Herschel Walker

[cowboyeric8]

Whats the story on Herschel? Is it true that he didn't believe in pushing weights and just did push-ups, sit-ups, pulled tires, and such? Just wondering because he was one big and powerful player for never pushing weights. He still looks like he can play.

Thanks

[Billy Bullocks]

I heard he did like 1500 push ups and sit ups...not sure if he lifted or not.

I also hear that Ray Lewis didn't even hit weights until like college, and I also hear Jamal Lewis doesnt lift, he hits a punching bag.

[jcblanco22]

Originally Posted by cowboyeric8

Whats the story on Herschel? Is it true that he didn't believe in pushing weights and just did push-ups, sit-ups, pulled tires, and such? Just wondering because he was one big and powerful player for never pushing weights. He still looks like he can play.

Thanks

Cowboyeric, I was always amazed by Herschel as well. I've heard the same stuff you have--never touched weights and had a bunch of interesting workout philosophies.

I remember reading how he kind of gauged his progress on his sit-ups each night (he stated he did 2000 per night) by the game shows on TV. I recall where Love Connection was a particular favorite of his, and he knew that he had to have a certain number by the end of the show if he was to be on pace to finish by a certain time. I think he said he only slept 3-4 hours per night also. Additionally, I do recall that his substitute for barbell or dumbell curls was curling cinderblocks!!

I've always been interested in learning more about Herschel. A lot of folks might also recall that he at one point wanted to quit the NFL to become an FBI agent and also practiced ballet for a while. If there's ever been someone in the sports world who hasn't written an autobio but should, it's Herschel in my opinion.

BTW, you're not kidding on your "looks like he could still play" comment. I happened to see him briefly at the Super Show this past January in Orlando (sporting goods trade show), the guy looks unbelievable.

[Billy Bullocks]

Wasn't he also an olympic sprinter? The guy was just a freak of nature, and a freak. Referred to himself in 3rd person and was on some crazy religion if I'm correct.

[THUMPER]

Originally Posted by Billy Bullocks

Wasn't he also an olympic sprinter? The guy was just a freak of nature, and a freak. Referred to himself in 3rd person and was on some crazy religion if I'm correct.

Herschel was one of the fastest players in the league and used to compete in the NFL's "Fastest Man" competitions. He never won but he did pretty well. Considering he was 225+ lbs and he was running against guys like Darrell Green (who usually won) or Ron Brown, both of whom were 180 lbs or less, he did remarkably well.

I loved his attitude as a player, especially when he came back to Dallas at the end of his career. We totally misused him but he never complained and was the best player on our STs unit, even leading the STs in tackles one year. Great athlete who could also play football and he was, and still is, a great person.

[jksmith269]

I saw Hershel on the Best Damn Sports show last year and he said he didn't lift and only did pushups and sit ups.... he said he did a lot of cardio work.

[TunaCaserole]

I believe on that episode of Best Damn Hershel mentioned he was training again for the Olympics to compete in Tae Kwon Do. He already competed in the bobsled after his football career was over.

[MinnesotaCowboy]

Herschel was a great runner and pass receiver when used in the proper scheme. Even with his great speed (I think he was a record-holder for 50 and 60 yd. sprints in college) he had very few to no moves in the open field. He was a back made to run inside the tackles. If he could get thru the first two tiers he could usually outrun anyone to the endzone. When we traded him to the Vikings they tried to run him outside all the time and he was a failure! He was great guy and a wonderful athlete but he had to be used in the proper scheme!

[Hostile]

Originally Posted by cowboyeric8

Whats the story on Herschel? Is it true that he didn't believe in pushing weights and just did push-ups, sit-ups, pulled tires, and such? Just wondering because he was one big and powerful player for never pushing weights. He still looks like he can play.

Thanks

There is a very old Sports Illustrated article about him. In High School he asked his football coach how he could get big, strong, and fast. The coach replied, "Push ups, situps, and windsprints." Herschel took him seriously and began to train.

One day the same coach told him he needed to work on his endurance. Herschel took that to mean run distances. So he added that to his training.

He never trained with weights, but he never stopped training either. His body fat ratio was amazing. I read where it was like 2% or less.

He didn't just do standard push ups, sit ups, or windsprints either. He would do a hand stand up against a wall and do push ups with his full body weight above him. Or he would put his elevated on a dresser and do push ups at a decline. Anything to add resistence training.

For sit ups he used to go to some bleachers and lock his fett up under the seat in front of him and out of he back of the bleachers lower himself all the way down to where his body was vertical to the ground then back up.

Very good article. I highly recommend it.

IMO, if he had been used solely in the I formation he might have been the benchmark upon which all RBs were measured. It didn't work out that way though.

[jcblanco22]

Originally Posted by Hostile

There is a very old Sports Illustrated article about him. In High School he asked his football coach how he could get big, strong, and fast. The coach replied, "Push ups, situps, and windsprints." Herschel took him seriously and began to train.

One day the same coach told him he needed to work on his endurance. Herschel took that to mean run distances. So he added that to his training.

He never trained with weights, but he never stopped training either. His body fat ratio was amazing. I read where it was like 2% or less.

He didn't just do standard push ups, sit ups, or windsprints either. He would do a hand stand up against a wall and do push ups with his full body weight above him. Or he would put his elevated on a dresser and do push ups at a decline. Anything to add resistence training.

[View Full Quote]For sit ups he used to go to some bleachers and lock his fett up under the seat in front of him and out of he back of the bleachers lower himself all the way down to where his body was vertical to the ground then back up.

Very good article. I highly recommend it.

IMO, if he had been used solely in the I formation he might have been the benchmark upon which all RBs were measured. It didn't work out that way though.

Thanks for the info. Hos, that's what I mean by the guy being interesting. Any idea on what year the article might be from?

[Bullet22]

Here's the man...

http://www.mattfurey.com/

[Hostile]

Originally Posted by jcblanco22

Thanks for the info. Hos, that's what I mean by the guy being interesting. Any idea on what year the article might be from?

