Reserve Power Runs Packers

Then, there is that enduring show biz legend where the star of the show falls ill and the director pushes the understudy on stage opening night and shouts “You’ll go out there a nobody. And you’ll come back a star!”

Dorsey Levens, understudy/stand-in of that long-running off-Broadway show, the Adventures of the Green Bay Packers, could relate.

One day, Dorsey was sitting on the bench, minding his own business, when out on the field they began helping the star off the field, Edgar Bennett. The coach looked down the line. “Levens, take off that blanket and go on in there for Bennett and try not to screw up!”

And, as they say in Hollywood, a star was born.

It was sure-fire box office. Levens riddled NFL lines in such a way, he ended up with 1,435 yards, the second-best rushing season in Packer history and only 39 yards fewer than Packer immortal Jim Taylor. By the end of the year, he was being mentioned as one of the best running backs in the game.

It was pretty heady eminence for young Herbert Dorsey Levens, who had resigned himself to a backup role all his life. He had been an outstanding high school runner in his hometown of Syracuse, N.Y., but when he got to Notre Dame, they kept giving the ball to a guy named Ricky Watters. Levens was fifth or sixth on the depth chart. The coach, Lou Holtz, had trouble remembering his number, never mind his name. So he switched to Georgia Tech, where he became just another Ramblin’ Wreck.

He did well enough to be drafted in the fifth round by the Packers. Now, fifth round is not exactly a confidence-builder, a ringing endorsement. The Pack thought he might make a nice backup fullback. They wanted him to learn to block. They also wanted him to tackle and put him on special teams, where you get to throw yourself at kickoff wedges and hope you don’t get too many concussions.

If Bennett hadn’t torn his Achilles’ tendon in the exhibition opener, Levens might never have gotten his name in lights.

In a way, he liked it there in the dark. “I’m not the type to go before a camera,” he tells you. “I’m pretty much a boring interview. I don’t have a lot to say.”

A Super Bowl leaves you no place to hide. The media circus swirls around the athletes in a blizzard of microphones, camcorders, notebooks, tape recorders and autograph books.

But there is a pecking order. One of the depressing sights of the interview sessions where star players either have a podium of their own or appear on stage in the hotel auditorium with the coach are the tables where lesser-knowns sit and await interviewers. Sometimes they sit there in lonely splendor. Only occasionally does some rookie journalist approach with a “Let’s see, you’re, uh, er, ah. Exactly what position do you play?”

Last year, Levens was one of these guys. He sat at Super Bowl XXXI’s interview sessions, unapproached, unbothered, uninteresting. He wished he could find himself that alone on a football field with the ball.

“I caught up on all my reading. I read every sports page in the country,” he remembers.

This year, it’s different. Levens has his own podium (an elevated stage of prominence) above the team proletariat. Media types come at him in waves. He has no time to read, only talk.

He answers politely, but scoffs at encomiums. “I think Barry Sanders is in a league of his own,” he tells you. “I’m not in his league.”

Ah, but he is. In 1997, he gained the most total yards from scrimmage of any Green Bay Packer in history, 1,805. He rushed for seven touchdowns and caught 53 passes for 370 yards and five touchdowns. He was within a couple of yards of Sanders’ marks.

There are those in the league who think he is the best runner, Sanders or no Sanders. The Dallas Cowboys think he is the second coming of the Galloping Ghost. After they had beaten the Packers seven times in a row, holding them to an average of 58 yard on the ground in the process, Levens rushed for 190 yards against them and Green Bay won, 45-17.

He has blown his cover. He went out a sub and came back a star. Bennett now becomes the Wally Pipp of pro football. Pipp, you may remember, was the New York Yankee first baseman who took himself out of the lineup with a cold one day. Lou Gehrig got in it and Pipp never did again.

Levens never was that much of a secret to defenders assigned to tackle him. But now the whole world knows about him. After all those years waiting in the wings, they finally shoved him onstage. He’s a big reason the Pack is back and he’ll never have to go back to the chorus line again.