49ers’ Ellison Is a Wild and Crazy Linebacker

Linebacker Riki Ellison and 49er teammate Tom Holmoe were in a small boat on a lagoon near their Foster City homes, watching Fourth of July fireworks and preparing to add a little bang to the celebration.

Ellison had brought along a bag of goodies that included enough M-80s--each equivalent to about a quarter of a stick of dynamite--to keep a mining company in business for a month.

It was a blustery night, and Ellison couldn’t keep a match going long enough to start the fun. Determined not to let a little breeze spoil his evening, he used the only available windbreak, striking a match inside the bag.

The bag caught fire, some small firecrackers started exploding, and Holmoe bailed out.

“Holmoe was dressed real nice when he jumped ship,” Ellison said. “I was just sitting there laughing. I guess I could’ve been blown to pieces. But I just put it out with my hands, and nothing happened.”

Another classic crazed-NFL-linebacker anecdote, right?

But just when you start to categorize this guy, he does something unexpected, like showing up at the training table with the latest Foreign Affairs journal.

Ellison reads it, too. He has a degree in international relations.

They say intelligence and common sense don’t always coexist, and Ellison may be living proof. He spent his days at USC trying to make the characters in “Animal House” seem genteel.

He had four knee operations in college, three of which were probably the result of his playing basketball, surfing, running into cars with his bike and jumping off fraternity houses . . . all while he was still in a cast.

It was all part of his college experience, which in reality was wilder than his wildest dreams. As a youngster, he had drifted off to sleep most nights counting the number of USC opponents he would run over and the Trojan song girls he would date.

And Ellison has this knack for realizing his dreams.

“He’s one of those fantasy types you read about,” said Ronnie Lott, a teammate at both USC and San Francisco. “He married a USC cheerleader and named his dog after his school (Troy). He epitomizes the All-American boy, even if he was born in New Zealand.”

Ellison was born in New Zealand--Christchurch, to be precise--but his story really begins in Malaysia, where his father was a professor.

“My first memories were of tigers and snakes running around and people talking about the (Vietnam) war being close by,” he said. “I guess my mom couldn’t handle living there after a while, so they got separated, and we moved back to New Zealand.” Ellison was 4 at the time.

His parents were divorced, and his mother remarried. In 1968, she got a postgraduate dance scholarship to attend USC, and the family moved to Pasadena.

Ellison took the surname of his stepfather, Dennis Gray, when he came to America, but living in the United States wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, as far as 8-year-old Riki Gray was concerned.

“I used to get the crap beat out of me every day after school by about 10 guys,” Ellison recalled. “You know how kids are with someone who’s different. I lost that accent in days.”

Then one day his stepfather took him to a USC football game, and he saw his future flash in front of him.

“I fell in love with it,” he said. “I mean I really fell in love with it . From then on, that was my dream.

“I’d never been to a major sports event in my life, and seeing all those people and the horse and the cheerleaders, that whole thing, it was real special for me.”

When his stepfather got a job as headmaster of a private school on an Arizona ranch, Riki kept the dream alive for five years by scanning the radio dial for the faint signals of Trojan broadcasts.

But by the time he turned 13, he had yet to actually play a game of football.

“We were at this ranch school between Flagstaff and Phoenix,” Ellison said. “We played basketball but never football. But I was such a fanatic about it, my parents finally sent me to a John McKay football camp when I was 13.”

“I was so fired up,” Ellison said. “I remember Coach McKay in his golf cart and Coach (John) Robinson. And I remember Coach (Marv) Goux distinctly.”

Half of the current Ram coaching staff might have taught him the game’s fundamentals, but that’s not why Ellison has led the 49ers in tackles the last two seasons. His exuberance is overshadowed only by his aggressiveness.

San Francisco linebacker coach Norb Hecker noticed the “gleam” in Ellison’s eyes during a tryout at USC. Most scouts had paid more attention to the scars on Ellison’s knees and told him to forget pro football. Hecker, though, persuaded Coach Bill Walsh to select Ellison in the fifth round in 1983.