I believe this might be the article.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/fea...walker_083181/

[font=Helvetica]More Than Georgia on His Mind [/font]




His roots are in the Deep South, but Herschel Walker sees the whole world as his stage



By Curry Kirkpatrick

Issue date: August 31, 1981



You could say that we become what we are not so much in the sanctuary of the womb or the groves of academe but in that Elysian drive-in joint known as high school. Most everyone went to high school, even a few hockey players. It is there that we were nutured, our personalities shaped, our bodies structured, our habits and moods and values all having jockeyed for position in the chaotic halls of puberty. High school is enduring. Chuck Berry: Ring, ring, goes the bell ... deliver me from the days of old. No one is completely delivered from the days of high school.

This is especially true in the case of heroes who learn to be heroes in high school and stay that way. High school nerds can change and turn into real people, but high school heroes aren't permitted the luxury. So why all the hullabaloo over Herschel Junior Walker, 19 and never been hissed? Why such astonishment about his poise, intelligence, charm, graciousness, humility, charisma, and his ability to put together more than two words at a time? Sir John Gielgud once said of Jean Seberg, who came out of little Marshalltown, Iowa, "She had learned to be a star before she became an actress," And so, now, Herschel Walker, the End Zone Stalker.

Walker, the All-America football player, says he runs track better than he plays football. Walker, the world-class sprinter, says he dances better than he sprints. Walker, the jump-splits hoffer, says he spends more time writing poetry than sashaying around the disco floor. But if there is one thing he knows more about than all of this, it is how to be a hero. Herschel Walker, out of little Wrightsville, Ga., learned that before he became anything else.

If all the Georgia Dawgs will please hunker down for a moment and cease woofing, we can put away Walker's historical debut against Tennessee and his historical NCAA freshman rushing record of 1,616 yards and his historical rookie-year third-place finish in the Heisman Trophy voting and his historical one-man-gang-despite-a-dislocated-shoulder Sugar Bowl routine against Notre Dame for the national championship and ... woof, woof, woof. All right, all right. Healthy all season. Hushel -- that's the way you Dawgs say it, now ain't it? Hushel -- would've gone for 2,000 yards easy. And, yeah, yeah, he got absolutely jobbed out of the Heisman. If the voters had waited two more weeks, Walker would have won it laughing. Now git down, you hairy dawgs.... If we put away all the football elements, and the track stop-watchers, too, it becomes fairly clear from Walker's endearing way with people, plus an obvious relish for this hero business, that his race is not with Art Schlichter or Carl Lewis for yards, finshing tapes, banquet appearances and other boring stuff. It is with -- why, of course! -- Sugar Ray Media Leonard for the role of America's next black sports idol.

Doubtless the word "idol" hasn't crossed Walker's own lips. He insists he never had a role model. Indeed, he says, "I don't remember ever admiring anyone.... Well, maybe Richard Pryor." And yet his mentors from Wrightsville -- Tom Jordan, a former head track coach and assistant football coach at Johnson County High, and Bob Newsome, Walker's employer at the corner Ford agency in town -- dispute this. Jordan says Walker "kept close track" of Muhammad Ali. Newsome remembers Walker's following the career of O.J. Simpson being impresssed with his class and stature."

Wasn't Ali thte one who rhymed anything that moved? Wasn't Simpson the one who gave so much credit to his offensive line? Well, late at night while everybody else was asleep in the old house on the hill outside Wrightsville, little Herschel Walker composed poems about life, love, his football team and his algebra class, at times conveying a feel and sensitivity that would shock and amaze ya, even Joe Frazya:

I wish they could see
The real person in me
Someday I reckon they will know
I'm not only here for the show

And when Walker arrived in Athens will all the bugles blaring, he proceeded to diffuse any resentment on the part of his teammates by being the first freshman to unload the seniors' luggage on the opening day of practice. Following that, he unloaded volley after volley of Simpsonilities. Like "I'm just here to make the traveling squad." And "The tailback position is one of the easiest to play." And "I play to satisfy my coaches and teammates. I'm just grateful to the offensive line for taking me in a member of their family.

Richard Pryor

"Herschel has the unique ability to make you feel good about yourself," says LaTrelle Troup, a Wrightsville housewife who has known Walker through her son, Chris, the current starting quarterback and safety at Johnson County High. "The folks who know Herschel Walker only as an athlete will be severely cheated in life."

On campus at Athens, Walker's wholesomeness, his closeness to family, his inclination to do all the right things and use all the right things and use all the right phrases, including "yes sir" and "no sir" (simple, unadulterated quotes which sent the media into mass cardiac arrest), his respect for elders, his manners in the presence of women, his patience with autograph-seeking children of all ages ... collectively, these responses seemed almost too good to be true. "But don't you see?" Newsome, the car dealer, says. "Herschel knew exactly where he was going and the best road to get there. This was all planned."

Nevertheless, Walker's behavior was nothing more than a finely tuned emulation of a value system taught by his parents, Willis and Christine. He was, and is, a child of the Old South, possessed of all that implies -- gentility, courtesy, devotion to Sunday School, punctuality at supper, loyalty to home and hearth. He is sincerely a mama's boy. Christine Walker's boy through and through. When Walker arrived at the state university, a school that first gave an athletic scholarship to a black in 1968, the fact that he was a black child of the Old South who hit the books, quoted from Macbeth and insisted he would graduate with a degree in criminology (he had aobut a 3.0 grade-point average last year) was the dynamic that shocked everyone. And, besides, the guy could run the football a little bit.

