Rueben Mayes Makes His Marks the Hard Way : Washington State’s Record-Breaking Back Accustomed to Being Overlooked

If Rueben Mayes were playing anywhere but in the near oblivion of Eastern Washington, he might be among the front-runners for the Heisman Trophy. He’s that good.

As it is, the running back who is no doubt going to become Washington State’s all-time leading rusher in the game against UCLA Saturday, has to be content with being an All-American. He can be proud that he’ll be included in the Heisman voting.

“It might have been different if I had played in California or someplace like that instead of up here, but Washington State gave me the opportunity that a lot of teams wouldn’t have given me,” Mayes said. “A black kid from some little town in Canada that nobody has heard of? Who would think that I was really any good at all?

“Washington State gave me the opportunity to be an All-American, to be the most valuable player in the Pac-10 and maybe have a pro career. If I had stayed in Canada, I could have run for 600 yards in every game, and who would have noticed that?”

It’s just like Mayes to put the whole thing in perspective so neatly.

He’s just as reasonable about his role in Washington’s State’s high-powered offense. And he’s even magnanimous about the injury to Keith Byars of Ohio State that kept the two from having a big showdown when their teams met a few weeks ago.

Mayes rushed for 1,637 yards last season and finished second in the nation, behind Byars.

“I was disappointed that I didn’t get to play against him, but I felt worse for him,” Mayes said. “He’s a big, strong, 240-pound football player who can’t play because of a little bone in his foot? I’m sure he was more disappointed. . . . I met him when we both spoke at a drug seminar in Phoenix. He’s a very nice person.”

Mayes is not listed at the top of the national rushing statistics this season. He has rushed for just 535 yards in Washington State’s first five games and ranks 29th.

Last season, however, he caught very few passes, and this season he has caught 18 for 223 yards, so his total production is higher.

And as Coach Jim Walden pointed out: “Mayes’ numbers are not down for this point in the season.”

He started last season with four games of less than 100 yards, then gained 201 against Ball State and 156 against UCLA.

He ran up the totals in the last half of the season. He rushed for 227 against Stanford, broke the NCAA single-game record of Georgia Tech’s Eddie Lee Ivery with 357 yards against Oregon, then finished with three more games of more than 115 yards each.

Last season, the other running back in Washington State’s split backfield, Kerry Porter, was injured. This season, Porter has rushed for 312 yards.

In 1983, Porter led the league with 1,000 yards.

With the two of them sharing the ball in 1985, it’s likely that neither will get back to the 1,000-yard mark.

Before the season began, a grateful Walden said: “I don’t think either of them gives a tinker’s damn who leads who in rushing. Their object is to win games.”

So far, though, the team is 2-4. But Mayes and Porter--along with the third standout in the backfield, quarterback Mark Rypien--have contributed quite nicely to a balanced offense.

“We do have good balance and we are a very explosive offense,” Mayes said. “We can do a lot of different things and utilize everybody. I think we have a fun offense. We have a lot of fakes and options. We kind of hide the ball--fake up the middle and option it, or run a play-action pass. We’re all involved in every play, no matter who ends up with the yards.”

Mayes said that he wasn’t used to that kind of sophistication when he was playing in North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

Walden called him a diamond in the rough when Mayes was recruited. After Mayes’ junior season, Walden said: “Here’s a guy who’s learned all you need to know about football, the intricacies, since he got here.”

As Walden described Mayes: “He has worked harder than anybody else. He’s not flamboyant out there, but he has speed, power and instinct. He knows when to hit the hole and how and what to do when he’s in it.”

Mayes isn’t the biggest back ever to come out of Canada. He’s 6 feet tall and he had to work at bulking up to 200 pounds.

At Comprehensive High School in North Battleford, Mayes averaged better than 200 yards a game his junior and senior seasons. But, he said: “Not too many schools send scouts that far up into the snowbanks.”

His town, a small farming community, is about 300 miles from the U.S. border. The only way any of the high school prospects from the area ever are discovered is by sending film to the Canadian pro teams and hoping that those teams help them make a connection.

Mayes’ high school coach sent film to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, hoping that they would pass word on to the U.S. coaches, but the only team he heard from was the University of Saskatchewan. His coach has since suggested that the local CFL team wanted to be sure to keep his rights in the event of a territorial draft.

So he tried something else. He sent the film to the Edmonton Eskimos, and the player personnel director passed it on to Bob Padilla, an assistant coach at Washington State. Padilla, a guest coach with the Eskimos, just happened to be in Edmonton when the film arrived.

Within days, Walden was inviting Mayes to visit Pullman, Wash.

For Mayes, who had grown up in a town of just 15,000 in a very isolated area--in one of just four black families in the community--Pullman was big time.

Mayes’ ancestors had moved to Pullman from Oklahoma as homesteaders in the early 1900s. His father, Murray, who owns a small auto body shop, has told it this way: “We knew hard times and setbacks, but we always overcame because we never stopped believing and we never stopped trying. I would often tell Rueben those stories.”

Mayes has five sisters, all younger, but when his mother and father split up, the sisters went with his mother and Rueben went with his father.

Now his hobby is cooking. “Not just duck a l’orange, as everybody likes to write,” he said. “I’ve been known to make lasagna for my offensive line.” He said he had to learn to cook when he moved in with his dad.

Mayes often is described a shy person.

“I’m not shy,” he said. “It might seem that way because I like my privacy and I’m not seen going out very much. But that’s not because I’m shy. It’s because I spend so much time on school and football that I don’t have much time for a social life.

“Where I’m from--it’s kind of hard to describe. It’s kind of an open environment. I don’t know if that explains it. People are relaxed. It might come across as shy or unassuming, but it’s just the kind of life I grew up with.

“I think things worked out for me very well. Pullman was a good place for me to go to school.”