Woodson Meets Success Because He Believed Mom

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - The meetings would last for hours, but they were all Georgia Woodson knew to do.

Her days were devoured in work, first in the job at the sewing factory and then the waitressing job at a restaurant for five hours at night. There were so many days she never saw her three children for more than a few moments in the morning. By the time she got home, they were already in bed.

The only way to talk, to give them values, to know them, was the meetings. So once a month she called them together and they sat on the floor of the old apartment in Fremont, Ohio.

The television was off. The radio was off. And for hours, they just sat there and talked. No subject was off limits. They talked about boys, they talked about girls. They talked about money and dreamed of what they would do someday if they ever became rich.

The two boys, Terry and Charles, always went on about how they were going to be football stars.

Georgia smiled.

"You can be all you want to be," she would say, like mothers always say.

But they believed her like most children never do when their mothers say such things.

"I'm too optimistic for them not to believe," Georgia Woodson says. "I really believe anyone can be anything they want. We have a religious family. We have a good faith in what we want to be."

Yes, they believed. And there she was with Charles, her youngest, just two weeks ago, beaming as they handed him the Heisman Trophy. Georgia Woodson kept telling everyone that she was the one most responsible for making it all come true.

Just days before winning the award, Charles looked down in a flock of tape recorders, shyly bit his lip and said: "She's where I picked up my confidence and ability to deal with tough situations. She's the greatest person in the world."

You want to understand Charles Woodson? Want to know what turns a very good defensive back into the best player in college football? What makes him the most important person in this year's Rose Bowl? You have to go back to the beginning.

"It has to come back to the mother," says Bob Knapp, the assistant athletic director at Fremont's Ross High School and a family friend. "If you're looking for one thing about Charles and those kids, it goes back to the mother. She's the matriarch of that family.

"I guess they were ahead of the times. They turned the television off and just sat around and talked. You have to buy a self-help book to learn those things. Isn't that what the self-help books tell you to do? Turn off the TV and just talk?"

Georgia sighs over the telephone. It's a relieved sigh. Thank goodness for the children, they've all turned out so right.

When the divorce was final, when Charles was 4, she was left with almost nothing. She worried about the time she wouldn't spend with them, about what they would become.

Now she has her answer. "They're so respectful," she says.

Shannon, the oldest, went to the University of Arkansas, and Terry graduated from Miami of Ohio. They have jobs and successful lives. And now Charles has been honored as the best player in college football. In the beginning, she just hoped they would make it through school. Everything has worked so well.

But Georgia raised her kids to help raise each other. Shannon dragged Charles to her cheerleading and track practices. Terry taught his little brother to play football. Even now, friends say, Charles credits Terry, not their father - a man he barely mentions - as the paternal figure in the family.

"He knew he was going to have success in his life. So did his mother," says Woodson's roommate, Marcus Ray, a Wolverine safety whose own family bonds are so tight he tattooed a picture of his mother's face to his forearm just so he could see her every day.

On the field, Charles is the most dangerous player in college football. He can beat you in so many ways. The moment Michigan's coaches began to experiment with him as a receiver on offense last season, the path to the Heisman already was being laid. The offense literally changes when he walks into the huddle. Michigan's vanilla attack suddenly sizzles with the promise of a big play at any second.

"You get the ball in his hands, it allows for something to happen," offensive coordinator Mike DeBord says.

When the Wolverines have given Woodson a chance to make something happen, he has scored three touchdowns - one on a punt return, two others on passes. He averaged 48.7 all-purpose yards a game, mostly on pass receptions and punt returns, this season as a part-time offensive player.

He intercepted seven passes even though opponents elected to throw away from him.

The one-handed snatch of Todd Schultz's pass, while tumbling out of bounds at Michigan State, was probably the play that thrust him into Heisman contention. His 37-yard touchdown reception at Penn State strengthened his candidacy, and the punt return for a touchdown against Ohio State pushed him over the top.

Yet the player so bold and audacious as to ponder making a Heisman pose when he ran back that punt is more tepid in real life. He hates his newfound celebrity. In fact, his friends and teammates say he would rather be left alone.

