By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN —
It wasn’t all that long ago, about the time the Pittsburgh Steelers found themselves on the outside looking in at the Super Bowl, that Bill Stewart approached his longtime friend, Mike Tomlin, the Steelers’ coach, to see if he couldn’t get some vintage film footage of Franco Harris.
While a devoutly religious man, Stewart was not looking to see Harris’ “Immaculate Reception” that won a 1972 AFC divisional playoff game.
Instead, he was working on a brainstorm, the idea being that he wanted to find ways to utilize the talents of Ryan Clarke in the West Virginia offense.
Clarke is a member of a dying breed, that being fullbacks, and is uniquely suited to the things Stewart wants to do with his offense, be it blocking for a fleet of miniature running backs like Noel Devine or Tavon Austin or running the ball to the inside to pick up first downs and touchdowns.
Once upon a time in the evolution of football, the game was far more manly and physical than today’s hi-tech, computer generated game. It was a game played on the frozen tundra of Green Bay or on the soggy footing in Baton Rouge.
It was a game where a man named Bronko Nagurski could batter his way into the Hall of Fame as a fullback, he along with the likes of Ernie Nevers and Ken Strong, setting up a tradition of bruising ball carriers and devastating blockers who would etch their names into history.
The truth is you could almost write the history of the professional game through the fullback, beginning with Nagurski and moving through first Marion Motley, then the immortal Jim Brown, on Paul Brown’s dominating Cleveland teams, to Jim Taylor blocking for Paul Hornung in Green Bay, to Alan Ameche in Baltimore scoring the winning touchdown in “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” and on to Larry Csonka, who blocked for Jim Kiick and Mercury Morris on Don Shula’s Dolphins’ championship teams.
If teams ran the ball, they had a fullback … and a good one.
West Virginia, of course, has been no exception, having a long, proud history of having great fullbacks.
The first was Joe Marconi, an All-American in the mid-1950s who played 11 seasons in the NFL, including with the 1963 champion Chicago Bears. The list winds through time with Larry Krutko and then Dick Leftridge, one of the great black pioneer players in WVU history who was a first-round draft pick.
Jim Braxton may well have been the most talented fullback ever at WVU, as he proved after he was drafted by Buffalo and blocked for O.J. Simpson when he broke the 2,000-yard barrier.
It kept coming with Ron Lee and Walter Easley, the all-time rushing leader among WVU fullbacks, Ron Wolfley, Kantroy Barber, LeRoy White and, of course, the first of two modern day fan favorites — Wes Ours, a converted offensive lineman who made the ground shake as he rumbled on breakaway runs into the secondary.
Of course the last great fullback was one of the fans’ greatest favorites, Owen Schmitt, who was everything a fullback is supposed to be. They called him “The Runaway Beer Truck” and he was famous for breaking face masks and hitting himself in the bare head with his helmet.
Indeed, fullbacks are first fun. They are the hard hats in the football culture, the beer and a shot guy down at the end of the bar, telling fun stories and able to lick any man in the house.
Ryan Clarke comes well equipped to follow in the cleat marks of his predecessors, if he can keep away from a few the quirky habits that have gotten him in trouble in the past, such as spending more time at the dinner table than in study hall.
This year, though, he becomes a key man in the offense. To begin with, the shifty Devine is more comfortable running out of the I-formation than the spread and quarterback Geno Smith is going to need to be maximum protected for he is not a scrambler and doesn’t have experienced backup.
So it is that Stewart is rapidly becoming a fan of Franco Harris as he looks to discover new ways to incorporate Clarke into his offense, not only for the upcoming season but the first year after Devine when Austin moves to the tailback spot.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