Surprisingly, Ellison has proved to be one of the NFL’s most durable players. He has started 54 of 55 games since the 49ers picked him, and he will be in there at inside linebacker again Sunday against the Rams at Anaheim Stadium.

Ellison earned a name for himself--it was Riki Gray, remember--at Amphitheater High School in Tucson. He was in demand, but the Trojan recruiters knew where they stood. They even threatened to take back their scholarship offer if he took any other recruiting trips.

Then came the day he had fantasized about for so long. With Robinson watching, he became a Trojan. Not too long thereafter, he became a starting Trojan.

“A lot of linebackers went down, and Chip Banks and I both started that first game as freshmen,” Ellison said. “There were 60,000 in the Coliseum, and I was scared to death.”

USC played Michigan in the 1979 Rose Bowl game after that season, and early in the first quarter, Ellison got hit in the knee. He had it taped and returned to play the rest of the game.

After the game, though, he underwent surgery. And as a result of his idea of rehabilitation, he had another operation after his sophomore year, arthroscopic surgery during his junior year and, finally, another complete reconstruction after that junior year.

The final operation did more than rebuild his knee. It helped give him new direction and an old name.

“After the season, Coach Robinson took me into his office and said, ‘Riki, do whatever it takes to get the knee fixed right,’ ” Ellison said. “I think that’s when I finally realized that if I ever wanted to walk the rest of my life, I’d better rehabilitate it.”

Deciding the temptations to “go crazy” were too great in Los Angeles, he went back to New Zealand to visit relatives. He also decided to renew his relationship with his father, who had become Fiji’s economic adviser.

Ellison’s father saw his son for the first time in 17 years at the airport in Fiji. It was an awkward yet ultimately satisfying reunion.

“I had a great time,” he said. “We became really close again, but that’s not the reason for my name change. It’s just my blood, my roots. Certainly my stepfather, Dennis Gray, is the man that raised me, that loved me when I was growing up, that sent me to that Trojan camp.

“He was the guy who was going to be hurt the most, and that was the toughest part of the decision. We talked about it and he understood, but I’m sure it hurt him just the same.”

Ellison’s 21st year was one of growth on many levels. He started thinking about life after football, and two things became apparent: He’d better concentrate on his studies and he’d better marry his girlfriend, Sheila, who had been the stabilizing force in his life at USC.

He redshirted the next year and tried to channel the frustration he felt into academic fervor.

“I threw out all my easy courses and went at it full speed,” he said. “I took a Middle Eastern foreign policy class one semester, and they had an Arab section of the room and a Jewish section. It was nuts. They really went at it.

“There was no going to sleep in that class. That’s what got me started on international relations. And I try hard to keep up, too. “I’m only 26 and I don’t want to be just an ex-football player all my life.”

If it weren’t for his wife, he might already be an ex-football player. As in deceased.

Sheila is part of the dream, one of those USC song girls Ellison decided he would marry in his first year in America. He pursued her from the moment he saw her--even bet his roommate that he would one day marry her--and did his best to make sure she knew he cared.

Once, he drew a heart on the door of her dorm room and inscribed it with: “Sheila, I Love You, Riki.”

In blood.

And she barely knew him.

“Yeah, he was pretty crazy when I met him,” she said. “I don’t think he would have made it through college alive without me. But he’s calmed down a lot.”

Ellison still is not real long on patience, however. This summer, he was holding out for a new contract and he called his agent every morning, telling the agent to accept whatever the 49ers would offer.

Sheila told Ellison to pack up his surfboard and take his frustrations out on the waves.

He took her advice and surfed himself into a four-year contract, reportedly worth $1.4 million.

“I think from the time we met, she’s wanted to break me,” Ellison says, smiling. “And she’s done a pretty good job--except on Sundays.”