Immediately Walker disarmed potential critics (read: the press) as easily as he evaded potential tacklers. Herschel, don't you get tired carrying the football so many times? "No sir, the ball ain't heavy." This was great stuff for a while. But then: Herschel, don't you get tired signing all those autographs? "No sir, the pen ain't heavy." Enough was enough. The Georgia offensive line was good but, hey, they weren't the 12 disciples or even the Seven Blocks of Granite. Walker's confession that he had never given the Heisman a thought was quaint, but, hey, he knew the precise number of juniors who had won the award and the seniors as well. After Walker received a summons for a traffic violation in Dublin, Ga., he telephoned his apologies to the officer who pulled him over, for wasting the cop's time. Hey, what was this, Hill Street Blues? Given these downs and the yardage to go, it was inevitable that cynicism would rear its ugly head. Chinks appeared to tarnish the All-America armor.

It was noted that, a year before Walker's matriculation, Georgia had created a women's track team specifically to get his older sister Veronica ("Nep"), a sprinter, up to Athens. But last April Veronica was suspected of shoplifting, though no charges were brought; after she was called on the carpet about other troubles, with her grades, she told school officials that if she was sent home, Herschel might just go with her. Well, he was his sister's keeper, but this certainly wasn't his fault, nor his idea.

And how about the way Walker had made Georgia Coach Vince Dooley squirm during the 1980 recruiting season by waiting so long, until he was the 29th and last freshman to sign? Surely he was coming to Athens all along. Or the way Walker had made all of college football wriggle this past spring by permitting Montreal Alouettes owner Nelson Skalbania's offer to play pro ball in Canada this fall to dangle in the scalding Georgia sun?

"I don't remember his daughter's name," Walker says of Skalbania's emissary to Athens, "but she sure was pretty." Certainly he never was going to abandon the national champions to go take handoffs for something called the Alouettes? Walker's mother drove more than two hours up Highway 15 to school to discuss the Montreal offer, but, she says, "Herschel wouldn't even turn that stereo down. Lord, how he blares that thing."

Then there was the aborted Herschel Walker Insurance Agency, a scheme devised by Newsome and an Atlanta lawyer as an "off-season summer job." As if Walker would have time to go door to door peddling fire and flood policies, what with all those 10-and-change 100-meter dashes he would be running in places like Oslo and Amsterdam between semesters. As that fiasco unfolded, to the horror of Dooley as well as the NCAA, the previously benign press opened fire.

In the spring of 1980 Walker refused to get involved when Wrightsville black groups held marches and boycotted stores in his hometown, protesting what they felt was police mistreatment and a lack of job opportunities. Walker attributes the confrontations to "outsiders." He says, "I never go jumping into something I don't know what I'm jumping into." In Athens the small black community began to wonder why Walker was always seen around campus with many more white friends than black. Walker watchers of both races confirm that he has gravitated toward white society and doesn't relate to his fellow blacks.

"Herschel shouldn'tbe underestimated," says Dr. Leroy Ervin, a black who is the assistant vice-president for academic affairs at Georgia. "There is a kind of genius there that has enabled him to synthesize things at a much quicker rate than most adults. He's not the kind to put an umbilical cord anywhere -- even where race is concerned. He gets close to some people ... at a distance. In the same way, he will never be directly offensive or affrontive. He has developed all the appropriate responses at an autonomic level."

The net result is that the person Herschel Walker has turned out to be is more, much more, than a little bit impossible to dislike. Just as his stability emanates from a tightly knit family, so his worldliness has been attained through travel. He asks not to be photographed in that cliche, out-of-the-backwoods shot in front of his home -- a neat, one-story, white clapboard house six miles outside Wrightsville over the railroad tracks and up a dirt road that overlooks a picturesque hill with green pastures and wild flowers sprinkled across the horizon. (In fact, he wants to demolish the house and build another on the site. That way he can, in a sense, obliterate the past without abandoning it.) Smoky, the horse, is out back. A pit bulldog and a chihuahua are on the porch. Trophies nearly fill an entire room. But inside, where a camera also isn't allowed, books are everywhere as well. The adults of the house, both factory workers who met picking cotton in the nearby fields, always tended to their book learning.

Out of this background Herschel Walker somehow developed terrific sociopolitical acumen. "The kid is a politician par excellence," says one Georgia man. In the 1980 election returns of Greene County, Ga., Walker received three write-in votes for President of the United States.

[Hostile]

Lest it be forgotten that, above everything else, Walker is still a relative infant from the boondocks who has been forced too early to form -- and asked to state -- opinions on issues both athletic and otherwise, his open, almost baby face and pragmatic mind are always there as a reminder.

Examining the situation long and hard, Walker figured out correctly that the National Football League shouldn't be permitted to deprive a football player of a job because of his age. He also determined that it would be foolish -- certainly now if not ever -- to challenge the league in court, even if he were to win. Earlier Walker, rejecting the Canadian Football League, announced, "I grew up in America and I don't think I should have to leave the country to make a living." That was his and his alone. He came into Dooley's office one day, sat down and said just htat. The Georgia people, hearts in throats, wrote up the press release. They didn't unfurl any flags. On the Bulldog highlight film a voice off camera asks a 19-year-old sophomore-to-be in a letter jacket what he would most like people to know about himself. "That Herschel Walker is not some make-believe character," Walker says.

The story is told of a disc jockey in Savannah whose mother called from New York last fall and asked who this nice Jewish boy "Herschel Somebody" was, the one running up big numbers for the Georgia Dogs. Well, the name happens to be a common one in Walker's neck of the woods. Lovett Stadium, the field where the Johnson County Trojans play, is named for a prominent former banker, Herschel Lovett. The county itself is named for a former Georgia govenor, Herschel V. Johnson. Two generations ago Big Herschel Walker and Little Herschel Walker were brothers, distinguished not by name but by size. Big Herschel Walker was the grandfather of Biggest Herschel Walker. How 'bout them Herschels?

