Defensive Backs from Area Hope NFL Has Paid Attention : Ex-Helix Player Cecil Overachieved at Arizona, Thinks He Can Continue to Do So in Pro Football

The Kid Who Couldn’t, Take 4 . . .

Maybe this time, they’ll get it right. After all, this is the National Football League. These folks spend darn close to the GNP evaluating talent.

Maybe this time, instead of telling him he’s not big or fast enough, coaches will covet him.

Perhaps during Sunday’s four-round segment of the draft, someone will announce the name of the former Helix High School standout:

“Chuck Cecil, safety.”

Then, as with the others, they’ll recite his feats: Pacific 10 Conference defensive player of the year, consensus All-American, eighth-leading interceptor in NCAA history.

“A bone-rattler, heady, great instincts, coachable, a leader, fearless . . . “

This was how they described Cecil at the University of Arizona, but only after he moved from sixth-string to three-year starter. Or at Hanford High, or at Helix, places where he had trouble convincing the coaches that he should be allowed on the field.

Maybe they’ll pull some trivia out, too:

Who is the all-time Pac-10 interception leader?

Ronnie Lott?

No.

Kenny Easley?

No.

Chuck Cecil?

See, it would be easy.

Maybe all that will happen. But don’t bet on it.

Mel Kiper Jr., the ESPN draft guru, ranks Cecil as the ninth-best senior safety and projects him as a middle-round pick. Cecil isn’t even Kiper’s top safety from the Pac-10. That would be Oregon’s Anthony Newman.

“That’s irrelevant,” said Cecil by phone from Tucson.

Some scouts, though, have indicated that they don’t think a 5-foot 11 1/2-inch 180-pounder who runs the 40 in 4.77 seconds is too small and too slow.

“He won’t be a first-round pick, but a high pick,” said Gil Brandt, the Dallas Cowboys’ vice president of player development. “We think he’s kind of a Cliff Harris type of football player.

“I think the hardest thing he’s going to have is staying healthy, because he hits so hard.”

Cecil manifests a major appeal of athletics.

Boastful words may be cast, klieg lights pointed, quotes jotted. But the game itself, especially one as violent as football, can reduce such things to flapdoodle. Especially when your opponent transforms himself into a human battering ram.

“I’ve knocked myself out on several occasions,” said Cecil, in a tone that rarely deviates from matter-of-fact. “Worse one was a Stanford guy. I hit this guy, (Brian) Morris, 6-4 and 235 pounds.

“We had a really good . . . (he laughs). I hit him about as fast as I can go. It was a solid lick--I was out for quite some time. When I came to, it had knocked the wind out of me as well. That’s a scary feeling, to wake up and not be able to breathe.”

Stanford could have spared Morris. Cecil, a standout student, wanted badly to go to that school. But he was turned down.

Morris recovered. But others incurred concussions or broken ribs. Included in the wounded was an Arizona lineman who picked on Cecil when Cecil was a freshman.

“Chuck doesn’t talk about it,” Ray Hernandez, a friend and former Helix assistant coach, says. “But he had a scrap with the guy. That day, he earned his teammates’ respect.”

Although he questioned his presence at Arizona early on, Cecil said he has never considered himself an underdog. His success there, he says, sprang from stern, accurate self-evaluation and love for the sport.

Those qualities nurtured his athletic talent. He lettered in three sports at Hanford, located in a small agricultural community near Fresno, and he played three sports at Helix after his father, Tom, changed jobs in the commodities exchange business.

Whether he will flourish at the newest level is speculation, and Cecil won’t speculate. He did say that the San Francisco 49ers would be his dream employer and that Buffalo, Minnesota and Houston have expressed the most interest in him.

“It’s killing me just waiting for (the draft),” he said. “As far as what happened to me in college, I never expected it to happen. For that to happen and the chance for me to play at the pro level . . . it’s a dream come true.”

Along the way, Cecil had a nightmare.

Earlier this month, he was arrested for disorderly conduct outside a bar in Tempe, Ariz. Tempe Municipal Court Judge Robert Koch dismissed the charges Wednesday for lack of evidence.

Brandt and scouts said the arrest did not damage Cecil’s chances in the draft.

“I was really concerned, to say the least,” Cecil said. “I’ve had a pretty clean reputation for my whole stay here at Arizona. All of a sudden to go out on a bad note like that is a point of concern.”

Said Judy Pshak, sports editor of The Daily Wildcat, Arizona’s student newspaper: “He was the good guy who overcame adversity, an All-America type. Kind of like Steve Kerr (an Arizona basketball standout).”

It’s a blemish Cecil won’t forget.

One other provides insight into Cecil, a scholastic All-American who will graduate in May with a degree in finance and a 3.3 grade-point average that he considers near embarrassing.

Cecil, a three-time scholastic All-American, received just one grade other than an A in high school.

Does he remember the class?

Do politicians like to talk?

It was in personal finance. Helix’s Kay Raines was the teacher. Both remember the B clearly.

“He was upset with himself, and that in itself frustrated him,” Raines recalled. “He was very competitive. He always put a lot pressure on himself.

“I don’t think Chuck took advantage of (being a renowned athlete) . . . I would say Chuck could do almost anything he sets his mind to.”

It might be worth remembering that Chuck Cecil’s mind has been set on pro football since he was a boy.