He’s Prince to Knight : Thompson Sets Heisman Standards at Indiana

The Great One (and if you think that means Gretzky in these parts, forget it) recently summoned Indiana tailback Anthony Thompson to the school auditorium.

There, in front of a standing-room-only audience of about 3,000 IU students, fabled Bob Knight, his basketball legend secure, showered Thompson, his football legend unfolding, with fawning praise.

It was a strange, special, awkward scene. Thompson isn’t fond of attention. It makes him uneasy, self-conscious. As a freshman, you would have needed a Jaws-of-Life machine to pry a word from him. Now, Thompson is more cooperative but no less hesitant to accept a compliment, even from the grand poobah himself.

As Thompson stared at his shoes, Knight conducted a history lesson. He informed the audience that the first collegiate football game, between Princeton and Rutgers, was played 120 years ago. And in those 120 years, nobody--not Pitt’s Tony Dorsett, Syracuse’s Ernie Davis or Jim Brown, Army’s Glenn Davis, Texas’ Earl Campbell, Ohio State’s Archie Griffin . . . nobody--has scored more touchdowns than the workaholic from Terre Haute, Ind.

“Each of you is given a bag of tools and a book of rules,” Knight gushed that day in his annual get-together with the students. “Here’s a guy who has done as much with the tools he was given as any kid I’ve known. . . . As good a kid as I’ve ever seen come down the pike.”

You think Knight was saying this just because Thompson was standing nearby? Hardly. Knight already has asked Thompson to address the IU basketball team.

And in a coaching class that he teaches at IU, Knight once asked his students to name the best athlete at the university. This being a basketball class, the names of several Indiana basketball players, past and present, were offered. Knight considered the candidates, but remained unconvinced.

Then someone suggested Thompson’s name.

Correct, said Knight. And did anybody notice, he added, that the best athlete just happened to be the one who worked the hardest?

Thompson can’t be for real, can he? He doesn’t drink. Doesn’t smoke. Worships his mother. Attends church. Attends classes. Visits elementary and junior high schools to preach about the evils of drugs.

Guys like Thompson don’t wear football pads, they wear merit badges, cleric’s collars.

Thompson also has been known to carry a football on occasion. During his four seasons at IU, Thompson has lugged more leather than a skycap. It began in 1986, eight games into the season, when he made his debut as a starter against Wisconsin. Indiana won that day, 21-7, a fact that was not lost on Hoosier Coach Bill Mallory.

“What’d he have?” asked Mallory at game’s end.

He was told 207 yards.

“Not too bad,” Mallory said.

Now it takes three full pages of the Indiana football press guide to detail Thompson’s college career, which ties him with Mallory and is only one page fewer than the exalted Knight receives in IU’s basketball guide. Thompson needs every inch of the space, what with his statistics multiplying like spores.

The local paper, the Herald-Telephone, recently used an entire front sports page to detail Thompson’s numbers. And even in small type they were impressive.

You know about the touchdowns. Thompson has scored 65 regular-season touchdowns and another three in bowl games. So maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that one of Thompson’s first interviews at IU was conducted in the end zone.

He also holds the NCAA record for most points scored in a career, 412 total and 394 regular-season, and most yards rushing in a single game, 377 against Wisconsin on Nov. 11. This season he ranks first in rushing at 169.8 yards a game and scoring at 15.4 points, and he is third in all-purpose yardage at 219.9 yards.

Moving on to the Big Ten records, Thompson is the career leader in rushing attempts and touchdowns. And if he hadn’t missed the first six weeks of practice as a freshman, who knows? More than likely, Archie Griffin’s conference-record rushing total wouldn’t be safe. After all, Thompson trails by only about 360 yards.

Then again, remember what he did against Wisconsin a few weeks ago.

IU assistant coach Buck Suhr and Thompson were on their way to speak to a junior high school assembly when someone showed them that Herald-Telephone sports page. Buhr looked at Thompson. Thompson looked at Suhr.

“Look at what you’ve done!” Suhr said.

And about that time, Suhr confronted Thompson with the running back’s least favorite topic: the H-word . . . the Heisman Trophy.

“Listen, you have got a hell of a chance to win it,” Suhr said. “Now let’s go do it.”

On Dec. 2, New York’s Downtown Athletic Club will present the winner with the famed stiff-arming statuette, though Thompson said he isn’t even sure he’ll attend the ceremony.

Given the choice, he’d rather retire to the IU weight room, or visit his mother in Terre Haute, or pal around with some children. Anything, but step into the glare generated by his gaudy statistics. In fact, you half expect Thompson to request that there be a change in Indiana’s offensive terminology, from I-back, to We-back.

