Sacramento’s Defense Comes of Age Behind Stinnett

Ken Stinnett paused when faced with the question.

“Can you move? Can you run?” the coaches asked.

“I don’t really know,” he answered candidly. “It’s been a long time.”

Stinnett was standing in the football office at Cal State Sacramento. It was the summer of 1986, the first day of practice.

The day before, Stinnett’s wife Rene had called Sacramento Coach Bob Mattos. “My husband wants a chance to earn a football scholarship,” she said.

Mattos had never heard of him. But there was a reason for that.

Stinnett, 29 years old at the time, had not played football in 11 years.

The coach was skeptical.

“He’s 6-foot-4 and a body builder,” Rene said.

“Have him come down tomorrow,” Mattos said.

So there he stood, a walking contradiction. A man with the body of an All-American and the football resume of a water boy. Mattos decided to give Stinnett a look in practice.

It was a wise choice.

Stinnett, a 260-pound nose tackle, became a starter midway through his first season. Playing full time in 1987, he was an honorable mention All-Western Football Conference selection.

He could take that up another notch--to the first team--this time around. He is, at age 31, considered one of the top defensive players on a Sacramento team ranked 12th in Division II going into tonight’s game against Cal State Northridge at North Campus Stadium.

After graduating in 1974 from Moon Valley High in Phoenix, Stinnett went to work as a carpenter. He says he went back to school because he wants to be his own boss.

“I like construction, but I’m tired of pounding nails,” he said by telephone from his home in Vacaville. “I want to get out of the labor part.”

Football, Stinnett says, was the only vehicle he could think of that might allow him a free education. “It started out as a joke,” Rene said.

Having grown up a short distance from Sun Devil Stadium, Arizona State’s 70,000-seat venue, Stinnett thought Division II competition would be easy.

“I saw that rinky-dink little field of ours and said, ‘That must be their practice field,’ ” Stinnett said. “Then Rene says, ‘No, that’s where they play their games.’ ”

He soon learned that a smaller stadium does not necessarily mean smaller players.

“My jaw dropped to my knees when I saw the size of some of these guys,” said Stinnett, a one-time top-5 finisher in the Mr. Arizona body-building competition.

Stinnett, who can bench press nearly 500 pounds, fared well in 1-on-1 drills, but not, at first, in games. “I fell for all the tricks,” he said. “The other guy didn’t have to take me out, I took myself out of most plays.”

After 2 years of learning, such an occurrence is rare now. Stinnett, called “Pops” by his teammates, routinely fights double-teams to a draw.

And he is also having his way in the classroom. He was among the top .5% of the nation’s engineering students last year.

“I’m having more fun now than ever before in my life,” Stinnett said. “I get a little worn out and beat up from time to time, but it’s been worth it.”

Rene, a revenue analyst for a telephone company, supports the Stinnett family, which includes an 8-year old son, Taylor.

Rene says the sacrifices the family has made in order for Stinnett to play football and go to school have been worthwhile, but her friends at work have trouble understanding.

“I work with an older group,” she said. “I think they sometimes wonder what Ken wants to be when he grows up.”