Beyond Husky Stadium -- Portraits Of 1983 Recruits

STEVE ALVORD

Typical of the seven to play at least a year of pro football, Steve Alvord was not the largest or the fastest athlete in his class. Yet he spent three seasons in the NFL with the St. Louis/Phoenix Cardinals, then two with Barcelona in the World League of American Football.

He retired with a college degree, a taste of Europe, and no major injuries.

"I'm glad I'm getting out now," said Alvord, a 270-pound defensive lineman. "The kids coming out of college now are so much bigger it's scary - 300-pound guys like Cortez Kennedy and Steve Emtman."

Alvord plans to start stockbroker training in June and get married in September. For now, he works at his father's construction company in Bellingham.

RICHARD BARBER

The son of a preacher, Richard Barber had more than a prayer of success at Washington. Bright, if bewildered by college life so far from his family in small-town Southern California, he wanted a degree in electrical engineering.

But he struggled in and out of class early. He recalls walking across campus one night when two men jumped him, put a handgun to his head and yelled racial slurs as he ran off. He became depressed about a lack of playing time on the 1985 Orange Bowl championship team. In the spring after his sophomore year, the quick safety quit.

He became an assistant manager at a University Avenue video-game parlor, where he was summoned outside to settle a disturbance Nov. 19, 1987. He was shot in the arm.

A couple weeks later, Barber tried to commit suicide, washing down a handful of pain pills with 100-proof liquor.

"There were all types of fights and violence going on where I worked," he said. "Guns were being drawn all the time. The stress just built up and I lost it."

With the help of his wife and three children, Barber regained his emotional footing. After bouncing around various jobs in two states, he now stocks shelves at a Seattle hardware store. He said he plans to return to Washington to get his degree.

He does not blame his experience at the UW for the suicide attempt. But he said he does wish he received more guidance as a freshman.

"I got into a system where there was no support. I was just put there and told, `survive.' It's a lot to reckon with for an individual."

BRUCE BEALL

Unlike all but a few of the '83 recruits, Bruce Beall became realistic about his NFL prospects early. A career backup linebacker, he channeled his energies into getting a degree and was one of the few to graduate before his eligibility expired.

"Not that I didn't care about football," he added quickly.

Beall had sales jobs with U.S. West and Honeywell before taking over as manager of a Portland golf course his family has owned for generations. Among the few players who owns a home, he and his wife recently had a baby boy - a "future Husky," he said.

CHRIS BENNETT

A towering defensive tackle from Spokane, Chris Bennett may have been the only player to leave the Washington program on philosophical grounds.

Like most freshmen, Bennett was wide-eyed at the businesslike nature of college football - the year-round training, the fights on the field as 150 players jockeyed for 24 starting positions, the benign pressure to put on weight, he felt, by any means. Unlike most freshmen, Bennett decided this brand of football would not build character, but rather break it down.

Loaded up with three puffball classes that he said athletic department counselors picked out for him, he told James in November of his first year that he wanted out.

"He said, `If you quit here, you'll always be a quitter.' But I quit anyway."

Bennett graduated last May from Spokane's Whitworth College, where he played for two years and had a lot of low-key fun.

"If I would have stayed at UW, I probably would have tried to go to the NFL and I wouldn't have graduated. That scared me, getting into that pattern."

JEFF BROWN

For Jeff Brown, the NFL dream was so powerful that it had to be torn down physically, with a groin injury that forced his release from the San Francisco 49ers after three months in the league.

The dream earlier cost him $11,000 in legal fees to sue the NCAA (unsuccessfully) when he tried to transfer as a senior from Washington, where he could not penetrate the starting lineup. Later, the dream cost him his marriage to his wife, he believes.

"I had a really tough time letting go of football," he said.

On the upside, his passion for the game kept him enrolled in school long enough to eventually earn a degree from Portland State. Now a salesman for two electronic-goods companies, one of them owned by his father, Brown said he learned more from James about running an efficient business than any professor.

"I've asked myself many, many times - did I do the right thing by going to UW? I mean, it's just stocked with talent there. But then I look at some of my teammates who have to start over now (after NFL careers). I've already done that."

