He’s Trying to Ride a Wave From Winnipeg Back to NFL : Football: Blaise Bryant surfed for a while after Jets cut him, but Huntington Beach resident missed the game and headed to CFL.

After he was cut by the New York Jets in August, 1992, running back Blaise Bryant’s thoughts soon turned to riding the waves at the Huntington Beach Pier.

He left training camp and moved home to Huntington Beach. He bought a bodyboard, a wet suit and headed for his favorite surf spot.

It was summer, plenty of sunshine, and the ocean was pumping waves about four to five feet at the pier.

Although Bryant was at home, he was still homesick . . . for football.

A former standout at Iowa State, Golden West College and Cypress High, Bryant decided to give pro football another try--in Canada.

He watched NFL exhibition games on TV and saw Marcus Robertson, a former teammate at Iowa State, playing safety for the Oilers. He watched Raider running back Nick Bell, whom he played against when Bell was at Iowa.

“I couldn’t take that,” Bryant said. “I just couldn’t take it.”

A week later, Bryant fled to the Canadian Football League, where he has been trying for the last year to put his career back together with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

A second-string tailback, Bryant has rushed for 226 yards in 45 carries with one touchdown through 10 games. His best game as a pro was on July 17 in a 36-14 victory over British Columbia. He ran for 132 yards and a touchdown in 13 carries.

He’s averaging more than five yards a carry and 8.5 yards per catch, but his role is to back up Michael Richardson, who led the league in rushing as a rookie last season with 1,153 yards.

After a brief tryout, Bryant joined Winnipeg midway through last season--the Canadian league runs from early July to early November.

Bryant played sparingly, but the front office liked him enough to pick up an optional second year on his contract.

Still, when his contract expires at the end of this season, he’s hoping for another NFL tryout.

“I’m happy playing in Canada,” Bryant said. “I get to play, and I like living in Winnipeg. But my ultimate goal is the NFL. I just need a legitimate shot, someone to call me and say, ‘Blaise, the job is open.’ ”

That offer may seem a little unrealistic--not many CFL second-stringers go to the NFL. But Bryant, 6 feet 1 and 200 pounds, thinks he still has a shot.

In August, 1992, Bryant wouldn’t even have considered an offer.

“After the Jets cut me, I figured I wasn’t going to play again,” Bryant said. “I was hurt. I had never faced failure before.”

Not at Cypress, where he was an All-Southern Section selection as a senior.

Not at Golden West, where he once rushed for more than 300 yards in a game.

But at Iowa State, he found success and failure.

After a standout junior year, nagging injuries ended what could have been an All-American senior season.

Dealing with failure hasn’t been easy for Bryant, who seemed to be born into football greatness. His father invented his son’s name in a hospital lounge, waiting for his son to be born. He was watching a football game, and heard an announcer say a player “scored in a blaze of glory.”

Blaise grabbed attention wherever he played, but more for his game than his name.

At Cypress, he rushed for 1,305 yards in 201 carries and 20 touchdowns. He made the all-section team and played in the Orange County all-star game.

He lost a football scholarship to Hawaii because he failed to meet Proposition 48 requirements with a low score on the entrance exam. He instead chose to play at a junior college.

As a sophomore at Golden West, he rushed for 1,691 yards, including a 330-yard game against Riverside. His grades improved, and he chose Iowa State over a handful of other schools.

In his first game at Iowa State, he ran for 213 yards and two touchdowns against Ohio University. It was the first time a Big Eight back cracked 200 yards in his debut. Heisman Trophy winners Barry Sanders, Mike Rozier and Johnny Rodgers didn’t come close.

He ran for 1,516 yards and 19 touchdowns that season. He was named the Big Eight Conference’s newcomer of the year and made the Associated Press’ All-American third team.

Bryant entered his senior season billed as a Heisman Trophy candidate and was considered by many scouts as a possible first-round draft pick. He made Playboy Magazine’s preseason All-American team.

But in an early season game against Minnesota, Bryant tore muscles in his left shoulder.

“I was getting tackled, and I put my hand down to break my fall,” Bryant said. “I twisted, and I felt something go in my left shoulder.”

Bryant returned after two games and rushed for more than 100 yards against Kansas. Then, against Oklahoma, he tore cartilage in his rib cage and missed some more games.

“It was just one of those bad years,” he said. “It was sad because I needed to put together a good season, and I couldn’t.”

The Jets took Bryant in the sixth round of the 1991 draft, three rounds lower than he figured he would go. The injuries had not only slowed his senior season, but also hurt his draft status.

But Jet coaches saw Bryant’s potential in an injury-free junior season. He was impressive in the Jets’ training camp, but the team already had proven running backs in Blair Thomas, Brad Baxter, Freeman McNeil and Johnny Hector.

The team planned to release Bryant but kept him on the squad as a “developmental player.”

This meant practice, but no playing. Still, Bryant stuck around and finished the year.

Entering the 1992 season, he figured he “didn’t have a chance at all.” Thomas, Baxter, McNeil and Hector were all back. Bryant could tell during drills that he was the odd man out.

He was right. The Jets cut him when they trimmed their roster to 47 in late August. And this time, there was no offer to return to the developmental squad.

“I won’t lie,” he said. “Getting cut was very tough on me. I felt I could play in the NFL.”

Since his NFL career ended, Bryant’s interests began stretching beyond the football field.

He has a degree in communications from Iowa State, and is considering graduate school. He wants to invest in real estate. Last spring, during his break from the Canadian league, he coached the triple jumpers and sprinters on the La Quinta High boys’ and girls’ track teams.

“That was the first time I ever got into coaching,” said Bryant, who had a personal best of 46 feet 9 inches as a high school triple jumper. “They’re good kids, and I really got into it. I want to come back this spring.”

Coaching has kept Bryant active in the county sports scene and in touch with his sporting roots. Every track meet he goes to, he sees someone from his high school or community college days.

“I can look around and say I was lucky,” he said. “I had some great years at Cypress, Golden West and Iowa State.”

He says he appreciates those years a little more now.

“I had never been the No. 2 guy (at his position) until I got into pro football,” he said. “I went to Golden West and I started, I went to Iowa State and I started.

“This made me wonder, how many guys were there who could have been the man, but played behind me in high school or college?”