College Football ’92 : Spotlight Not Blinding Faulk

The play was 42 Trap. Marshall Faulk took the handoff and glided toward an opening.

His legs were churning. He had never wanted anything so badly. He twisted and turned and, 15 or 20 yards later--he doesn’t remember which--he was in the end zone.

He was 7 years old.

Marshall Faulk’s first football game. The New Orleans Recreation Department League. St. Roch Park, Faulk’s team, against Sampson, at Barrow Stadium.

“The coach had me watching for a while,” Faulk said, as if he still can’t understand that. “I was anxious to get in.”

Faulk, San Diego State’s tailback, still runs as if he’s late for a career. Even at the college level, opponents find it difficult to tackle him or even slow him down.

He still remembers 42 Trap. It’s as clear as his path to the NCAA record book.

In 1991, Faulk, everybody’s All-American, broke or tied 13 NCAA records, even though he missed 3 1/2 games because of two broken ribs and a punctured lung. In his second college game, against Pacific, he set an NCAA record, since surpassed, by gaining 386 yards.

He became the first freshman to lead the NCAA in both rushing, at 158.8 yards a game, and scoring, at 15.56 points.

At the end of the season, he was the third freshman in NCAA history selected to the Associated Press All-American team. The others, Pitt’s Tony Dorsett and Georgia’s Herschel Walker, later owned Heisman Trophies.

So, as the Aztecs prepared recently to open their season against USC on Saturday in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, Faulk, a 5-foot-11, 200-pound sophomore, found himself being drilled with Heisman questions from more media outlets than he dreamed existed.

“It doesn’t put any pressure on me,” Faulk said. “I understand where they’re coming from, but it’s more of a team effort. Without the team, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

In hindsight, perhaps San Diego State should have just cleared out the spot in its one-back backfield as soon as he stepped on campus.

As Faulk pointed out, “I’ve scored in all of my first games.”

His high school career began in the eighth grade, when New Orleans Carver High Coach Wayne Reese put him into a homecoming game seconds before it ended.

Faulk caught a screen pass and turned it into a 30-yard touchdown play.

“Everybody was leaving by then, though,” he said, smiling.

When he got to San Diego State, Aztec coaches thought about redshirting him for a couple of practices. Then they saw Faulk’s speed in his first scrimmage in August, 1991.

In his first game, against Cal State Long Beach--he started only because then-senior T.C. Wright had missed a practice during game week with an injury--Faulk got his touchdown in the third quarter.

He scored seven more the next week against Pacific in a game in which he didn’t even play until about four minutes remained in the first quarter.

“Mainly, I was just wanting to see how the college game was,” Faulk said. “I had never experienced it.

“The next thing that came to mind was, ‘Was I going to play? How much time?’ ”

How much time did he have?

“His special talents mesmerize people,” San Diego State Coach Al Luginbill said. “He gets a step and he may be out the gate. He even draws the attention of our own defense.

“Very seldom does he go to the ground on the first hit.”

That trait has been noticed by others, such as Brigham Young Coach LaVell Edwards, who watched Faulk gain 118 yards and score twice during a 52-52 tie last November.

“The thing I remember most is how well he caught the ball,” Edwards said. “You could tell he is a great runner.

“I remember watching their UCLA game (a 37-12 Bruin victory). They got pounded, and I don’t think Marshall got a lot of yards (79), but when he got hit, I remember he always fell forward. I remember thinking that, for a young kid, he’s relentless.”

Somehow, Faulk has always fallen forward. He grew up a screen pass away from the projects in New Orleans, an area in which Reese estimated the average annual household income is $7,000--but lives were often worth much less.

“When somebody pulls a gun, you figure, ‘I don’t need to be here on these streets,’ ” Faulk said. “When you live down there, it could happen at any time.

“You don’t know what it’s like living on the edge.”

Basically, Faulk reared himself. His mother, Cecile, and his father, Roosevelt, were divorced when Faulk was young and, during his junior year at Carver, his mother became ill and moved in with her sister.

There wasn’t much room in the house, and Faulk, not wanting to transfer to another school, moved in with a friend across the street from Carver.

During his senior year, he earned his living as a maintenance man for the school system.

“It was a nice job to have. I was always at school on time,” he said, smiling.

Came recruiting time, Miami and Nebraska, among others, wanted him as a defensive back.

But SDSU’s Curtis Johnson, a receiver coach, told Faulk that the Aztecs would let him try running back. It was a great pitch.

Not that the deal was done immediately. Faulk’s father, who had been in a hospital for seven months with throat cancer, died the night before Faulk was to visit San Diego.