SCOTT BUSZ

The top-rated tight-end prospect in the country coming out of high school, Scott Busz never caught a pass in four seasons at Washington. Owner of a 3.975 GPA in high school, he spent much of his time as "chief tutor" for starter Rod Jones, and "mostly on the game plan."

The hype aside, Busz did well for a young man. He earned Husky letters in three seasons, and came back to graduate in economics after bartending for several years. He brooded, though, through much of his Husky career, trying to cope with not living up to his billing coming out of Aberdeen.

"It was good preparation for life," said Busz, now a data compiler for a state agency. "I learned to deal with the politics of the team, and politics are everywhere."

CHRIS CHANDLER

Runner-up to Jeff George in Indianapolis, then Vinny Testaverde in Tampa Bay, Chris Chandler shook the second-best blues in Phoenix last season. After an injury to Timm Rosenbach, his former Washington State rival, Chandler became the Cardinals' starting quarterback.

He set personal highs last year in passing yards, completion percentage and touchdowns, and in his spare time traded golf swings with John Daly in the local pro-am (Chandler hit 314 yards, Daly 315) - the kind of things people talk about when you're a professional athlete.

He has yet to graduate. His salary is $825,000 a year.

JOHN CHAPMAN

A backup offensive lineman, John Chapman quit the team his junior year amid academic troubles. He said that to remain a student he would have had to drop a class his winter quarter. But when he did so, he also made himself ineligible by NCAA rules to play in the bowl game that year, to the ire of his unconsulted position coach.

"I remember the day I went into his office. The guy came unglued. He started screaming, `Coach James is going to come down on me! Why did you do this to me?' I said to myself, this isn't what I came to college for. That's it. I'm not playing anymore."

Without scholarship, he returned to school the next fall. He thrived in class and earned a degree, majoring in society and justice. He now is a mechanical estimator for his family plumbing business.

"I feel sorry for guys who play football because I jumped a whole grade point when I quit - from like a 2.2 to a 3.5. Unless you come in with a 3.5 in high school, you're going to have a real tough time."

KEVIN CONARD

A defensive tackle from Compton, Calif., Kevin Conard was in trouble with campus police almost from the moment he arrived in Seattle. He also incurred the wrath of coaches and fell behind in school, his GPA dropping to 1.99.

Conard, like many players who came from predominantly black communities, had trouble adjusting to a campus where less than 4 percent of the students are black and culture clashes are inevitable, said his roommate at the time, Vince Fudzie.

"There are just some things you can do in L.A. that you can't do in Washington," Fudzie said. "Washington is a very conservative state."

No more so than Orange County, Calif., where Conard and Fudzie got involved in a nightclub incident with police at the 1985 Freedom Bowl. Citing them for "serious misconduct," James revoked their scholarships.

The players later sued the nightclub for its racial-exclusion policies, and won. They also sued James and the university, and lost after reaching the state Supreme Court.

Conard, who did not return phone calls for this article, transferred to San Diego State after leaving Washington. He is now in Los Angeles working as a credit-repair specialist, Fudzie said.

RODNEY COX

As a teenager, Rodney Cox watched Perry Mason episodes and decided he wanted to be a lawyer. But there was no arguing his way out of a transcript problem that ended his Washington career after less than one month.

He cheated, taking up a high-school teacher on what he thought was the promise of a passing grade for no classwork. When the updated transcript arrived at Washington - with failing grades in several classes - Cox lost his scholarship.

Confused, homesick and unable to pay for school, he returned to the Los Angeles neighborhood that produced baseball's Eric Davis and football's Ricky Bell, David Fulcher and Reggie Cox, his brother and a 1976 Seahawk draftee.

"The first night I got home, I dreamed that Don James called me over to say, `You're back,' and that the transcripts were wrong. But surely enough, when I awoke I was still in the same room and still far away from Seattle.

"Right then I realized it was time to adjust."

Cox called the Husky booster who had recruited him, Jim Kenyon, and went to work for the Los Angeles developer as a messenger. Once among the top prep linebackers in the city, Cox also enrolled at a local junior college and made all-conference. But he lost interest in school and quit after a year.

Now a sanitation worker for the county, an active member of his Baptist Church and married for five years, Cox said he does not regret the experience that ended his Husky career. He just learned the cost of taking short cuts sooner than other players, a lesson he says he tries to instill in his son and daughter.

