Bieniemy Now Makes Trouble for Opponents

The hotel fire alarm went off after curfew in Denver, an obvious prank, and so the Chargers went looking for the usual suspect.

“I’m in bed watching TV and since I have this reputation they just assumed it was me,” Eric Bieniemy said.

“They just plain overlooked Stanley Richard who was in the other bed, and they ask me, ‘What are you doing, Eric?’ Can you believe that? I’m watching TV and I’m in bed.”

When the fire department arrived, however, they were able to determine the specific location of the alarm: The room belonging to Richard and Bieniemy.

“We knew Stanley wouldn’t do it,” said Dick Lewis, the team’s security officer on the road. “Eric got busted; we knew who did it.”

Bieniemy raised his right hand. Solemnly. “You see, the way I figure it,” he said, “it had to be a defective alarm; I mean I don’t know how it went off. I’m innocent. I swear.”

General Manager Bobby Beathard has heard all the testimony. “He’s got one of the greatest smiles I’ve ever seen. There’s some mischief in him, but it’s the good kind. I mean, didn’t he set the alarms off in that hotel?”

Why sure he did. He’s also probably responsible for the Padres’ demise and the decline of George Bush.

“I think it’s that lovable, mischievous smile; people think he’s up to something,” said Fern St. Cyr, Bieniemy’s mother. “But he’s really a good kid.”

Last week a penalty flag flew in Indianapolis and immediately the call was made in San Diego.

“I’ll bet that was on Eric,” said Bieniemy’s 11-year-old brother, Jamal.

“No, I don’t think so,” said St. Cyr, because you know Eric’s really a good kid.

“Personal foul--face mask. No. 32,” announced the referee.

Brother knows best.

“You know, he’s very feisty on the field,” said St. Cyr.

More than that. “He’s a raging inferno on the field,” said Mike Barry, offensive line coach for the University of Colorado.

A 5-foot-7, 200-pound fireball on the field. A prankster. A troublemaker at times, according to the law. A really good kid.

Pull the picture together. “Looks kind of like a Picasso, doesn’t it?” said Bieniemy.

“When he first got here you heard all the bad things about Eric Bieniemy,” Beathard said, “and maybe people expected to hear more bad things about him.

“But you talk to the University of Colorado people now and all they are talking about is how they are missing Eric Bieniemy. And not just because of his running ability, but what he brought to the team as a leader.”

The talk in the Charger locker room has been just as supportive. “I told him this in training camp, I’ve noticed how much he’s matured from last year to this year as far as his approach to football,” tackle Broderick Thompson said. “I commended him for his work in training camp.”

Teammates take notice of hard work, big collisions on the field and a football shoved in their face.

“It seems the harder someone hits him, the harder he plays,” cornerback Gill Byrd said. “He meets a challenge with a challenge.”

Linebacker Gary Plummer watched Bieniemy work out on a treadmill at 12 m.p.h. He told him he had one at home that sped to 17 m.p.h. Bieniemy was knocking on Plummer’s door a few days later.

“We worked out together in the off-season,” Plummer said. “This guy is a hard worker, a great guy. I’m not going to bring a guy around my family that’s got a bad attitude or something like that.”

*

First impressions, however, suggested someone much more irksome. When Bieniemy arrived in San Diego two years ago police sirens were heard in the distance. He missed a court assignment to answer a speeding ticket that resulted in an arrest warrant, and then folks began pulling out his rap sheet.

“It did sound pretty bad, didn’t it?” said St. Cyr.

Lots of trouble. Trouble that could be explained, maybe, but lots of trouble.

For example: Freshman year in Boulder and Bieniemy and friends are out on the town.

“I’m in the bathroom and these big white guys tell me: ‘Nigger, we’re going to kick your black ass.’ It caught me off-guard; I had never been approached like that. They were in my face. I said, ‘OK, I’ll be right back.’

“I went and got (6-4, 257-pound) Kanavis McGhee and two of the guys immediately ran when they saw Kanavis. One decided to take a swing at Kanavis, but he was so drunk, he fell. The bouncers came up, and they didn’t care to hear the story.

“They just saw this guy laying on the floor and assumed we knocked him down. One of the bouncers hit Kanavis on the back of the head and that starts everything. Now I ain’t lying, we tore down the house. We went wild and fought.”

After the police arrived and all parties were separated, Bieniemy was led to believe he was free to go home.