In their den in the unphotographed house up on the hill Willis and Christine Walker proudly point to plaques, ribbons and honors won by all of their offspring -- Willis Junior, 25 now, Renneth, age 24, Sharon, age 23, Veronica, age 20. Herschel Junior (Christine just liked the name Junior. The family calls him "Bo"), and Lorenza, age 17. Everyone but baby Carol, 14, who can really shoot the basketball and may ultimately be the best athlete of the brood. That will take some doing. Sharon was quite the softball player in her day. Renneth and Lorenza made their marks in several sports for the Trojans. And Willis Jr. -- "Spunk" to his buddies -- was the first genuine Walker star. Because of an accident with a gun, Spunk played with one thumb as a defensive end for Johnson County. Back there in the ninth grade, he was as big and strong as Herschel was to get later, which is to say enormous and very. Nobody could run a play by Spunk Walker. He was a major college prospect, possibly a pro prospect. But he got married, took a night job and finally had to drop out of school. "Well, you know how kids are," says Christine Walker.

By his junior year in high school, Bo could finally outrace his sister, Nep, in their sprints by the house. He was chomping at the bit to whip his brothers, too. It wasn't that he even liked football. His mother hated it. "I just close my eyes until everybody gets up from the collisions," Christine Walker says. Peer pressure and sibling rivalry forced Walker into the game. Then a couple of unusual developments took place which were to color the legend born in Johnson County.

Unlike the other Walker children, Herschel was uncommonly quiet, always staying by himself. "I cherish privacy," he says. "I stayed by myself so I could grow." But how, physically, did he grow? He never lifted a weight. Still doesn't. He never even lifted a pitchfork. "I raked the yard once," he says. Suddenly, Walker filled out from his short, chubby frame inot a veritable Hercules. Wrightsville veterans remember him in 11th grade as a speeding bullet, a muscle-bound hulk, an "elephant roaming through a toothpick factory." Herchel was nicknamed "Hurt" Walker for the way he applied himself on the gridiron. Whenever he appeared to be smothered at the line of scrimmage, he would "rise up from the ground and be gone." Local folks see him today as this marvelous physical specimen -- 6' 2", 220 pounds, massive thighs, ox neck, peaked shoulders, tiny 31-inch waist tapering up and out to what the glistening fellows down at the flex salon would refer to as "the perfect upper-body V" -- and insist he hasn't changed one iota. "I'm telling you, Herschel was a monster down here," says Chris Troup, the erstwhile quarterback. "And he had to ease up all the time. If he didn't, he would have killed guys, just broken their necks with one hit."

Calling defensive signals back then, Walker's shouting made his voice hoarse and may have harmed his vocal cords. In conversation now he finishes most sentences with his voice cracking into a funny, alto pitch, as if a "Wolfen" ahd instantly turned into Olivia Newton-John. When he grew up -- that is to say, at age 17 -- he seemed to have had enough of food and sleep as well. "I think I overdid the vegetables," Christine Walker says. At any rate Herschel abandoned most accepted nutrition and started packing in hamburgers and junk food. Now in Athens milk and orange juice are necessary training-table evils, but his main sustenance is boxcar loads of Snickers bars. Pregame meals? Perish the thought. Walker hardly eats anything at all for up to two days before football games.

As for his sleep habits, or lack of same, those too were ingrained on the hill outside Wrightsville. He would reserve the wee hours for doing his homework or reading his books or writing his poetry ... anything but sleep. A few years later, during Sugar Bowl week, Claude Felton, the Georgia sports-information director, would ask Walker in New Orleans if he wanted a wake-up call for his appearance on the TV show Good Morning America. "No need," Walker said. On the morrow he was waiting in the hotel lobby at 5:20 a.m. "I don't want to risk missing anything of life." Walker says. "I reckon late at night is the only time I get to think> about anything."

Time has always been of the essence for heroes. In Wrightsville there was time enough to run for 86 touchdowns and 6,137 yards, 45 and 3,167 of those in his senior year alone, when Johnson County won the state Class A championship. Current Head Coach Jimmy Moore remembers the practices: "Track meets," he says. "Run a play -- TD. Run a play -- TD. I swear Herschel used to let people tackle himi so he wouldn't have to run so far." There was also time to win the dashes and the shotput in the state Class A track meet. There was time to ride his horse and his motorcycle, to win dance contests and shoot pool, to serve as president of the Beta Club and prepare for his Brown Belt in karate, and to meet all the recruiters who made the Holiday Inn look like the site of an NCAA coaches' convention. There was time to do what Walker's mother says he does best -- "pay attention to people." But there was no time to think. What a fine, harmless excuse for procrastination.

Where would he go to college? A Clemson man supposedly requested a cladestine meeting with Walker in a graveyard outside of town. Southern Cal Coach John Robinson supposedly registered in a hotel, fully prepared to whisk him off to the Pacific Coast; that John Robinson turned out to be a salesman from Huntsville, Ala. Finally, on Easter Sunday, when Walker's decision was relayed to Mike Cavan, the Georgia assitant coach who had virtually lived for six months in Bob Newsome's lakeside cabin while pursuing his quarry, Cavan screamed so wildly his family thought he'd been shot.

Four months later Walker fled his sheltered, teen-age kingdom. "It is time to move on and give life a try," he wrote in a poem entitled It's Almost Gone. The night before Walker set out on the trail -- of whom? Jim Thorpe? Red Grange? Thurgood Marshall? -- he paid a visit to the Troups, then took one final drive by the old high school field. He was all alone. The next morning he left for Athens before dawn. He didn't wak his family. It was easier that way.

Is Herschel Walker the first hero ever to ride off ito the sunrise? No matter. From his beginnings in the big time, this gentle, poised creature, blessed with such a magnificent body, such immense talkent, couldn't seem to escape the cirucmstances which kept mount to certify him as mythical. Either that or ... this was all planned.

In the Georgia media guide, first-semester freshmen aren't listed on the depth chart. Under "tailback" last fall there were five other names. During preseason practice Walker moved up to third string, but his timting was off; he wasn't hitting the proper holes and he didn't break one long gainer. Walker showed no consistent power or quickness or assertiveness. He ran straight up and down, not "under the shoulders," as the Georgia coaches teach. He was, according to one observer, "a non-person. Herschel just chugged into the line and disappeared into a heap."

