Not Mapped Out : Thomas Brothers Take Bizarre Route to Cotton Bowl-Bound Texas Tech

Their home is in the Panhandle about a three-hour drive to the northeast in an unincorporated area outside Pampa, the big city, and White Deer, a plot of land so isolated that as kids they would play in the snow in their underwear without fear of being seen by neighbors. So remote that, as Spike Dykes, their football coach at Texas Tech, says, “You gotta be wantin’ to go there to get there.”

So Lubbock is a huge metropolis to the Thomas brothers. No wonder. It’s the cotton capital of Texas and home to about 187,000 people. And then there’s the graffiti on one of the windows of the Industrial- Mechanical Engineering building on campus--someone wrote “Hi YA’LL!” in the dust.

Perspective is everything in this case. But have the Thomases hit the big time here? That is not up for debate, not after free safety Bart and linebacker Zach became the first brothers to be consensus All-Southwest Conference picks in the 80-year history of the league. Not after Zach, a junior, was named first-team All-American by UPI and the American Football Coaches Assn. and the SWC defensive player of the year.

To think that neither is supposed to be in this town, at least not to play football, or on this level. And certainly not preparing for this game, the Jan. 2 Cotton Bowl against USC.

Bart should be finishing, or have already completed, his career as an option quarterback at Air Force, preparing for his ultimate goal to be a fighter pilot. Either that or wondering what could have been after retiring before last season to concentrate on school and helping his wife raise their infant daughter.

Zach probably should have used up his eligibility at some junior college and then gone to that final resting place for all slow-footed, undersized linebackers. Division II.

Instead, the small-town brothers are going big city. They are going to Dallas.

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No one is surprised that Bart Thomas succeeded. He has always been the natural athlete--all-state as a quarterback and defensive back on the team that won the Texas 2A championship, basketball MVP for his district, record-setter in the pole vault for his division. For good measure, he’ll stand flat footed and turn a few back flips.

The twist is that it happened here. Coming out of high school in White Deer (population: 1,110), he considered Air Force, Arizona and Texas before deciding on the academy and the desire to fly jets. Texas Tech was never really in the picture, and never pushed hard, because the Red Raiders wanted him as a defensive back and Bart made it clear to everyone he wanted to play quarterback.

Enter fate. During a pickup game at Air Force with some of his college teammates in waiting, before he even got to two-a-days, Bart planted his right leg to make a cut and tore his anterior cruciate ligament. He had not enrolled in classes yet, so the clock on his eligibility had not started and school officials wanted him to attend a prep school rather than miss the first semester of his freshman year because of the surgery and rehabilitation.

Bart decided against that, effectively making him a free agent again. Concerned about the serious injury, every school that had interest in him before backed off except Texas Tech, still promising nothing more than defensive back, and Arizona, still offering quarterback. Dykes was the first coach to call him in the hospital, and that stuck with the patient/prospect.

“He had faith in me,” Bart said. “I was lucky for that. Coach Dykes, I realized how good a guy he was after that deal.”

Said Dykes: “Recruiting is nothing but feel anyway. There’s a few players around that are great players and everybody knows them. There’s the blue-chip guys, the Tony Bosellis (of USC), coming out of high school that you know are going to be great players. The majority of the people playing are the guys that you don’t know whether they’ll make it or not anyway.”

If it was a gamble for the Red Raiders, the payoff started to be realized in 1991, when Thomas played a prominent role on special teams. The next season, when Zach arrived, Bart became the starting strong safety in the second game and held it most of the rest of the way, finishing as the team’s fifth-leading tackler. He was moved to free safety in the spring and was the projected starter for 1993. That’s when daughter Taylor was born, on May 1.

The responsibilities of fatherhood quickly became overwhelming, and Bart started to think in the summer about quitting football to devote the extra time to the family. He decided to wait until two-a-days before making a decision. It took one day of fall practice to determine that his interest in the game had waned, so he quit.

At the time, he thought he had permanently retired. He took a heavy load of classes. He helped his wife, Jill, raise Taylor. He watched the home games in person and the road games on television. He was miserable.

“He had regrets,” Zach said. “I know he missed it big time my sophomore year, when we went to the (John Hancock Bowl). He watched all the games and it was like, ‘Gosh, I wish I was out there.’ ”

With Jill’s encouragement, Bart returned for 1994, for one last season. One more chance to be teammates with his brother.

Rejuvenated by the year away, Bart, now a 23-year-old senior, started every game at free safety, led the Red Raiders with six interceptions and finished fourth in tackles. Zach was No. 2 in interceptions and No. 1 in tackles.

“Bart was the No. 1 reason I came here,” Zach said. “We could play together, just like high school. That’s what I wanted. It was a dream. Now I can’t believe we both make all-conference.”

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Zach Thomas succeeding here, now that’s a surprise.

He has spent most of his life trying to prove people wrong, and that has been the motivation to excel. He was the chunky kid in junior high who got picked on a lot. He wanted to play varsity as a freshman at White Deer, and did. People said that was because it was a small school. He wanted to go to a bigger school for better competition, more baseball and more class choices, so he transferred to a 4A school in Pampa (population: 20,000). People there said he was in over his head.

Then he starred at the big school, and people still said he was too small at 5-11 3/4--”When they measure my height I try to put a lot of socks on,” he says--and too slow. Texas and Texas A&M; both said he didn’t size up, literally, so the college decision came down to Texas Tech and Oklahoma State. Tech was closer to home and had Bart. No contest.

As a freshman, he came on in the second half of the season to reach second string at inside linebacker. In 1993, with Bart on sabbatical, Zach finished fourth in the SWC in tackles. As a junior, he took off.

Everyone saw this coming, right?

“People would say, ‘You look 5-10, you look like you have pedestrian speed, you can’t get to the play,’ ” Zach said. “Hey, they don’t say that any more.”

Said younger sister Katina, a freshman at Tech: “When he reads the papers or the media guides and it says, ‘Zach Thomas: pedestrian speed,’ he’ll just put it down like he didn’t read it. But I can see right through him. It drives him. It’s like, that’s what people think and he’ll show them.”

That’s why he was running late to eighth-grade graduation--he had just remembered an all-night party would follow and he needed to lift weights now, even while wearing the Sunday suit, because the chance probably wouldn’t come later. That’s why he would get so mad in high school after striking out in baseball that he would bite his hand hard enough to leave temporary marks between the thumb and index finger. And why the star at Pampa loved to be on kickoff coverage in the state championship game, and why Texas Tech gave a scholarship to someone too small and too slow.

“What really impressed me about ol’ Zach is that he was on all the special teams,” Dykes said. “He’s a senior, the best player on the team, starting fullback, starting linebacker--and all the special teams. I just watched him play that night, and he played hurt with a sprained ankle and was a fierce competitor. Shoot, that’s the kind of guys that make good players.

“He’s probably not as tall as some people would like him. But he’ll play pro ball the same way. He won’t be supposed to and he’ll be out there playing, because he’s just a good player.”

Because he, like brother Bart on a different path, was wantin’ to get there.