As USC running back Austin Jones remembers, it was a couple days or so after Caleb Williams won the Heisman Trophy last December in New York City that the quarterback was back on campus at practice prepping for the Cotton Bowl as if nothing notable had happened over the weekend.
"Even when he came back, he didn't say anything about the Heisman. ... He was back like it was nothing, normal day of practice," Jones recalls.
Williams maintains that his life indeed hasn't changed much since he formally cemented his name among the all-time greats in college football history, but that's not true.
This offseason, Williams was the honorary starter at the NASCAR race in Los Angeles in February, threw out the first pitch at both Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers games, walked in a Hugo Boss fashion show in Miami in March, took in a Formula 1 race in Monaco, got invited on stage at a Drake concert earlier this month and will now star in Dr. Pepper's "Fansville" commercials this year.
It's also almost a consensus presumption that he'll be the No. 1 overall pick in the next NFL draft and he has a good chance to make college football history by becoming just the second repeat Heisman winner along with former Ohio State running back Archie Griffin in 1974-75.
Williams is now the face of college football.
That's what prompted the question when he talked with TrojanSports.com last month.
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"I don't think my life has changed much," Williams answered. "I keep my life and my group and my friends and things like that very tight around me, small-knit circle, so that stuff doesn't really get in. I don't allow it to seep in because it's not doing me any good whether it's good or bad, whatever the people are saying -- I still have to go out there, compete, play and go have fun."
What he meant -- and what by all accounts does seem to be true -- is that Williams himself hasn't changed much through all of that.
"He's even more hungry," Trojans center Justin Dedich said. "You wouldn't think that, winning the Heisman, but he's even more hungry this year. He wants more and he feels like there's more out there. He's just grown as a leader this year."
Said Jones: "Just seeing him work every single day, he finds ways to work within himself. I can't see it because I think he's such a great player so I don't know what exactly he does [to improve further], but when you're around something like that every single day nothing surprises you anymore. The crazy throws that he makes or the stuff that he does, it's just one of those things where it's just like, 'That's Caleb.' ...
"He just comes in and he wants to win and he wants to work. You see it every day in what he does."