“I’m walking to the car, and I hear, ‘Freeze.’ My arms went up--’You got me.’ They took Kanavis and me to jail. Then came the hard part: I had to call my mom.”

Mom and Dad had advised him he was making a mistake when he chose to bypass an invitation to USC in favor of playing at Colorado. Mom and Dad were right.

“I had taken geography throughout high school, but I didn’t even know where Colorado was on the map,” Bieniemy said. “I had always been an ‘SC fan; that’s where I wanted to go.

“But I took a visit to CU and it was a different scene. I had been used to living in big city; I had never been in a small city. It was pretty, it was the first time in snow, it was just something different. I wanted to be a part of it.”

A few months after arriving, he wanted out.

“Being black, you may be one or two in a total of 500 white students,” he said. “You felt isolated. You were thousands of miles away from home. What am I doing here? If I would have gone to USC, I might have been in the same scene, but then I would have known I could go home at anytime if I wanted. It was a rough adjustment.

“It’s very intimidating. You look around and there’s no one you can really talk to. I’m always a person that says hello to everybody. You say hello to people there and they look at you like you’re crazy.

“I had come from New Orleans where everyone around me was black, and then in California there were all sorts of races and yet we never looked at each other like you’re Mexican or black or whatever. We were all in the school together, so what’s the difference.

“But when I went to Colorado I looked down at my skin, and it was, ‘Eric, you’re black. You’re black.’ It made me become more aware of my culture and people, and made me want to learn more about what we had been through and we’re going through.”

*

Bieniemy found support and strength in football. He made friends, and on the football team, he said, there was no color conflict.

“He felt fine during the football season because he was their knight in shining armor,” St. Cyr said, “but after football, it was like he was some sort of bad stepchild.

“I was born and raised in New Orleans so I knew prejudice, but I didn’t want that to stop him. I told him, ‘Never let someone rob you of something that belongs to you. You’re going to have all kinds of problems; don’t let them rule you. Find a way to handle them.’ ”

Bieniemy has always listened to his mother. When he was in kindergarten, she divorced Eric’s father, Eric Bieniemy Sr., and later remarried Thaddeus St. Cyr.

Her boy had gigantic thighs, a 25-inch waist and was no taller than the kitchen table. “I’d have to buy 36-inch waist pants to they would fit over his thighs,” she said. “It was a big problem.

“You raise boys, though and it’s tough. I was always the big villain. I was saying no when they wanted a yes.”

The family moved from New Orleans to California. They settled into a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood shortly after Bieniemy’s 10th birthday.

“Eric will kill me for telling this, but I remember the day when the kids went down the block to the store and came running home,” she said. “They were screaming and I thought somebody was chasing them. They said, ‘Mom, we just saw the people who were in Godzilla.’ It was the first time they had seen any Koreans. It was the first time they really had seen people of another race.”

The family moved to West Covina a year later, and eventually Bieniemy made his way to Bishop Amat High School.

“You got good grades or you didn’t play football,” said Bieniemy, who returned to CU last winter to continue his studies. “My mom believed in education, and that’s the way it was going to be. I studied.”

Bieniemy earned those good grades, ran for a whole lot of yards and went off to gain more fame at the University of Colorado.

“It wasn’t that easy,” said Charles Johnson, a teammate at CU and a friend who talks to the running back three to four times a week. “Like most African-American scholarship athletes, it’s a culture shock. It takes time for an 18-year-old to mature, but an 18-year-old with notoriety receives exposure for everything he does, while other 18-years-olds are allowed to make mistakes without notice.

“I was teasing him the other day about the time he and (CU Coach Bill) McCartney were crying together. It was a heart-to-heart, tear-to-tear talk.”

It was also the turning point in Bieniemy’s stay at CU, and now when he looks back on his time in college, he does so with fondness.

“I wouldn’t change a thing, but listen, I was ready to quit after my sophomore year. I was going to go back and try to go to USC,” he said. “Me and Coach McCartney were not getting along and I just wanted out. I just wanted out of Colorado; I had made a mistake.

“There were problems in our football family at CU, and everything that I had come to depend on was falling apart. I went to McCartney and I told him I was leaving. He said, fine, but he wasn’t going to release me, so I’d have to go to a junior college or pay my own way. I was very upset.”

