White Got the Help He Needed

What does a fellow do when he’s hurt, his knees are weak, his head is buzzing and he’s scared and the pressure is unbearable and he feels disoriented, unsure of himself?

He does what young men have been doing since time began. He sends for his mother. He wants his mommy.

Even if he’s a bona fide Heisman Trophy candidate, unarguably the best running back on the West Coast and, for all anyone knows, the nation.

Even if it’s halftime of the most important game his team has played to date and there are still 30 minutes of football to be played. On the hallowed turf of the Rose Bowl in front of 53,859 fans.

That’s the frightening position Russell White of the California Bears found himself in between the halves of Saturday’s game with the UCLA Bruins.

He had rushed for 72 yards and a touchdown in the first half and was the dominant back on the field even though a diagnosed iron deficiency in his blood had made him light-headed and shaky.

The doctors prescribed glucose injections and, as he sat in the locker room with needles sticking in each arm, it occurred to Russell that a guy needs his mother at times such as these.

A trainer was dispatched to the seats to rush Mom, Helen White, to his side. It was no time to be macho.

“She had to play two roles in my life as I was growing up--my mother and my father. I needed her. She was not only my mother, she was my best friend,” Russell was to explain later.

Mrs. White showed up with her son’s girlfriend, Tovi Scruggs. They both counseled caution. As Moms have since the beginning of time. “They told me, ‘Don’t try to be no superhero,’ ” Russell recalled. “But I heard the crowd roaring and I didn’t know which crowd it was--ours or theirs.” So he put on his pads and asked a trainer to escort him back on the field.

It was like a scene from an old Warner Bros. movie--the star halfback returning in the nick of time. All it needed was a dog. Not a dry eye on the Cal side of the field.

He didn’t exactly score the winning touchdown. But he gained 53 more yards and scored another touchdown. His contribution was as pivotal as emotional.

Remember when Cal was just a breather? On the schedule instead of Caltech or Cal Poly?

It’s been almost a half-century since the Cal Bears had a football team anyone took seriously. They haven’t been to a Rose Bowl in 32 years. They used to go all the time. They went three years in a row once.

They used to have teams they called “‘Wonder Teams.” Lately, it’s a wonder they have teams.

They seem to have been trying to get on Harvard’s schedule of late. It’s a cinch they were overmatched in the league they were in. Sometimes when they played UCLA or USC, you couldn’t bear to look. The Trojans beat ‘em 60-7 one year, 50-14 another and 42-0 another. UCLA beat ‘em, 61-21, 45-0 and 42-18. They should have had the decency to blindfold the Cal players.

Their college song was “those sturdy Golden Bears,” and the league used to amend it to “those dirty Golden Bears.” But neither one fit the Cal team of late.

The last time they won a game in Los Angeles was 1977. And that was a forfeit of a game they had lost (UCLA proved to have used an ineligible player and did the honorable thing). The last time they won down here on the scoreboard was 1971. The prevailing opinion was, the Cal team could score a touchdown only on the Stanford band. Their backfield was good only going through tubas.

But Cal has come out of its long hibernation. The Bears beat a good UCLA team Saturday because they wouldn’t quit.

And because they had Russell White--and quarterback Mike Pawlawski. The game might be described as the Perils of Pawlawski and a pearl named White.

They’re not Miami yet. But at 4-0, they’re in the Rose Bowl hunt.

The interesting thing is, a Russell White would not be at Cal in past years. A blue-chip high-schooler such as him wouldn’t be found dead behind that papier-mache line.

He would have gone to USC. Notre Dame. UCLA. Washington.

All of the above wanted him. Russell White passed.

Why would he skip USC, the school that glorifies the tailback? “I didn’t want to go the Tailback U. and be just another tailback--a backup tailback,” White explains.

The notion of Russell White being a backup anything is laughable. Even being sick to the point of intravenous feeding, he is a remarkable football player.

Bill Cosby used to say of Gale Sayers: “He comes up to the tackler and then splits himself in two--the one with the football disappears.”

Russell White doesn’t exactly disappear. He just seems to come out the other side of the tackler. The first tackler has no chance at all. He gets the shadow. To get the substance calls for a gang.

He is more than just a gold tornado. When Russell White got to Berkeley, he found he had more than iron deficiency to lick. He had dyslexia. “I had this learning disability I didn’t know I had.” He accepted ineligibility, he didn’t transfer to Alabama or Oklahoma. He licked the problem and now has a 3.0 grade-point average.

He is a remarkable athlete whose uncle, Charles White, was a Heisman trophy winner and whose cousin was an All-Pro defensive back with the 49ers. White used to run the 100 in 10.5, the 200 in 21.0 and triple-jump over 50 feet.

But his greatest strength is, he knows exactly where to go when the going gets tough. Mom.