The Longest Yard for Doak Walker

Before there was Dateline, Nightline, Outside the Lines, Inside
Edition, 60 Minutes and 48 Hours, there were heroes.

They were handsome and swift, and we knew just enough about them
to keep them as gods. They played offense and defense and kicked
and punted and dated the homecoming queen, and that was enough.
They didn't go on Leno or Oprah, and they never cried on Roy
Firestone. You only saw them on magazine covers and in
newsreels, and on the back of your eyelids when you slept
because all you wanted to be was them.

That man, lying so still there, learning how to talk again, he
was one. He's Doak Walker, and he was as golden as golden gets.
He had perfectly even, white teeth and a jaw as square as a deck
of cards and a mop of brown hair that made girls bite their
necklaces. He was so shifty you couldn't have tackled him in a
phone booth, yet so humble that he wrote the Associated Press a
thank-you note for naming him an All-America. Come to think of
it, he was a three-time All-America, twice one of the
Outstanding Players in the Cotton Bowl, a four-time All-Pro. He
appeared on 47 covers, including Life, Look and Collier's. One
time, Kyle Rote, another gridiron golden boy, saw a guy buying a
football magazine at a newsstand. "Don't buy that one," Rote
said. "It's not official. It doesn't have a picture of Doak
Walker on the cover."

Fifty years ago they gave Doak Walker the Heisman Trophy because
who the hell else were they going to give it to? That season he
was among the nation's finest in rushing, passing, punting, punt
returning, kick returning, field goals, extra points and
interceptions. The Cotton Bowl added more than 20,000 seats just
so more people could see him. He led SMU to two straight
Southwest Conference championships. After a game he'd come out
of the locker room in a coat and tie, hug his girlfriend, who
really was the homecoming queen, and take her for a malted.
Thirty million mothers sighed.

That's why Doak Walker, motionless, can't possibly be. Are you
saying that the man who won two NFL titles with the Detroit
Lions, who was inducted into the college and pro football halls
of fame, is a quadriplegic? Are you saying somebody finally
stopped Doak Walker?

What gets you is that it was an intermediate ski slope. Doak
Walker never did anything intermediate. He was a wonderful
skier, one of the best at Steamboat Ski Resort, along with his
wife, the former Skeeter Werner, an Olympian. But there he was,
on the last day of January this year, on a slope called Rainbow,
carving those beautiful giant arcs of his, when he hit a change
in the rolling terrain and traveled 20 to 30 feet in the air. He
fell forward and tumbled, severely bruising his brain stem. When
the first skiers arrived, he had no pulse. Luckily, one of them
was a dentist who knew CPR.

Doak Walker is at Craig Hospital in Denver now and, at 71,
working harder than ever. He speaks through a tube and he's up
to four words now: yes, no and thank you. But the eyes are still
bright, and when he disagrees with you he sticks out his tongue.
Here's a guy who in college and the pros gained close to 10,000
all-purpose yards--most of them effortlessly--yet you wonder
what he'd give now to run just one foot of that.

Doak Walker doesn't want people to make a fuss over him. He
never was much for fusses. Still, it's unthinkable. One of the
most vital, virile men in American sports history, a guy
football barely left a mark on, will have to learn how to sip
and puff on a straw to get his wheelchair around. Some Rainbow
this turned out to be.

There's a little hope that he might get back some movement. But
he's going to have to have his house redone--lower sinks, wider
doorways, showers he can wheel into. Long-term care is going to
cost a small mutual fund, so proceeds from this year's
Walker-Lundquist Steamboat Invitational golf tournament will go
to the Doak Walker Rehabilitation Fund.

Anyway, the point of all this is just to let you know that every
day isn't Saturday in the open field anymore for number 37. A
lot of days are fourth-and-11, actually. So, if you think of it,
write Doak Walker. The fax machine is right down the hall,
303-789-8330, and he reads every message.

Tell him he's still your hero. After all, everybody likes a
thank-you note.

B/W PHOTO: ROBERT BECK [Rick Reilly]

Every day isn't Saturday in the open field anymore for number
37. A lot of days are fourth-and-11.