"Everyone has choices they have to make. The choices I made back in high school taught me later to take care of business. The quicker a person learns to face up to it, the better."

TONY DOMINGUE

For anyone who believes that Conibear Shellhouse on campus was a drug-free zone until the recent arrest of Danianke Smith, let former linebacker Tony Domingue, who lived there and used cocaine and marijuana as a player, correct the impression.

"After my first year, I knew where to go for a bag of pot. Sometimes it was no farther away than the crewhouse."

Domingue dabbled in drugs in high school, but going to Washington was like splashing lighter fluid on a small fire. He often got high and skipped class, arrived late for meetings and was contrary with coaches, who finally urged him to move into the nearby crewhouse and take drug tests, he said.

He quit the team before the 1985 game against Oregon, when coaches told him he would not play against his home-state Ducks. He worked graveyard shifts at the University District 7-Eleven, but soon quit that, too, embarrassed at serving beer and munchies to former teammates.

Now a divorced father of two, Domingue works in a Portland warehouse - "the kind of job (assistant coach) Skip Hall said I would end up in if I didn't listen." He said his boss constantly reminds him of his wasted potential, of how his marvelously muscled, 6-foot-4, 220-pound frame should be moving around NFL linemen.

He blames no one for his predicament except himself - not his disadvantaged upbringing, not the college recruiters who filled his head with fantasies, not the death of his mother, which sent him, as a college sophomore, on a "self-destruction mission."

Often, though, he wishes he never played football.

"I'd rather have been some . . . anything," he said. "But I had to be a big star. It went to my head. From the day I got up there, I was headed back down here."

MARK ENTROP

A tall, raw, offensive lineman from Puyallup, Mark Entrop never considered, prepared for or thought he could afford college until recruiters planted the idea his senior year of high school.

Bad idea, he decided after a year of college classes, and returned home to do construction, his job since ninth grade.

Entrop now calls quitting school "a mistake." But he gets by, a single guy with no house payment and enough time to hunt and play golf.

LANCE FAURIA

As a student at a San Fernando Valley high school, Lance Fauria shattered a basketball backboard and was runner-up in a Las Vegas slam-dunk contest. He was grounded as an athlete in the next 2 1/2 years, as a slight foot injury escalated into two surgeries to his left foot and eight operations to his right knee.

"I spent more time in the hospital my first year than in school, between the time it took to recuperate and the time on pain medication," said Fauria, a backup tight end.

Weary of football, he quit the team and school and, like his father, became a police officer. He worked four years as a Seattle cop before taking a job at an immigration jail next to the Kingdome.

"Cowboy," as teammates called Fauria for his boots, now helps run a correctional facility in Texas that features a "shock incarceration boot camp." The military-style rehabilitation program endorses heavy use of pushups and early wake-up calls - much like a Don James camp, Fauria notes, except "we don't have stadium steps to run."

RICK FENNEY

If the Huskies could build the perfect alum to use as a recruiting tool, he would look a lot like Rick Fenney. An NFL fullback for five years, he received his degree and is now a Minneapolis stockbroker who lives the content family life with his high-school sweetheart and two daughters.

How he became a Husky poster boy is no mystery to Fenney.

"I had two things going for me," he said. "Number one, I worked hard and prepared well in the off-season. Number two, I had a great tutor in Keith Gilbertson, the assistant coach at Snohomish High School (and father of the former UW offensive coordinator). He worked with me from eighth grade until I got into the NFL. I don't know if I would have made it without him; I really believe that."

Gilbertson set up a training regimen, helping Fenney become the biggest, fastest and strongest Husky fullback in the James era. He gave him academic direction, urging him to return to Washington his first two NFL off-seasons to get his history degree. In sum, Fenney got the astute, early guidance so few athletes get.

Fenney was cut by the Vikings last August after a career-ending dislocation of his hip, similar to that suffered by Bo Jackson. He sued the team for his $300,000 salary in a case still pending; doctors tell him the hip will likely have to be replaced.

DARRYL FRANKLIN

The Huskies' leading receiver in 1987, Darryl Franklin was known, and chastised, for his celebratory arm-waving after big catches. But beneath the character was character - a good student with an interest in art, trout fishing and clothes shopping.