There were easy outs, of course. Walker had played in Class A, consisting of the smallest schools in the state. The Georgia varsity was angered by his delay in signing and was ready, gunning to nail him. Defensive Lineman Eddie (Meat Cleaver) Weaver: "I just stuck him a couple of serious shots. No whoop-de-do. The man just went down."

As is his wont, Dooley issued daily pessimism pills to any fans who might inquire. The general feeling was that Walker wasn't ready. Privately, Dooley told a friend, "I'm afraid Herschel is just a big, stiff back."

Later, with the full spotlight of the freshman's astonishing season blazing away, an opposing theory gained momentum. It was simply that Walker, the sensitive soul, the pragmatist, the babe from the backwoods who knew the best road, was playing possum. He was never a practice player anyway, remember. "I play as well as I want to," he said once, slipping. Could it be that this phenom was so good he oculd deliberately set out to pace himself, to gradually fit into the team picture, to be unspectacular, to drink no win before its time?

Dooley says it took Walker seven games to become a seasoned, intelligent runner, to "escape the sandlot." Did Walker actually conceal his skills, refusing to impose his stardom on his elder until it was absolutely necessary? Could he get away with all that and then just, just happen? "It's like fishing, I guess," the youngster would say in explanation of his gift many weeks after the fact. "You drop the hook in the water and when you see it bob you pull it out."

What happened that first time, that cloudy night of Sept. 6 in Knoxville, Tenn. and, indeed, what happened on all the rest of Georgia's fairy-tale Saturdays, furnished no more logical explanation. Walker didn't enter the Tennessee game until the second quarter. He didn't gain his 25th yard until his 11th carry. Then in a span of a little more than seven minutes in the middle of the seond half -- with the Dogs whimpering and seemingly long gone -- Walker took command, carried the ball on eight of 12 plays, gained 53 of Georgia's 91 yards and scored two touchdowns to rally the Dogs from a 15-2 deficit to a 16-15 victory.

The first touchdown run was instantly burned into the souls of Dog fans forever because during the few seconds it took Walker to slant right, cut back and explode for 16 yards up the middle, they could see the future -- and the future had WALKER MY DOG plastered on bumpers all over the state. As his family, gathered on the front porch in Wrightsville, listened to the car radio, screaming "Do it, Bo! Do it, Bo!" Walker beat six different Tennessee defenders, most notably Safety Bill Bates, who met him helmet-on and was toppled head-over-fanny backward as easily as if he were an inflatable rubber toy with sand in the base. While Bates was left to wonder if anybody caught the license number, Walker split two more Vol defenders at the goal line and went in standing up.

Dooley would later describe the play as "fantastic, electric. All of a sudden, you just knew...." Center Joe Happe says, "It was stunning. The effect that single run had on our team, I just can't explain it. All of us, we went crazy and played over our heads the rest of the game. [The rest of the season?] There was no way we would lose. Everybody was so psyched."

Everybody but one. For a brief moment after the run, and just before he was pummeled by Offensive Tackle Nat Hudson and then engulfed by what looked like an entire republic in red, all of them hugging and waving and jumping up and down, he was alone there in the end zone. Just Herschel Walker and history.

Ninety-five thousand fans, the largest crowd ever to see a football game in the South, were on their feet not knowing whether to laugh or cry at what they had just witnessed but knowing it was something very special. Walker himself slowly turned around to face the oncoming hordes. He held out both his hands, plams up, for the routine congratulatory handslap. At this transcendent moment, it was obvious that Herschel Walker had been there, somewhere, before. Ring, ring, goes the bell.

There would be other glorious Herschel Walker journeys encompassed in Georgia's perfect 12-0 season. They very next week the Dublin Courier Herald greeted Walker's first home game at Athens with this stentorian headline: DEBUT! HERSCHEL BETWEEN THE HEDGES! The newspaper suggested to its readers: "You might want to stash this away somewhere to show your grandchildren one day." Walker ran for 145 yards and three TDs against Texas A&M.

Every week a new wrinkle. For power aficionados there was Walker's 60-yard ramble against Vanderbilt following a play in which he was penalized for a late block. So he got mad and took off, looking for people to blast until he finally, mercifully, found pay dirt. For speed freaks, there was the 76-yard scamper against South Carolina in which three Gamecock defenders had the wasy angle to spear Walker over the sideline and into Athens' famous greenery. The trio came up empty. For record keepers, there was the 65-yarder late in the game with Georgia Tech that broke Tony Dorsett's total yardage mark for freshmen.

Running backs are forever being compared to each other, Payton to Simpson to Sayer, Campbell to Brown to Motley. In reality such an exercise is futile because, like concert pianists, each RB has some distinct characteristic with whihc he delivers the goods. After one has rounded up cliches like inner drive and concentration and competitiveness, there is simply this about Walker -- probably no runner has ever been so powerful and so fast concurrently.

Dooley, speaking in Early Colonial coachese, mentions Walker's feet. How "close together" and "close to the ground" they are. How he has "the nice base" and "the good plant and spurt." How he "slides" so well. Dooley says Walker's improvement graph in practices and games was a vast upward slope. "Herschel kept getting better and better. He just never leveled off." Georgia Offensive Coordinator George Haffner speaks of Walker's "happiness," his "zest and enjoyment for running." Haffner says it always looked like Herschel was saying, "Here I come, boys. I'm a competitor and you've got your hands full now."

The sine qua non for all running backs is their ability at that moment when the hole closes. Do they whirl, shift direction, lower the helmet? Spin off? Slow up? Power move? What Walker seems to do better than anyone before is to accelerate right then and there and whip into a gear unbeknownst to mere football players. Remember, we are talking about an Olympic gold medal aspirant who has run the 60-yard dash in 6:24 and a wind-aided 10.22 100 meters. We're talking quick. "Herschel won't impress you with his slick moves or feints," says Cavan. "But don't let him get even with you on the field or the points start clicking on the scoreboard."