Faulk went anyway. He believed he had made a commitment to visit and that his future was at stake. And, there was something else.

“He mentioned to me that he didn’t want to go to the funeral; he didn’t want to remember his father like that,” said Johnson, 30, who has become kind of a surrogate father/big brother to Faulk.

So Faulk and Johnson flew to San Diego. Sort of.

They were fogged in at the New Orleans airport for four hours. When they got to Houston, they were fogged in again. They got to Dallas and had to switch flights. Finally, they arrived at San Diego about 9 p.m. that Friday night--10 hours late.

Said Johnson, almost giddy at the memory: “I remember being in the coaches’ office and having some of the other coaches say, ‘You won’t ever get that kid. He’s already had a bad trip. He doesn’t want to hear anything from us.’ ”

But Faulk already had heard what he wanted. The Aztecs would give him a chance at running back.

He darted toward the hole.

A year later, his life is an open playbook. A man for all seasons, Faulk was on Bob Hope’s Christmas special last winter; he was in Florida for a Playboy preseason All-American get-together last spring; he visited at Sports Illustrated this summer; and reporters from the New York Times to the Sporting News to CNN have been to San Diego to see him in camp.

Is there anything people don’t know about him?

“Everybody has squiggled and squirmed every answer they can get out of me,” he said. “The only thing they probably don’t know is my blood type and is my health good?”

Opponents figure his health is OK. He had 153 yards against New Mexico last October before breaking his ribs--in the second quarter.

He ran for 154 yards against Miami last November, the most rushing against the Hurricanes since Florida State’s Sammie Smith ran for 184 yards in 1987.

UCLA Coach Terry Donahue compared him to Barry Sanders of the Detroit Lions. Miami linebacker Jessie Armstead likened him to former Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winner Raghib (Rocket) Ismail.

“He’s fast and quick,” Armstead said. “A lot of guys are one or the other, but not both. He’ll make you miss, and he runs low to the ground. . . . He reminds me of Walter Payton, too, because when you line up a tackle, he’s going to bring it to you. He punished our defensive backs.”

There are scattered signs that the talk, the hype, the scene are getting to Faulk, but you must look hard to find them.

“People expect so much from him, but he’s keeping it to himself,” said Ray Peterson, one of Faulk’s roommates and closest friends. “He never says, ‘Ray, man, people are expecting things from me.’ ”

Johnson said: “He’s been a man a long time. He’s been in some life-and-death situations. He’s wondered where his next meal is coming from. This is just something else to deal with.”

Teammates and coaches say there is no talk about the Heisman. They don’t even joke with him about it.

As for talk of his leaving San Diego State after this year for the NFL, Faulk said, “I hear the talk so much it almost forces you to think about it.”

But, for now, when pressed about next year, Faulk said: “I’ll be here.”

Faulk scoffs at the sophomore jinx, downplays his accomplishments and doesn’t even have a videotape of that Pacific game--he gave it to his mother in New Orleans.

“So many bad things have happened to me in my life that I had to put behind me that, when good things happen, I can put those behind me, too,” Faulk explained.

Although Luginbill said he and Faulk have not discussed the expectations for this fall, and although Faulk remains outwardly relaxed, there is one undeniable fact.

Faulk’s life changed last fall forever.

“He feels pressure to do well,” Luginbill said. “It’s coming from external forces. My God, that’s all people have talked about all year.”

Here and there, it is noticeable. Such as the time in San Diego State’s first intrasquad scrimmage two weeks ago when Faulk believed he was hit late by Aztec defensive back Damon Pieri.

Faulk got up screaming at Pieri and, after he was removed by Luginbill, Faulk and his coach had an animated argument on the bench. The incident got big play locally and, although both say it was forgotten by the end of the scrimmage, that, too, was part of Faulk’s education.

“That incident was a godsend to us,” Luginbill said. “It really (pointed out) that whatever he does is big news. I think he understands what he’s under now.”

Luginbill used the opportunity to tell Faulk that opponents will be trying to upset him all season, and that he must learn to react without losing his poise.

Now, with another first game days away, Faulk is comfortable. He knows he will be a marked man for the next several months.

“I would love to say no,” he said.

But it is starting already. A man of the streets knows the word on the streets.

“I have some friends who live in L.A., and they know a couple of guys who play for USC,” Faulk said. “I hear those guys are calling me ‘Marshmallow’ Faulk and (SDSU receiver) Darnay Scott ‘Doo-Doo’ Scott.”

Faulk paused--then grinned.

Marshmallow Faulk?

“That is going to be a nice one to hear.”