He also was one of the few black players with a family business to fall back on. Several credits short of graduation, Franklin, after a brief stint with the Buffalo Bills, now works with his father in a small Tacoma construction business.

VINCE FUDZIE

In the weeks after published allegations of NCAA violations in the Washington program, Vince Fudzie and other players who spoke out were criticized by some current and former Huskies for causing possible penalties to the team.

The big picture, Fudzie pleaded. Look at the big picture.

The only black player from California to graduate in the '83 recruiting class, Fudzie argued that behind the NCAA rules is a destructive system where athletes are inhibited from succeeding academically. The son of a foreign diplomat who went to an inner-city Oakland high school, these thoughts had been in his head as a Husky but gained clarity after he was kicked off the team as a junior.

He later got his degree in accounting and joined the firm of Deloitte and Touche in San Francisco.

"My thing is, an injustice to one is an injustice to all," said Fudzie, now a sports agent and business consultant. "If you've got a guy who goes through there (UW) and gets stupid, he's going to be the guy later who's stealing my car. These things ultimately affect us all."

KEVIN GOGAN

A $425,000-a-year salary. A custom, 3,200-square-foot home under construction in the woods east of Lake Sammamish, with a three-car garage for his three cars. A wife and two children. After a rough NFL start that included a suspension for marijuana use, Kevin Gogan, backup offensive lineman on the Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys, hit the jackpot.

Huskies in the NFL are almost club within themselves. There is a special camaraderie, a knowing handshake when their teams meet, even if they played in different eras at Washington.

What does he plan to do after football? "Hopefully nothing. Maybe open a store. I don't want to work 9 to 5 every day, putting on a suit and tie." He said he is nearly set for life, from savings on six years of NFL pay. Getting his sociology degree would be window dressing, but he wants it anyway.

His lone regret about going to Washington is not about some academic, but blocking technique. "I was allowed to get by while playing average. Here (in Dallas), as a blocker you always bury somebody."

BRIAN HABIB

Son of a chemistry professor at Central Washington University, Brian Habib graduated on time with a degree in history. He usually went to class and studied from his own copious notes, allowing him to survive the fall quarters when football cut hard into the time for academics.

"School was just something ingrained in me as a kid," said Habib, a solid, if unspectacular, defensive tackle at Washington. "I could never fathom not graduating from college."

Expecting to become a history professor, Habib was drafted in the 11th round by the Minnesota Vikings. He was later converted into an offensive tackle, and squeezed his way into the starting lineup 1 1/2 years ago.

Last month, Habib took advantage of new NFL free-agency rules and signed with the Denver Broncos for $4.2 million over three years, briefly making him the highest paid NFL offensive lineman.

AL HENRY

Bigger than any other Husky freshman except Lincoln Kennedy, Al Henry (300 pounds) was a monolith without foundation. When his mother died in junior-high school, he moved from home to home, from Philadelphia to, finally, Utah where his older brother played college football.

There, he lived with a family arranged for him by his high-school coach, until a Washington assistant coach whom his brother knew recruited him to Seattle. But, partly feeling like an orphan after the coach who wooed him quit, Henry left as a sophomore.

"A lot of the players who adapt well up there are from that area already," said Henry, now a manager at a Portland car dealership. "Seattle just didn't appeal to me."

LONZELL HILL

The only recruit whose father played in the NFL, Lonzell "Mo" Hill grew up with all the peculiar benefits and drawbacks that come with being the son of J.D. Hill, receiver for the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions in the 1970s.

"It helps you get your foot in the door," he said, "but you've got to make it on your own."

The Huskies' leading receiver his junior and senior seasons, Hill was drafted higher than any of his classmates, in the second round by the New Orleans Saints. He was cut after four seasons and moved on to the Canadian Football League, where he starts for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

He has yet to earn a college degree, but his golf game is coming along. He lives in Kent and plans to start a fashion business.

ALLEN JAMES

Adapting to the structure, discipline and demands of Husky football was no task for Allen James, whose father, like the Husky head coach, had an Army background. A middle-class kid who entered Washington with a 3.0 high-school GPA, he saw playing time all four seasons at strong safety, and graduated in 1988.