At the same time, Bieniemy’s mother was on the phone. “She didn’t want me to quit,” he said. “She said I started something and I should finish it.

“My mother has been my motivation. She is a very strong person.”

Bieniemy decided to stay, and Fern St. Cyr decided that her son needed the family’s support. The family moved to Colorado.

“A big decision,” she said. “A very costly decision. But to me children are the most important thing in life. Once you have what you need, you make sure they have the things they need in life.”

In the next two years, the University of Colorado compiled a 22-2-1 record with Eric Bieniemy leading the way. He became the only player in McCartney’s first decade on the job to attend a road game although he was hurt.

“He deserves to go,” McCartney said at the time, “because he’s such a special kid, and he’s an integral part of the morale and fabric of our squad.”

Bieniemy set a long list of school records, finished third in the Heisman Trophy voting and was named to CU’s all-century team.

“He’s one of those rare kids that come along that make everyone around them better,” Barry said. “He doesn’t know that he’s not 6-3. He would call out the biggest lineman on defense in practice and it would set the pace for the other players.

“He fumbled five times against Nebraska and we’re down 12-0 and you would think the kids would be asking to get him out of there. But they wouldn’t let him quit, and in the fourth quarter he took the game over. He scored four touchdowns, and the team rallied around him.”

Family support.

“I was in an environment where I felt I was lower than a man,” he said. “You were this or you were that, and then my family comes and I had someone to turn to. It was just seeing my mom more than anything. Things weren’t so bad anymore.”

*

And the Chargers called. They already were overloaded with quality running backs, but on the morning of the 1991 NFL draft, Beathard wrote Bieniemy’s name down on his draft wish list.

“Too good of a talent to pass up,” Beathard explained later after grabbing him with a second-round pick.

Too bad, suggested the media. Why take a running back who will never play when the team needs another wide receiver so desperately?

“I think he has the chance to be a heck of a back,” Beathard said. “He’s a breakaway back. He’s not a little back, he’s a short back. You look at his legs and you won’t find 220-pound running backs having any bigger legs.

“He’s built to take a beating and dish one out. He hits the hole quicker than anyone we have, and he’s a very instinctive runner.”

He is also tough, so tough that on three separate occasions he has been branded with the Omega Psi Phi fraternity insignia. That’s branded, as in burned.

“I cried,” St. Cyr said. “I actually cried. I couldn’t believe it. For the longest time I couldn’t say anything to him. It hurt to look at him. He told me I wouldn’t understand, and I don’t.”

Bieniemy said there are reasons for the marks on his body, but they are private.

“He said they didn’t hurt,” Beathard said. “But my God, have you seen them?

“This kid is something. Just watching him in practice. . . . Anybody that can stop and start like that is an exciting guy.”

Beathard held on to Bieniemy and all his other running backs in the past year despite pressure from fans and critics to make a trade.

“Never considered it,” Beathard said.

Bieniemy ran 10 times for 48 yards a week ago in Indianapolis and recorded his first NFL touchdown. And now that Rod Bernstine has been placed on injured reserve with a shoulder injury, he Bieniemy has become Marion Butts’ relief.

“His opportunity is coming up now and I think he’s going to show that he’s the player they thought he was when they drafted him,” Byrd said. “You can see that by the way he practices. He goes full speed in practice, and has from the beginning, and I think it keeps him sharp. You could see that in the Indianapolis game.”

You will see Bieniemy’s family cheering for their favorite running back in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, too. Mom and Dad have moved from Colorado to San Diego, and the support staff is in place.

“Eric’s brother, Cory, is stationed at Camp Pendleton and it’s a chance for all of us to be together,” St. Cyr said. “It’s been a while since our family could spend valuable time together.”

Had Bieniemy, however, been drafted by Green Bay, “he would have gone by himself,” St. Cyr said with a laugh. “I’m sure we would have visited--in the summer.”

The Chargers took Tuesday off, but Bieniemy was working in the team’s weight room. He might have the chance to play more against Denver, and Bronco fans, who know all about his glory days at CU, have reason to be concerned.

“People know he’s going to fight you and fight you until he wins,” Johnson said. “I remember playing Oklahoma State and we run this big offensive play down inside the 10, and we look back up the field and here’s this 5-6 freshman running back fighting with a big defensive lineman. That’s Eric.

“He got kicked out of the game, but that’s part of what makes him such a great football player. There’s no quit in this guy.”