“He’s a guy who legitimately doesn’t enjoy all the hoopla of what he’s done,” Suhr said. “The things he enjoys is playing football and being around kids. He’s like the Pied Piper: He loves them and they love him.”

Figures. Raised by his mother, Helen Allen, Thompson learned the value of love and discipline early. And although the family wasn’t poor, it occasionally felt poverty nipping at its heels. Thompson shared a bed with his younger brother Ernie, who is a second-string IU flanker, for years.

Even today, with financial success an NFL draft away, his tastes remain conservative and subtle. For instance, you don’t need a pair of protective goggles to approach Thompson, as you might with the gold- and diamond-laden Deion (Prime Time) Sanders.

Thompson doesn’t court fame, he tolerates it. Playboy once asked him to appear in an issue that contained the magazine’s preseason All-American team. He declined. He didn’t think his mother, a devout Apostolic Baptist, would appreciate her son appearing in the same issue as Miss September.

He agrees to interviews but doesn’t embrace them. Pleasant, polite, punctual? Without a doubt. A quote machine? Rarely.

Thompson wants to change his phone number, but hasn’t had a spare moment. Agents call all the time. A first-round choice-to-be in the 1990 NFL draft, they know a meal ticket when they see it.

Local community groups inquire about his speaking schedule. And dinner at an area restaurant has become a bit of an event, what with all the autograph requests. Thompson smiles and plugs along, which isn’t a bad way to describe his playing style.

Against Wisconsin three weeks ago, Thompson carried the ball 52 times. With the exception of IU quarterback Dave Schnell, that’s more carries than the season totals of each of the remaining Hoosier offensive players. That’s almost half as many carries as Purdue’s leading rusher, Jerome Sparkman, has this year.

Somehow, though, Thompson never tires. He averages 33 carries a game and appears as lively on the last carry as the first.

Iowa Coach Hayden Fry once surveyed the damage of a Thompson-led romp over his Hawkeyes and told reporters: “The good thing in that game is he never had a run over eight yards. The bad thing about it is I don’t think he had one less than seven.”

His playing idol is Walter Payton, which explains a lot. Thompson wore the Chicago Bear running back’s No. 34 in high school. He would generally just watch the Bears on television, or nothing at all. He acquired some of Payton’s playing traits, most notably the ability to ignore pain.

“I remember we were playing Ohio State and he got hit so hard that he landed on his head,” Hoosier tackle Todd Oberdorf said. “He just hopped right up. It’s when he gets hit the hardest that he pops up on his feet the quickest.”

Payton once invited Thompson, then a sophomore, to join him in several workouts. They traveled to the Hill, a landfill near Payton’s suburban Chicago home. About 70 yards long, the Hill slopes at a 45-degree angle. Up and down the embankment they sprinted. During a brief rest, Thompson glanced down at his thighs. They were quivering.

From that came part of the inspiration for Thompson’s near-fanatical work ethic. You can imagine how much time he spends with barbells and the like. But he also is known to strap on a 30-pound vest and run the 76 steps of Memorial Stadium’s bleacher section--six times. Or he’ll wear that same vest and then pull a weighted sled. Or slip into a pair of specially designed shoes that promote development of specific muscles.

They keep detailed statistics in the football department, including second effort and broken tackles. Guess who leads those two categories? And Mallory enjoys counting the times Thompson has literally carried a pile of tacklers downfield. Against Wisconsin (sorry, Badgers), Mallory said Thompson dragged eight tacklers forward.

“A lot of times that projector has been run back more than once on plays he’s made,” Mallory said.

Mallory isn’t one for hyperbole, but if it were up to him, the Downtown Athletic Club could immediately send their Heisman Trophy to the engraver’s shop. And don’t forget to spell Thompson’s name right.

“He epitomizes to me what I’ve always thought the Heisman should be,” Mallory said.

Which is to say that you get an entire package with Thompson: student, athlete, leader, the whole nine yards. Or in Thompson’s case this season, the whole 1,745 yards.

“Every once in a while I think about (the Heisman),” Thompson said. “But it’s just secondary to me. I’ve never been an individual player. I’ve always been a team player and honors like that mean virtually nothing if you don’t have a winning season.”

A winning season is one game away. If Indiana beats Purdue on Saturday the Hoosiers finish the year 6-5 and receive an invitation to play in the Freedom Bowl. It’s not the Rose Bowl, but it’s close--just down the freeway.

And even if Thompson arrives without a Heisman Trophy in his possession, nobody at Indiana will hold it against him. “He won’t have to worry about how we feel,” said Mallory, who credits Thompson for turning around a program in disarray.

For Thompson, that’s thanks enough. He’ll take warm words over a cold statue any day.