After the Ohio State game, he was quoted as saying he believed he was the best player in the country. The words sounded so boastful and were strung through papers and magazines around the nation so much that the context had been mangled. He was responding to a question, not bragging, friends said.

None of this did much to draw anything more from a person who seems uncomfortable with attention to begin with.

"People see him as arrogant. I see him as shy," family friend Knapp says. "I think he's almost inwardly wishing the notoriety would go away."

Of course, it doesn't. A few days before the Heisman ceremony, the Michigan sports information people had him come to a news conference in a room down the hall from the football offices. Everyone, it seems, wanted a piece of him. There had to be at least 10 television crews, including ESPN and CNN, set up around the floor. And as soon as he walked in, the room began to buzz.

"Let the games begin," one reporter mumbled.

Woodson was friendly. He shook hands enthusiastically when introduced, and as he was being pulled away for one of his many TV interviews, he looked over his shoulder and said, "I'll be back."

Later, after being pushed in front of a table with about 30 tape recorders, he said he wasn't sure to whom the Heisman would go, but he said he certainly didn't expect to win it. At another point, he was asked about his mother, and he smiled.

"We had a lot of problems when I was younger," he said. "She had a lot of problems going on, but she wouldn't ever let anybody know that things were going wrong. That's where I picked up my confidence and ability to deal with tough situations."

He didn't elaborate. It was obvious he was growing weary of the interviews, of the same questions, and he began to look irritated. "I have a headache," he said.

Soon he was gone, down the hall wearing a heavy jacket and carrying a baseball cap. His face was cloudy, all the earlier exuberance drained away.

It is difficult to really know him. The files of newspaper clippings in the Michigan athletic department are filled with attempts at profiles that have the most generic of quotes from Woodson. It is clear he just doesn't like to talk about himself.

But this is the child Georgia Woodson raised. She is asked about her son's reticence to reveal much about himself and "ummmhmmms" in affirmation.

"He's a quiet kid, but he listens," she says. "You may not think he's paying attention, but he can repeat everything you say.

"He's very level-headed about things - he is about (the Heisman). I think he gets that from his mom. I don't let a lot of things upset me. I just deal with it.

"There are a lot of things he could have been upset about growing up. I was working all the time. I taught them to be independent. I've always been independent. I never asked for anything from anyone."

She drives a 3,000-pound forklift all day at the American National Can Co. in Bellevue, Ohio, outside of Fremont. After the divorce, she could have pulled into a shellor run away. There were days she wanted to.

"Once you get out and start working and don't go to college and get a degree, you can't turn back," Georgia would tell her children in the meetings. "You'll have to work the rest of your life. And unless you own your own business and have people working for you, you'll have to work in a factory like your mother."

So they all tried to be athletes. Shannon nearly made the 1992 Olympics as a runner. Terry nearly made it into big-time college football, but he was just a bit too small. Then came Charles, who as an athlete was perfect.

The instant Michigan defensive coordinator Jim Herrmann walked into the gym at Ross High and saw Woodson take off from the foul line and dunk a basketball, he knew he was seeing something remarkable. But it wasn't until he actually had the player and began coaching him that he understood the fire of Woodson.

"He's the most competitive person I've been around," Herrmann says.

Woodson and roommate Ray play "Jeopardy!" in their apartment, shouting out answers and keeping track of the scores on their hands. Woodson hates to lose, and when he wins, he taunts Ray. Those little games at 7:30 every weekday evening have become the biggest wars of the season.

"I think his competitiveness comes from being so secure in life," Knapp says. "He's not afraid to admit when he's made a mistake and goes on making sure he won't make it again.

"I think Georgia has given him the security to handle things. That family has given each other security. When there's a problem, they're meeting together to talk it over."

Two weeks ago, they all cheered as Charles was handed the granite statue at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York for being the best player in college football. Georgia leaped to her feet and hugged her son. There they were for the nation to see, just as they had been in Fremont, Ohio, and Ann Arbor all those years before.

And after so many meetings on the living-room floor, her words had come true.

You can be all you want to be.

Charles had. He had become the best.