James worked construction for two years after getting out of school, then for eight months as a youth counselor, before going into business as an insurance salesman in Tacoma. He bristles at comments made by former teammates who say they were mistreated.

"They were dealt the same cards as me. If they didn't do the right thing while they were there, it's not the university's problem."

RICKY MEYER

A highly recruited fullback out of the Bay Area, Ricky Meyer arrived with what doctors later concluded was a physical defect in the way he ran. He broke each leg twice in his first 18 months with the UW and became a career backup.

An honor student in high school, he also brought good study habits to Washington. He graduated on time, in public relations. "We spent too much time practicing and in meetings, but I got my work done," he said.

Meyer used Husky alumni connections to get a job out of college selling cars. He now manages a Las Vegas dealership.

CURT SISCEL

As a sophomore center, Curt Siscel was blocking in practice when a scrub running back hit him, not the hole, and broke two vertebrae in his back. "Dr. (Steven) Bramwell said I could continue to play football or I could walk when I'm 30. I decided to walk."

He said the coaches offered to keep him on scholarship. But he went home to Northern California because he was bored with school, felt "useless" without football, and wanted away from the coaches he often clashed with about weight and injury problems.

"When you're walking around on crutches and Don James comes up to you and says, `How long are you going to milk this for?' it gets to you," he said.

Siscel said that for a couple years after leaving Seattle he was bitter at coaches and obnoxious toward friends. He refused to watch Husky games.

Now a journeyman truck mechanic, he said most of the hard feelings for the program have subsided but not the pain in his back, which he said prevents him from standing up straight. He said doctors told him the injury cannot be corrected with surgery.

DAVID TOY

The football career of David Toy can neatly be summarized: He started at tailback the first two games of his sophomore season, then fumbled into the Husky end zone against Oklahoma State and forever after played behind Vince Weathersby.

His post-football resume has also had a decidedly bouncy quality: from volunteer work with an environmental group, to bartending, to loan collections, to health-care service, to a couple of other get-by jobs, to his current job as a technician in a Seattle pharmacy.

Toy, one class shy of graduation in political science, laments the lack of any apparent network among black former teammates, many of whom, without degrees, are not in stable jobs. "It's kind of like, `When I see you, I see you,' and that's once a year."

AL TUFONO

The only Hawaiian in the class, Al Tufono also is the only player from that class who used Husky coaches to get a job. They hired him as a graduate assistant last year.

He left after the national-championship season for a job as coordinator for Seattle Parks and Recreation. A high-school coach in Hawaii briefly after graduating in 1988, he helps implement a grant to provide summer programs for teenagers.

"I wanted to work with kids," said Tufono, an inside linebacker who was slowed by injury problems at Washington. "Fortunately, I got in at a time when there was a need for people of my ethnicity."

DEMOUY WILLIAMS

A starting cornerback, Demouy Williams returned after his stint at Washington to his hometown of Rancho Cordova, outside Sacramento, where he was the top athlete in his high school and a B-minus student who wanted a career in business.

In March 1989, he did business, with an undercover police detective posing as a crack dealer. Hidden behind an apartment door, Jim Cooper, a former high-school teammate, took the money from Williams and passed him the rock.

When officers lunged to grab Williams, he flashed the 4.3 speed that once used to win football games. "He dropped his jacket and was off to the races," Cooper said somberly. "We only caught him because he slipped in the mud."

In August 1991, he was arrested for drugs again, this time for methamphetamine, a highly addictive form of speed.

Williams could not be reached for this article. Friends and his former high-school coach have lost contact with him since the drug bust and subsequent loss of a construction job.

In his void is the painful question: Where did he go wrong? Tracy Johnson, former teammate in Rancho and a longtime friend, points to the premature death of Williams' mother when he was in high school - the loss of the guiding force in his large family.

In Seattle, Husky players like Reggie Rogers became his family. "When he left for Washington, the trouble started. He'd come home on breaks and just party out," Johnson said. "It seemed like he wasn't afraid of anything."

When Williams returned without a degree or NFL career to show from five years in the Husky program, he became severely depressed, Johnson said.

"It was almost like when football was over," he said, "everything was over."