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Former Trojan Turned Husky, Goforth Ready to Play in Coliseum One Last Time

Originally posted on FanNation Husky Maven | By Dan Raley | Last updated 11/2/23

Watch the video replay and you see Utah quarterback Cam Rising cross the 50-yard line and take such a vicious hit his helmet comes flying off and goes rolling down the field almost like a decapitated head in some horror film. Rising's hair stands up on end while he goes down hard in a heap. A FOX Sports camera pans to his distraught family members in the stands who were scanning the scene to see if he survived intact.

The perpetrator of this extreme college football violence in last year's Pac-12 championship game was Ralen Goforth, someone you might expect to be walking around spitting out teeth, his body twitching out of control and urgently searching to rearrange someone else's body parts.

Formerly of USC, Goforth currently comes up with hard hits for the University of Washington football team — and he's a far cry from the person you might envision after viewing that aforementioned footage of him in fierce executioner mode.

He's maddeningly soft-spoken and polite. He mentions how he came to the UW almost like others go backpacking across Europe, just to experience something new. He tells how the Husky football program fits his goals and morals, but he takes great pains not to badmouth USC, where he spent four seasons.

On Saturday afternoon, Goforth will face his old team with his new one in a game nationally televised by ABC, though no one will be at the family home in Long Beach to watch it. He's trying to collect 25 to 30 tickets to take care of everyone who claims to be a close relative as he prepares for a personal victory tour in a familiar place.

"This is truly my last time in the Coliseum," he said of the Trojans' home field, "so I want to make it special."

The sturdy 6-foot-2, 237-pound Goforth started 17 of the 40 games he played at USC, but he's been used only as a Husky reserve for each of the eight outings so far, which doesn't seem to bother him, at least not outwardly.

He's the UW's seventh-leading tackler with 27, including 2 tackles for loss, and he has a pair of pass break-ups, this after piling up 105 tackles at USC.

One of the big attractions that drew Goforth to the Huskies was the fact so many of his prospective new teammates were fifth- and sixth-year players who were willing to postpone their NFL aspirations to try and win Pac-12 and national championships.

"They've got a group of guys who could have left and went pretty good in the draft. ... I was asking them, 'Why did you all decide to come back?' " Goforth said.

Interestingly, Goforth insists he'll always be loyal to USC because that's where he started and invested a lot of football time. He speaks well of Lincoln Riley, calling him a players' coach. He's already heard from a former USC teammate or two about Saturday's game in Los Angeles.

Again, the fact he's not in the UW starting lineup for this showdown, instead backing up Edefuan Ulofoshio and Alphonzo Tuputala, has not been a lingering issue for him. He prefers to look at the big picture.

"We're all trying to compete and get better," Goforth said. "We all have the same amount of goals, which is to win at the end of the day. However, we get that done, I'm happy."

Once the UW-USC game is played, Goforth and the Huskies will prepare for a home game against Utah, the team that had its quarterback turned into hat-less road kill by this hard-charging linebacker.

Rising, however, recently was ruled out for the season after trying to come back from a knee injury suffered against Penn State in the Rose Bowl, rather than the linebacker's previous helmet-separating hit, and he will be relegated to spectator.

Goforth simply will have to find another well-exposed and unsuspecting quarterback and separate him from his headgear. And then, typical of him, maybe help the guy up, wish him well and move on to the next play.

This article first appeared on FanNation Husky Maven and was syndicated with permission.

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