Spec Townes, the former Georgia track coach who won the gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles in the 1936 Olympics, likens Walker's gliding motion in the open field to that of an old teammate, Jesse Owens.

Walker closed out the 1980 regular season by rushing for more than 200 yards in three of his last four games. Some of his other numbers were equally staggering. Thirty-five of his 274 carries were for 10 yards or more. Seven of his 15 touchdown runs were for 48 yards or longer. His many records were achieved despite injuries that caused him to miss more than 10 full quarters. He was the first freshman to make the consensus All-America team in this century.

What may be more significant about Walker's extraordinary first year was the effect he had on 99 others, namely the members of the Georgia team whom he turned from a 6-5 crew of stumblebums into national champions partly by showing them how to hang on to his considerable bootstraps. With Walker on their side the Dogs knew they always had a chance against anybody. "I've thought about it a lot," says Happe, "and I guess what Herschel gave us was a sense of image for ourselves. He hardly talked on the field, but his own discipline seemed to diffuse our rambunctiousness. He set a standard of excellence, to try hard all the time, and damn if anybody was gonig to let up. You knew if you did your job. Herschel would work it out and we'd win. It sounds corny, but I get excited just thinking about him."

Possibly nothing like what happened to Georgia had taken place in college sports since the present junior Senator from New Jersey singlehandedly carried a ragtag Princeton basketball team to the NCAA final four in 1965. But Bradley was a senior then. And Bradley failed.

At New Orleans, going for the brass ring against the mighty Fighting Irish, the Georgia offense came up empty; Quarterback Buck Belue missed on his first 12 passes, and the Dogs' team yardage -- excepting the tailback -- amounted to minus 23 yards. On his second carry Walker's left shoulder "subluxated" after a chilling hit from Notre Dame's Bob Crable, and he had to leave the game. Georgia trainer Warren Morris said it was the kind of injury that normally knocks a player out for three weeks. On Georgia's next possession Walker went back in. A major part of the Dogs' game plan was to throw screen passes to Walker to counter the Irish rush. No runner had gained 100 yards on Notre Dame all season. But now Walker was ordered not to try to catch a pass, not to stiff-arm and to hold the ball only with his right hand.

Subsequently, half crippled, Walker ran for 150 yards, scored two touchdowns and led Georgia to a 17-10 victory and its first national championship.

Someday I reckon they will know
I'm not only here for the show

Now that there has been time to reflect, is it possible that Walker had the most dramatic, succssful, heroic year any college athlete ever had? Now that he is a wizened sophomore on the verge of another chapter in this remarkable saga, is it possible that Walker will have three more years like it? Moreover, now that this quiet colossus of a young man has put himself in position to take on the Russians on the cinders, the NFL, in the courts and who knows what-all in the adult garden of verses and politics, is it really possible that Herschel Walker will never get tired because his life is too filled with wonders to risk missing any of them?

Yes sir. Immortality ain't heavy.

[Hostile]

The actual article I may be thinking of was dated August 18, 1986 when he came to Dallas. Here is the cover.




Still trying to find that story.

[Hostile]

Another good article. It mentions the no weight training again.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/fea...walker_111786/

[font=Helvetica]Walker & Dorsett [/font]




The author paints intimate portraits of the Cowboys' famed running backs, who are as different as they are exceptional





By Rick Telander Issue date: November 17, 1986



You know these guys. Brothers-in-arms now, they have been in the limelight individually for ages. Tony Dorsett, 32, from Aliquippa, Pa., on his way to the second-highest career rushing total in NFL history, the feisty, troubled rabbit always just a step ahead of the hounds. Herschel Walker, the god from the piney woods of Georgia, savior of the state university football team, near-savior of the USFL, the greatest -- or is it most suspect? -- running back in the history of the game. Can it be he is only 24? Have we been reading about Ol' Hersch since he was in high school (3,167 yards and 45 touchdowns in his senior year alone)? Indeed we have.

And now these two remarkably different yet oddly compatible men are together on America's Team. They would appear to have the potential to be the most prodigious running tandem in the history of the game, but it almost certainly is not meant to be. The Cowboys are basically a tailback I-formation team with room for only one tailback at a time, and coach Tom Landry is ( resisting the temptation to play them at the same time (see box, page 82), explaining, to the consternation of those who would prefer to consider them as all-around football players, "They're runners, not blockers."

Lately, however, Dorsett has not even been that. Earlier this season he was running as well or better than he ever had, but he injured his ankle, then his knee, and missed three games and limped through six others. Through Sunday's game with the Raiders he had 450 yards, probably not enough to help him reach 1,000, something he has done every season since he came into the league in 1977, except the strike year of '82. Because of the injuries to Dorsett, and because of Landry's philosophy, Dorsett and Walker -- he also has an ankle injury -- haven't lined up together very much.

Age is the troubling factor now for Dorsett. His time is running out, and with Walker instantly establishing himself as a force in the NFL both as a runner (he has 522 yards on 114 carries) and as a pass receiver (49 catches for 563 yards), it is becoming clear that Walker is something quite different, and ultimately far more important, than Dorsett's running mate. He is Dorsett's heir apparent. "When Tony graduates, so to speak," says the Cowboys' offensive coordinator Paul Hackett, "it's Herschel."

In college Dorsett and Walker each led his team to an undefeated season and the national championship. Each is a Heisman Trophy winner (Dorsett in 1976 and Walker in '82). Their professional rushing numbers are stunning -- 11,282 yards in nine NFL seasons (fifth on the alltime list and just 70 yards behind fourth-place John Riggins) for Dorsett; 5,562 yards in three USFL seasons for Walker.

Playing for the USFL's New Jersey Generals last year, Walker rushed for 2,411 yards, more than anyone ever has anywhere, in any league. He also had an astonishing streak of 11 consecutive games rushing for 100 yards or more. Last season Dorsett gained 1,307 yards. Their combined total of 3,718 yards is more than any NFL team has gained rushing in a season.

