Is He the Invisible (Heis)man? : McNair Must Impress Voters Who Will Never See Him Play

They say if you want to know what size crowd they’ll have at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, then look down West Avenue until you reach the bridge that bows its back about half a mile away. If there are cars parked beside its concrete pillars, then something special is happening.

Will Steve (Air II) McNair do?

McNair, the biggest thing to hit the state of Mississippi since Faulkner discovered commas, is the reason Saturday night’s game was here in the first place. The Alcorn State quarterback is so special that he causes statisticians to triple-check their totals, opposing coaches to develop facial tics, pro scouts to drool, governors to write “Dear Media” letters on his behalf and Heisman Trophy voters to think twice about their ballots and a Division I-AA candidate.

“If I voted, I’d vote for myself,” McNair said.

McNair also draws a crowd, which is why Mississippi Valley State officials agreed to move the game from their itty-bitty 10,500-seat campus in Itta Bena to the state capital and the 62,000-seat Memorial. Home-field advantage is nice, figured Mississippi Valley, but so are gate receipts.

Thanks to McNair, the cars were two deep at the bridge and 34,982 fans were in the seats. They saw the usual stuff from the 6-foot-3, 218-pound McNair, which is to say, they saw the unusual.

Despite nursing a deep shoulder bruise (he was in a sling for two days and wasn’t able to lift his right arm earlier in the week), McNair completed 17 of 25 passes for 226 yards and two touchdowns. He rushed eight times for 108 yards and another touchdown. He passed for a two-point conversion. And he was back in street clothes before the end of the game, the result of an easy 49-24 victory.

But it wasn’t so much what he did as it was how he did it. His downfield passes left contrails. His swing passes were as gentle as the night’s breeze and as soft as a Southern accent. When he scrambled, it was only at the last moment and never the result of panic.

At least half a dozen times McNair saw the pocket collapse around him, Mississippi Valley players lunging forward, their fingertips grabbing at his jersey. And then he was gone.

“He’s like a running back with an arm,” said former Alcorn star linebacker John Thierry, a first-round pick this year with the Chicago Bears.

By halftime, McNair had accounted for 274 total yards, including a 22-yard scoring run in which he somehow squirmed past four would-be tacklers, made his way to the two-yard line, got hit again and then, with his back to the end zone and his arms outstretched with the ball, pile-drove his way for the touchdown. It was on that play that McNair moved into second place on the NCAA’s career yardage list (13,531 total), replacing Portland State’s Neil Lomax, and within 1,134 yards of Brigham Young’s Ty Detmer.

For the season, McNair has thrown for 19 touchdowns, run for four, accounted for 1,989 passing yards and 517 rushing yards. Even the modest McNair said the statistics can’t be ignored.

“If I saw them I’d be amazed,” he said. “The numbers speak for themselves.”

They speak, but are they loud enough? If you didn’t have a ticket you couldn’t see the game or McNair, who has been selected the Southwestern Athletic Conference player of the year in each of his first three seasons. A few of the highlights might be picked up from the Jackson stations, but that’s about it for TV exposure. Instead, McNair has become a word-of-mouth Heisman nominee, the first Division I-AA player to seriously challenge for the award.

To help the cause, Mississippi Gov. Kirk Fordice sent letters to each of the Heisman voters and did what knows best: he politicked.

“Like any young man with such heart and determination, Steve McNair does not want a handout, he wants an opportunity,” Fordice wrote. “I ask that you give him the opportunity to exhibit his athletic gifts and receive the same consideration as any of our country’s other great college football players.”

Fordice is no dummy. Football and goodwill go far in this state, especially with a re-election campaign on the horizon.

But Fordice can do only so much. McNair suffers from a lack of TV time. He plays in Division I-AA and in the SWAC. Ask Joe Fan to name three teams from the conference and you’ll probably get a dull, numb look.

Meanwhile, Florida quarterback Terry Dean all but has his own weekly highlight show. Washington tailback Napoleon Kaufman keeps piling up some impressive numbers of his own. Colorado running back Rashaan Salaam is making his own Heisman charge.

And then there is the other factor. The one nobody talks about--except Alabama State Coach Houston Markham.

According to Markham, McNair won’t win the Heisman Trophy because he is a black player at a predominantly black Division I-AA school in a predominantly black conference.

There . . . he said it.

“(Heisman voters and media) got a stigma to small black schools and that ain’t right . . . and it’s about right and wrong,” said Markham, an Alcorn alumnus from the Class of ’65 who roomed with Alcorn Coach Cardell Jones and later coached with him in high school, then at Jackson State. “It makes you think that the distance between the black and white today is wider than it was when Rosa said she wasn’t going to get off the bus. That’s all it is--right and wrong, black and white. That’s all it is.”

Markham doesn’t say such things without reason. He saw Walter Payton’s career at Jackson State dismissed with a wave of the hand by Heisman voters. The same thing happened to Doug Williams at Grambling. And Jerry Rice at Mississippi Valley State.

McNair hasn’t been ignored. Sports Illustrated splashed him on the cover and, with only a month gone in the season, exclaimed, “Hand Him The Heisman.” It was a bold thought, but not unprecedented. A few years ago the same magazine pushed the campaign for Plymouth State’s Joe Dudek. Even had a catchy campaign slogan: “What the heck, vote for Dudek.”

Dudek finished ninth in the balloting.

Writers and TV crews aplenty have made the pilgrimage to the modest Lorman, Miss., campus. Some even have visited Mt. Olive, where McNair and his four brothers and sisters were raised by his single mother. It made for a heartwarming story, but the question persisted.

Curiosity piece or actual Heisman contender? Statistical freak show or Steve Young clone to Nth degree, but with a Division I-AA twist?

As for his gaudy statistics, Markham offers the same explanation. If McNair were white. . . . “You all would take his numbers--am I right?--and be satisfied,” he said. “I mean, this is America and I’m not bitter, because bitterness don’t do anything for you in this kind of situation. You just got to hope it gets better in time.”

McNair tiptoes around the subject. Recruited by nearly every Division I-A program in the region--but as a defensive back, not a quarterback--McNair said he has never regretted his decision to sign with Alcorn. And voting bias? If McNair thinks it exists, he isn’t saying.

“I try to keep that far from my mind,” he said. “Things change.”

Markham isn’t so sure. A few days before Alcorn’s Sept. 17 game against Alabama State, a reporter from a Montgomery, Ala., newspaper asked Markham if McNair could read defenses. Markham was so flabbergasted by the question that he was rendered speechless.

But not for long.

“The question ain’t whether he can read defenses or not,” Markham told the reporter. “The question is whether you can read numbers. Because if he accounts for 600-plus yards, whether he reads defenses or not it really doesn’t matter. And if he didn’t read any that week, then don’t read none.”

So respectful was the Alabama State coaching staff of McNair, that an almost unheard-of defensive formation was concocted. Depending on the down and distance, Alabama State sometimes rushed only one lineman and dropped the remaining 10 players into pass coverage. At times you could see a beefy nose tackle backpedaling his way into the secondary.

Alcorn still won as McNair passed for 344 yards and two touchdowns and rushed for 116 yards.

“I know what I can do,” McNair said. “I know they knock the caliber of (Division I-AA) competition. But if they see me they would know better.”

Mississippi Valley State knows. So did everyone else who witnessed McNair, bum shoulder and all, toy with the Delta Devils Saturday evening. After all, greatness isn’t always defined by how many capital A’s follow your Division I.

Too bad the rest of America couldn’t see the same thing.