Waiting . . . and Wondering : Running Back Raises Roof Over Failure to Make NFL

Bernard White spent the fall the last two years pounding the football into opposing defenses. As a junior at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, he became just the third player in college history to rush for 1,000 yards and catch 50 passes in a season.

This fall, he figured he would be in lofty places, pounding the ball into NFL defenses. Instead, what he got was a job offer in which the only lofty places he’d get to visit would be roofs of houses--and the pounding would be done not with a football, but with a hammer.

White, who dreamed of playing in the National Football League since his childhood days in a run-down neighborhood of Pittsburgh, took the job at the Los Angeles roofing company, and works now in the stock room, organizing pallets of shingles. Instead of being a Green Bay Packer, White is a United Roofing packer.

“I’ve got a lot of bitterness,” White said. “I prepared for professional football all my life, since the age of 7, and then the dream got shattered. It’s like a part of you is taken away, and it hurts.”

In 1984, White joined Gerald Wilhite of San Jose State and Darrin Nelson of Stanford as the only three collegiate players ever to run for 1,000 yards and make 50 receptions in one season. Wilhite plays for the Denver Broncos and Nelson plays for the Minnesota Vikings. White finished that season with 1,036 rushing yards and 56 catches for 400 yards. He also scored 15 touchdowns.

As a senior, White ran for 949 yards and caught 33 passes for 228 yards, despite missing the final game of the season with an injury that also severely hampered him in the California Bowl in Fresno, in which Bowling Green lost its only game of the season, to Fresno State. White scored 19 touchdowns that season and won the national scoring championship, finishing ahead of Heisman Trophy winner Bo Jackson of Auburn, who now runs over bases instead of linebackers, and Lorenzo White, who is still at Michigan State.

Bowling Green plays in Division I, but barely. Based on scholarships, it is considered closer to a Div. I-AA school. This is part of the reason that White was not drafted by the NFL and not invited to any training camps as a free agent. Another likely reason is that White, despite being a muscular 200 pounds, is only 5-9.

“You don’t do what I did in college, I don’t care what league or what division you’re in, and not get a professional tryout,” White said. “They can’t measure my height or judge what school I went to. They have to measure the size of my heart. You don’t score that many touchdowns and have as successful a college career as I did and be a fluke.

“I can play football. It’s the only thing in the world that I can say I do real well. I can run that pill. I can shake you and run past you and punish you and block and catch and run a good pass route. Everything that a ballplayer should be able to do, I possess.”

And on April 29th, the day of the NFL draft, White sat in his mother’s apartment in Pittsburgh, anticipating the ringing of the telephone. And it did ring. The calls came from his friends and his relatives, asking if he had heard anything yet. But no calls came from NFL teams.

“On April 28th, I knew I’d be drafted,” White said. “I knew it. I just didn’t know which team. Me or my coaches had talked to the Green Bay Packers, New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers, and they all said I’d go in the middle rounds, maybe fourth or fifth or sixth.”

And so White waited by his mother’s phone, telling his concerned friends that he had to hang up because a team might be calling at any time. And he waited. And waited. When the day was over and still no calls had come from an NFL team, White was told that the league had completed 10 rounds of the draft and would hold rounds 11 and 12 the following day.

“But when I picked up the newspaper the next day, all 12 rounds were listed,” White said. “I figured maybe I’d been drafted but they had lost my phone number. So I went through the whole list. I looked and looked and looked for Bernard White.

“Finally, I sat down and said, ‘Damn, you didn’t make it.’ ”

Dave Hackenberg, a sportswriter for the Toledo Blade who covered Bowling Green during White’s playing days, said the biggest turnoff for NFL scouts was White’s body.

“The big knock was his size,” Hackenberg said. “He’s only 5-9, and there are just so many Freeman McNeils out there. He wasn’t built like a monster, didn’t have that massive body construction that the pros look for.

“But he was way above average in speed, he cut very well, read his blockers well, found the holes very well, was a good open-field runner and caught everything they threw at him. I was sort of surprised he wasn’t drafted. They draft 340 or so college kids, and I figured somebody would take a look at him.”

White lives in Ventura now. He played football at Ventura College for two years before transferring to Bowling Green. He lives alone, and spends his non-working hours in the gym, lifting weights, and running on the Ventura College track. Despite the crushing setback on NFL draft day, White’s dream still lives.

“I think of myself as a Rolls-Royce just sitting around, not being used,” said White. “What they’re trying to tell me is that everyone that was drafted is better than me. Everyone that was signed as a free agent is better than me. That’s hard to accept. That hurts me more than anything. All the guys drafted and all the guys signed as free agents are better than Bernard White? There’s no way. You don’t score 34 touchdown in two years without being an excellent football player.

“I look at guys like Marcus Allen and Herschel Walker and Tony Dorsett and I realize those guys are the elite. There aren’t too many who can be like them. I know I’m not a franchise player like they are. I’m in that gray area below them. I know I could perform and do well and help somebody. Joe Morris of the Giants is like that, in that gray area. He’ll never be considered a great player like Marcus Allen. He won’t be remembered 20 years from now. They’ll just say he was a good player who was 5-7 and had a few good seasons. Maybe that’s what I can be.”

White, 23, has hired an agent out of Pittsburgh. He said the agent has told him to stay in shape and plan on being at an NFL tryout or two next summer. And so White continues to lift weights and to run. And to dream.

“I could live with being cut by an NFL team. With going to camp and getting a fair tryout and then being cut. I could live with that,” he said. “Right now I’m hurt as hell. I just want a chance. Just one chance.”