Sure, sure, this is just playing with stats. But throw in receiving yardage (Walker had 155 yards in the Washington game alone) and deception yardage (openings created for other Dallas runners and receivers when Dorsett or Walker is out there) and all the plays the Cowboys haven't even designed yet for the two of them, and somehow it doesn't seem fair. . . .

"I want a dog," says Tony Dorsett.

, He settles painfully into his Mercedes 500 SEL outside the Cowboys Center and dials a number on his cellular phone. Busy. He hangs up and grimaces.

Dorsett is hurt, physically and mentally. His left ankle was nearly ripped off in the season opener against the Giants. He suffered a partially torn ligament in his left knee against Atlanta, and now he is worried about his future. He has never been badly hurt in his entire football career. No surgery, no knee problems. At 5 ft. 11 in. and 185 pounds he is of an endangered species, an exotic sprite who survives in the fissures between mountains. His streak of 93 consecutive starts came to an end on Sept. 29. And here it is the Wednesday before the Redskins game and he can barely jog.

"I am so scared," Dorsett says. "Is this how it ends?"

He rubs his knee; he pulls down his sock and looks at his ankle. "The longer you play this game the more invincible you feel," he says softly, as though talking to his leg. "And then you get this idle time, like now, and you don't really feel a part of anything. . . . All you know is that the system was here before you got here, and it'll still be here after you're gone. You're just a product to be used. The beat must go on."

He dials the number again. Still busy. He is trying to get hold of a woman who sells puppies. Chows. "I have just decided I want a chow," he says. "I like them."

He knows that this dog business is insane, that it neatly displays the personality traits that have made his off-field life such a mess -- the impetuousness, the failure to plan for the future, the sentimentality that leads him into traps he would never approach on the playing field. But he can't help it.

"I don't know what it is that makes me want a dog," he says. "I know it'll make a mess around the house. I know it'll drive me crazy. And if I'd had it these last two weeks, with my injuries, it would have had to stay in the garage the whole time." He shrugs, drifting to the larger issue. "But . . . how do I say this? . . . I'm me. I can't put on airs. I'm not a phony. I know the way I am hurts me more times than it helps. But somehow it's all tied up with my integrity, and my integrity is the last thing I'm going to let you take from me."

So much else has already been taken from this man-child whom Landry calls "the best running back for his size that I've ever seen." Gone are his wife and stepdaughter (to his 1984 divorce), part of his fortune (to poor investments), his father, beloved older brother and girlfriend (to early deaths), and gone, too, is the notion that nightlife-loving Tony Dorsett will one day simply change and become a solid, stay-at-home, Cowboy-approved family man. For more than a decade "new" Tony Dorsett stories have appeared like spring wheat. This writer wrote one five years ago. But it is clear that the man who says "nobody controls me" will remain uncontrolled and that his turbulent process of becoming is what he is.

And yet. . . .

"I must be getting lonely," Dorsett says, driving off to his big house in Dallas where he lives alone. He says that as a reason for getting a dog, but it also could mean that he has confronted the possibility of life without professional football. Or that he is ready to take on a pal like Herschel Walker.

"I'm getting a dog," says Herschel Walker in his high-pitched, cheerful voice. "A rottweiler. A very intelligent security dog, a dog my wife can handle and who is very nice. I'm gone a lot."

Indeed he is. Walker is the new celebrity darling in Dallas, and he's available to all. No interview or charitable request will be denied. If you want Herschel, just walk up and make your pitch. "Why yes, that would be fine," he'll say. Can I get your autograph? Can I borrow your car? "Certainly, no problem." You can ask him to go to lunch three weeks from now, and he'll be there, and he'll answer anything you ask him. And he won't say a bad word about a soul.

"I just love people," he explains. "Really, I do. I love the people in New York and New Jersey. They are so nice." Come on now, Herschel. "It's true. I really do. Players don't understand me because I do so much for free, when I could be getting paid. Hey, I know people cheat me, but I don't care. I'm a boy from Georgia who just likes people."

He is so sickeningly sweet that Dallas writers, accustomed to the mercenary rantings and ensuing apologies of the mercurial Dorsett, are a tad suspicious. "Herschel is simply too good to be true," Times Herald columnist Skip Bayless wrote recently, concluding that Herschel "runs on batteries," and "is as hard to get a grip on off the field as Dorsett is on one."

The irony, then, is that Walker is hard to fathom precisely because he is so open. "I have some secrets from the press," says the former 4-H Club member with a shrug. "My pear salad won first place at a club gathering."

Cindy Walker, a collegiate half-miler who met Herschel through his sister, rolls her eyes. She sits next to her husband on a couch in their rented home near Las Colinas, the new "urban village" that sprang one day from a mesquite plain 15 minutes north of Dallas. Earlier, Herschel had proudly brought out the blueprints for the house they are building in Las Colinas. It will have four bedrooms and special features designed not so much for children as for the imminent rottweiler.

Herschel is enamored of Las Colinas, a sheltered, high-tech enclave described by urban architectural critic Paul Geisel as "visually, everything you would want the city of New York to be," except that it has "no street life, no schools, no churches, no social organizations other than bodybuilding. Look right or left, you could be on the moon." No problem for Walker, the world's most adaptable man. "Dallas is very nice," he affirms. "But I would have gone wherever I was supposed to -- Indianapolis, Green Bay, wherever -- because they took the trouble to draft me. Yes indeed, I would have gone."

"People keep saying to us, 'You two are so innocent, so nice! Just wait till you've been here a year -- you'll change,' " Cindy says with exasperation. "But why should we change? We've been through Georgia and New Jersey. Believe me, we've been through it all."

Herschel nods in agreement. He has the equanimity of somebody about three times his age, and he knows others sense it.

"Everyone always seems to think that I'm so old," he says. "And it seems to me I've been around a pretty long time, too."

