Bailey Ready to Break Dorsett Rushing Mark

Johnny Bailey says he doesn’t want to think about Tony Dorsett. But that may not be possible this season.

The 5-8 3/4, 180-pound senior at Texas A&I;, who turned his back on Division I football rather than sit out a year as a Proposition 48 casualty, is poised to break Dorsett’s NCAA regular-season career rushing record.

“I just want to get my mind on just playing every game, staying healthy and doing good for the team,” Bailey said as fall practice was getting under way. “If the record comes, it comes. I don’t want to think about it every game, you know, try to do too much and end up doing the wrong thing. I just want to let it come.”

Bailey has rushed for 5,051 yards in three seasons. Dorsett’s NCAA all-divisions career rushing record at Pitt from 1973-76 is 6,082.

The 22-year-old Bailey, who averaged 149 yards a game last year for Division II A&I;, knows he has a good chance to roll up those final 1,032 yards this season, but he also faces a new challenge.

Fullback Heath Sherman, his running mate for three years at A&I;, is gone, drafted by Philadelphia. This year Bailey most likely will be joined by fullback Sloan Hood, his former running mate at Houston’s Yates High School, said backfield coach Don Pittman.

“Heath played a major role and Johnny realizes that,” Pittman said.

“When Heath was here, Johnny got all the p.r., but in the back of everybody’s mind, everyone was saying that Heath was the one that made the offense go,” the coach said. “Johnny wants to prove to himself and to our spectators that the offense still will be productive and he’ll play a major role in it, so that probably is his biggest challenge.”

Pittman said Bailey’s strengths are his competitive personality, his speed and, “Johnny has what you call ‘great vision.’ Great vision is seeing cuts, making the cuts, seeing a hole and accelerating into the hole.”

Bailey for the last two years has captured the Harlon Hill Award, Division II’s version of the Heisman, and has led the division in rushing since he began his college career. He also was a three-time selection to The Associated Press Little All-America football team and one of last year’s four division winners of the first Domino’s Pizza All-American Football Coaches Association’s “Coaches Choice” Player of the Year.

The Javelinas have finished 9-2, 9-2 and 10-3 in Bailey’s three years at A&I.; The school lost in last season’s Division II semifinals to Portland State, which took the championship.

Bailey was highly recruited in high school, but because of a low grade-point average, the NCAA’s Proposition 48 would have required him to sit out his freshman year at a Division I school.

So he took a full four-year scholarship at the 5,300-student A&I; in South Texas, majoring in sociology. He said he’s glad he settled there and hopes the NFL scouts keep showing up at the games.

It isn’t the first time A&I; has had a top pro prospect. The school has furnished seven first-round picks for the NFL draft since 1966.

If he doesn’t make the pros, Bailey, who has a 10-month-old daughter in Dallas, said he plans to finish school, get a job and settle down with a family.

Bailey disagrees with those who argue that he’d have a less impressive rushing tally at a bigger school against tougher competition.

“Major colleges may have a better offensive line than a smaller college,” Bailey said.

Coach Pittman agreed, and pointed out that being at a small school hasn’t kept Bailey from developing a formidable reputation throughout the NCAA.

“Johnny Bailey is known all over the country,” Pittman said. “Everywhere you go, people who are on top of college football ask you about Johnny Bailey. You mention Texas A&I;, the next question is, ‘Johnny Bailey. How is he doing? Is he that good?’ or whatever. That’s the topic.”

The coach said he also is working to focus Bailey on winning games, not the record. Pittman doesn’t want preoccupation with the rushing mark to jinx Bailey’s chances of breaking it.

“Records come and go,” said Bailey, who wears a diamond earring and a 14-karat gold dollar-sign medallion. “It matters to me if I get it, but I’m mainly just going out to try and do my job and try to help my team win a ball game.”