Running, Away From Home : ‘Spoon’ Has Been a Bull at Houston

Spoooooooon. Hey, Chuck Weatherspoon, the eyes of Texas are upon you, good buddy.

After a season-long ban, Texans--heck, folks nationwide--can catch you and those high-scoring Houston Cougars on TV this year. Tough break about missing a bowl game again, though. NCAA sanctions can be rough.

But never mind that stuff, Spoon, tell us about all those yards you’ve gained as Houston’s one-and-only super back?

Earl Campbell and Eric Dickerson never had three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons as collegians. Can you become the fourth running back in Southwest Conference history to do it?

How does that stumpy body roll over those hulking defenders, anyway?

And about that Heisman Trophy--can you win it like your teammate Andre Ware did last season?

Do tell, Spoon, do tell.

Please, a pause for reflection from the man whose name will echo into the Astrodome rafters on Saturday afternoons this fall.

The first time Weatherspoon heard an Astrodome crowd erupt in a chorus of Spoooooooon, it scared him.

A nervous freshman from La Habra High School, Weatherspoon whispered into a teammate’s ear, “Did I do something wrong?”

He thought he was getting booooooooed for the first time, in his first college game.

When the teammate set Weatherspoon straight, the young running back smiled to himself.

“OK,” he thought. “That’s all right.”

The Houston media guide lists Weatherspoon, a senior, at 5 feet 7. That’s a lie. He’s closer to 5-10. It also says he weighs 210 pounds, which is what John Jenkins, in his first season as Cougar coach, wishes Weatherspoon weighed. He’s closer to 220.

Watching a man Weatherspoon’s size run, defenders draped over him trying to drag him down, inspires all sorts of analogies with bulls--mechanical and otherwise.

A Texas sportswriter recently asked Weatherspoon the following question:

“You know they closed down the mechanical bull at Gilley’s, you gonna take it’s place?”

Weatherspoon shook his head, spit tobacco juice into a paper cup, then laughed.

“I’m like a wild, loose bull out on the field,” Weatherspoon said.

To hear the stories, you’d think Weatherspoon dragged the entire Southwest Conference on his back for each of the 2,150 yards he has gained in his career.

That’s not so.

Weatherspoon’s Pop Warner days appear to be the source of current hyperbole.

Johnny Weatherspoon bought a weightlifting set for his three sons, Anthony, Linton and Chuck, when the three were youngsters. Chuck, in particular, lifted with great gusto. While he never sprouted like Anthony, who played at Colorado, or Linton, also at Houston, he developed enormous muscles in his legs and upper torso.

Once in a Pop Warner game, Weatherspoon was carrying the ball when a defender jumped on his back. Another climbed aboard, then another, but Weatherspoon kept running with “a whole bunch of them trying to get me down.”

At La Habra, where he rushed for more than 4,000 yards, Weatherspoon was alternately referred to as a frigate and a battleship.

Today, he resembles no one as much as Robert Newhouse, a stocky fullback with the Cougars from 1969-71 and later with the Dallas Cowboys.

“People bounce off him like in a little pinball machine,” said Newhouse, a commentator on the Cougars’ radio network. “We’re built about the same, but I don’t think I was as strong as him.”

Weatherspoon tries to hit the defenders before they hit him, which may account for the pinball effect.

“Gang tackling,” he said, is the only sure way to bring him down.

Weatherspoon was recruited by Houston before the Cougars hit it big, when fans still remembered Newhouse as the school’s greatest running back.

Bill Yeoman, who had coached Cougar teams good and bad since 1962, brought Weatherspoon to Houston to play a rather straightforward brand of football.

Yeoman resigned in 1986 after going 1-9, his second consecutive losing season. Worse, two former players accused Yeoman and his staff of paying players and allowing them to play while ineligible. Following the 1985 season, 12 players flunked out of school and 10 of 28 recruits from 1985 were ruled scholastically ineligible. Soon after, the NCAA started looking into the charges.

Jack Pardee, ex-Chicago Bear and Washington Redskin coach, took over in 1987, hiring John Jenkins, an offensive coordinator with the Houston Gamblers who knew how to spruce up the Cougars’ sagging offense.

Pardee allowed Jenkins, who was tinkering with the run-and-shoot offense, to indulge himself. It took awhile to get the thing revved up, but once they did, it worked with ridiculous ease.

Last season came the big breakthrough--quarterback Andre Ware threw short passes on almost every down, wide receiver Manny Hazard grabbed Ware’s throws and Weatherspoon ran through gaping holes when defenses were sure the Cougars were passing.

Among the numbers the Cougars posted on their way to a 9-2 record were:

--Weatherspoon averaged 9.6 yards a carry, breaking the NCAA mark of 9.4 held by Greg Pruitt of Oklahoma. His all-purpose total of 2,391 yards broke by 284 yards the 25-year-old SWC record held by Donny Anderson of Texas Tech.

--Ware passed for 517 yards in little more than a half of the Cougars’ 95-21 wipeout of Southern Methodist.

--A team scoring average of 53.5 points, including four games of more than 60.

Fittingly, the announcement of Ware as the Heisman Trophy winner came on the afternoon of yet another Cougar rout, this one, 64-0, over Rice.

On a muggy summer afternoon in Houston, with the beginning of the season still a month away and Jenkins the Cougars’ new coach, Weatherspoon mulled over the numbers and laughed.

He knows that neither Campbell, a Heisman winner at Texas, nor Dickerson, who was part of SMU’s Pony Express, had three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons.

Weatherspoon also knows that teammates have not won consecutive Heismans since Doc Blanchard ran inside and Glenn Davis outside for Army in 1945 and ‘46, respectively.

“The Heisman Trophy,” he said “that doesn’t faze me at all. It’s nice to be recognized, but I just want to go out and play.”

You can’t blame him. Above all else, the run and shoot is fun. Fun to play and fun to watch.

“Our fans stay until the end of the game, no matter the score, because you never know what could happen,” Weatherspoon said. “It’s too bad people didn’t get to see us on TV last year.”

The Cougars were banned from live TV and bowl games last year, as part of NCAA probation in the wake of Yeoman’s turbulent final seasons at Houston. This season, the Cougars are back on TV (they make their return Sept. 13 against Texas Tech on ESPN), but still cannot play in a bowl game.

“It ain’t gonna be my goal to win the Heisman,” Weatherspoon said. “(But) it’s a honor to have people know how good the Houston Cougars are. It’ll be nice. People will see us on TV and say, ‘I like Houston. They’re pretty good.’ Before they only got to read about us.”