So much of Walker's adult life has been lived under public scrutiny that he has been shaped because of it. At one point during his high school years he wanted to join the Marines rather than go to college. But there was such intense recruiting pressure placed on him that he wound up carrying schoolbooks and footballs rather than a rifle. The fifth of Willis and Christine Walker's seven children, he grew up dirt-poor, making his own toys "out of wood and cardboard." When he was a renowned high school athlete he was asked to be part of a Wrightsville civil rights conflict. He refused and was ostracized by some of his black friends because of it. Called a "honky-lover," he retreated from everyone, black and white. At home sometimes he would fall asleep with his book of poems on his chest and his mother would sneak a look just to see "what was going on in his head." She was as baffled as everyone else by the outward calm Herschel presented to the world.

Is that calm real? "Yes," he answers. "It's like when people say, 'Oh, Herschel, you got all that money,' like that makes the difference. It doesn't. They say, 'Why don't you drive a Porsche or a Ferrari?' Why? Who am I trying to impress? The thing is, when you're dead, you've got nothing. I just have a pretty firm sense of who I am. Maybe I always have."

It took some kind of firmness to marry a white woman in the Deep South, to take the pounding he gets afield (Herschel has averaged 356 carries per year since he was 18), to carry the weight for whole programs and teams and leagues and to do it cheerfully.

"All my life people have criticized Herschel," he says, slipping into the role of observer, which he often assumes. "They said my high school was too small and I couldn't do it big time. They said at Georgia I ran too much. They said the USFL was a bad league. To be honest I don't think there's that much difference in the leagues. In the depth probably, but hey, football is tough and the USFL had NFL players in it. Here I am 24, and Herschel's starting over. But it's O.K."

Throughout his young life Walker has had a pair of disparate aids to help him along -- religion and TV. "Without my faith in the Lord I'd be without a backbone," he says. And of television he says, "I love it, I love it. I can watch anything. Movies, comedians, but no sports events. I never watch sports events. I love cartoons. In Georgia I'd get up early Saturday morning and sit in front of the TV and just watch the test pattern. Finally, the farm report would come on, then one little cartoon, then more news, then the rest of the cartoons." TV is the white noise for Herschel's life, the mind-deadener and critic-stifler. "Sometimes it drives me nuts," says Cindy. "He can lie on the couch and watch TV all day and be happy."

Through the years one of Walker's critics has been O.J. Simpson, who once said that Walker "doesn't have a clue about how to run." Walker shrugs it off, saying, "I'll put my stats against the people he likes."

But another apparent critic was Dorsett, who went nuts when Walker signed with the Cowboys in August. Walker's contract -- $5 million for five years -- was more than Dorsett's estimated five-year, $4.5 million deal, and Tony couldn't handle that, even though his long-range contract actually is worth a reported $9.65 million. He ripped the Cowboys for pulling "a publicity stunt"; he said he would walk out; he demanded to be traded. "Tony Dorsett is second to no back on this team," he roared.

The next day, of course, he took it all back. His contract, renegotiated last year, didn't look so bad to him. Walker would be a great new weapon for the Cowboys. Maybe, as everybody said, Walker's presence would lighten Dorsett's burden and extend his playing career. Tony apologized to all. "You've seen all this before," he said humbly.

"The ego that makes him react that way is the same ego that makes him great," said Landry knowingly.

"I regret only that I might have hurt Herschel when I blew up," says Dorsett now. "But I wasn't mad at him. It's just that when you've been brought up in the Cowboys' system, brainwashed, trained, or whatever you want to call it, you realize you're never going to make what other top backs make. There is no doubt in my mind that if I ever miss a beat on the field, they would love to get rid of me. . . ."

Dorsett sighs, realizing he's railing against the System again, talking about how he's just a piece of meat in the Cowboy meat grinder, a baby chow forever fighting his leash. The truth of the matter is that after all these years the System has come to halfway like him.

"He's so human," says Cowboys vice-president Gil Brandt.

"Things just happen to him," says Dallas's president and general manager Tex Schramm. "But it's not in his nature to be bad."

"You know what Herschel told me?" Dorsett says. " 'When you started in the NFL, I was only 15.' Damn."

Dorsett seems genuinely to like his eventual successor, even if he is a bit amused by Herschel's placid nature. "He's a nice guy," Dorsett says. "One hundred percent humble pie. But he'll attack you on the field." Does that surprise Dorsett, the transformation Herschel undergoes? "No, I've seen it before," Dorsett says.

"There's something tied up inside all of us."

When Walker first came to preseason camp, Dorsett took him aside. "There's a lot of s -- -- going on around here," he said. "Don't take it personally."

Herschel hasn't. "Tony is a super guy," he says. "It's an honor to be on the same team with him." And you have to believe him.

The Cowboys got Walker by choosing him in the fifth round of the 1985 draft. At the time he was playing for the Generals and locked into a four-year guaranteed contract with Generals owner Donald Trump. Still, it seems amazing that no other NFL team picked him sooner, just on the chance the USFL would fold its tents and the ego-heavy Trump would settle up with the star and release him. But then Dallas has a knack for swiping long shots on draft day. "People forget we once drafted Merv Rettenmund and Carl Lewis," notes Schramm. "We also were the first team to draft a basketball player, and we took Roger Staubach when he was in the Navy." When the USFL did suspend operations this summer and Walker became a Cowboy, Landry immediately issued a directive to his staff: Without changing Dorsett's role, find as many ways as you can to get Herschel into the offense. Walker has now lined up at every position on offense except interior line and quarterback, and he has terrified defenses wherever he has gone. His pass receiving skills have been the real shocker. "Put a defensive back on him and he'll break his tackle. Put a linebacker on him and he'll outrun him," says Dallas cornerback Everson Walls. "The only way to stop him is the way Denver did (he had only 33 yards in 15 carries in a 29-14 loss on Oct. 5): Hit him low, then bring everybody."