SDSU’s Best Knows It Is Faulk’s Time : Football: Career rushing leader Norm Nygaard salutes sophomore.

The letter went out last week.

Norm Nygaard had planned on writing it since last year. He knew from the first time he saw Marshall Faulk on television that, after all these years, here was a guy who would finally surpass his record.

He never planned on keeping it this long, anyway. When Nygaard played football from 1952 to 1954 at San Diego State--then San Diego State College--he didn’t think about records.

A ceremony to honor him when he became the school’s all-time leading rusher in 1953? Ha. Know how Nygaard discovered he had set the record? It was at the beginning of the 1954 season, when he was looking through a game program.

He wanted to make sure they spelled “Nygaard” correctly. Two a’s, not one. He happened to see a chart. There he was, the Aztecs’ all-time leading rusher.

By the time he finished his career, Nygaard, who will be inducted into the Aztec Hall of Fame on Nov. 28 when SDSU plays Miami, had piled up 2,619 yards. Through back after back and coach after coach, his achievement has remained nestled in the record book out of harm’s way.

Until now. Possibly this Saturday against Air Force or, barring the unexpected, next Saturday against Colorado State, Faulk will thunder past Nygaard, further into Aztec lore.

Faulk, who has 2,422 yards, needs 198 to surpass the record. He is averaging 198.6 per game.

Entering the season, Faulk needed 1,190 yards for the record. Nygaard was set to write Faulk a note this winter, telling him to work hard and keep his nose straight and he would be sure to get the record next season.

Then Nygaard, 60, settled in front of his television at home in Reno, Nev., for each of SDSU’s first three games this season. He watched Faulk blitz USC for 220 yards, Brigham Young for 299 and UCLA for 118.

He started the letter.

“Basically, what I said was that, ‘You probably don’t know me, but you’re about to shatter my record,’ ” Nygaard said. “ ‘Comparing what we did with you guys is like comparing apples and oranges.

“ ‘We were like a 1946 Chevy pickup truck going down a dirt road in three gears. You guys are like a Mercedes going down a freeway, turbocharged.’ ”

Nygaard has never seen Faulk run in person. In fact, since Nygaard left SDSU in 1954, he has only been to one college game--in 1970, to see USC play Cal because he had gone to high school with Jim Hanifan, then an assistant coach at Cal.

It isn’t that Nygaard has lost touch with the game. Instead, he prefers to watch college football on television.

“I hear people compare (Faulk) to other football players,” Nygaard said. “If he stays healthy and keeps his mind on what he’s doing, someday people will be saying, ‘That guy reminds me of Marshall Faulk.’ ”

Nygaard spent the first 10 years of his life in Minnesota before moving to Los Angeles. After playing well at Covina High School, Nygaard played two seasons at Mt. San Antonio College before participating three years at then-SDSC.

SDSC was at the small college level and, because the Korean War was on, it was able to allow community college transfers three years of eligibility. Nygaard, his eyes on a possible NFL career, took it.

“I felt I needed an extra year of experience,” he said.

It was in the days when players played both offense and defense, and Nygaard may have been the school’s first “dime back.” The current Aztec coaching staff coined that name to describe the hybrid defensive back-linebacker position played by Robert Griffith. Nygaard, in addition to running back, played what he called “roving back--a combination of linebacker, cornerback and free safety.”

He always enjoyed defense--to the point that his favorite football memory is from when he was playing at Mt. SAC.

“I led the conference in scoring and I was a defensive back,” he said, still chuckling. “I had 14 touchdowns in nine games. That’s kind of an unusual thing to do.”

But he excelled as a running back with the Aztecs. Although the team hovered around .500 during his three seasons--4-5 in 1952, 5-3-1 in 1953 and 5-4 in 1954--Nygaard was good enough to be drafted by the Los Angeles Rams after his junior season.

Perhaps part of what got the Rams’ attention was SDSC’s final game of the 1954 season. During a 72-0 rout of Santa Barbara, Nygaard ran for 215 yards on only 10 carries.

“He kept scoring and scoring and scoring,” said Bob Newton, an offensive lineman on that team and one of Nygaard’s closest friends.

Tom Ables, a former SDSU sports information director who has seen all but two Aztec football games--both home and away--since 1946, remembers Nygaard doing almost anything he wanted against Santa Barbara.

“Frankly, they weren’t a very good football team,” Ables said. “In a way, you could equate it to Marshall Faulk’s (386) yards against Pacific.”

NFL teams could hold the rights to a player for more than a year in those days, so Nygaard returned to the Aztecs for his senior season and planned on a career with the Rams. The yardage continued to pile up.

“Norm was a great runner, he really was,” Newton said. “He was a fast kid, and he had terrific balance and good cutting speed. He had a lot of natural ability.”

Another offensive lineman from that team, Jay Gutowski, remembers Nygaard’s quickness.

“He was an excellent runner, probably one of the best,” said Gutowski, who taught in SDSU’s physical education department until last year. “He was quick into the hole. Very deceptive. It was hard to get a shot at him. He was very elusive.”

Nygaard’s good fortune, though, seemed to expire along with his eligibility. The Rams promised he would play the second and fourth quarters of their second exhibition game and, when he didn’t, he had angry words with then-Coach Sid Gillman.

So he was traded to Washington shortly thereafter when Vic Janowicz, the 1950 Heisman Trophy winner, suffered a dislocated rib.

“Then one day we were ready to get dinner and, as I walked by Janowicz, he sneezed and popped the rib back into place,” Nygaard recalled.

That sneeze spelled the end of his Washington career. The Redskins traded him to Green Bay but he broke an arm in a scrimmage the week before the season opened.

He played one year for Toronto in the Canadian Football League but tore up a hip. By the end of the 1956 season, his football career was finished.

He ended up joining his friend Newton as a Los Angeles County fireman. Nygaard remained there from 1958 until 1970, when he retired early after blowing out his back on a rescue operation.

“Being a fireman was the most rewarding job I’ve ever had in my life,” Nygaard said. “Nobody hates you; everybody loves you. And if you do a good job, everything usually turns out OK.”

Now divorced with one daughter and three grandchildren, Nygaard lives 30 yards from the Truckee River in Reno, about 1 1/2 miles out of town and only about a mile away from Newton.

“I enjoy things a lot of people would like to enjoy--every day as it comes along,” he said.

He and Newton get together two or three times a week. Saturday, when the Aztecs host Air Force in a game to be nationally televised by ESPN, in the game that could see Faulk surpass Nygaard’s record, the two will gather in front of Nygaard’s television.

Two buddies, ex-teammates, will watch their old team. The food will taste a little better, the beer will be a little colder and, as they watch Faulk charge toward the 1950s, several memories are sure to surface.

“It’s amazing how long the record stayed there,” Nygaard said. “But they turned into a passing team. . . .”

And so Nygaard, despite not having been to an SDSU game since he left in 1954, continued to be linked to the school in a visible way.

“I have fond memories of San Diego,” Nygaard said. “I had the greatest time of my life down there. I hope Marshall is enjoying it as much. I’m sure he is.

“The best thing you can say is that I appreciate the attention I’m getting 40 years later. I already had my day in the sun. This is Marshall Faulk’s time.”

SDSU Career Rushing Leaders

Player (Years) Yards Norm Nygaard (1952-54) 2619 Marshall Faulk (1991-) 2422 David Turner (1976-77) Paul Hewitt (1987-88) 2056 Kern Carson (1961-63) 1911 Art Preston (1949-51) 1664 Don Shy (1965-66) 1432 Lloyd Edwards (1967-68) 1251 Jim Allison (1963-64) 1233