Bob Toledo said Monday the pressure is on the Trojans. Trojans coach Paul Hackett admitted Tuesday that's probably true.

``We've been talking about it for a year,'' Hackett said.

Morton, for one, said he's having trouble sleeping. Tenth on USC's all-time rushing list with 2,284 yards, including a game-high 120 against UCLA in 1998, he should have a big game Saturday against the Pac-10's weakest rushing defense.

If he doesn't, or if his teammates let him down, his guarantee goes on the trash heap of history.