74,000 will be thinking of Curtis Williams

WITH A SOMBER atmosphere at Husky Stadium, many minds will be on safety Curtis Williams, who remains hospitalized with a spinal-cord injury.

In a major-league city where college roots might be deeper than any other, there is always a certain buzz for a University of Washington football game. But today may be different.

Seventh-ranked Washington (7-1) hosts a 5-3 Arizona team that was in the thick of the Pac-10 race until losing to UCLA last week.

Nobody, not the Huskies, not the Wildcats, not 74,000-plus fans, can know what it will be like today, when they play a game shrouded by the sober aftermath of last week's spinal-cord injury to UW safety Curtis Williams.

Junior Hakim Akbar moves from free to strong safety to replace Williams, and freshman Greg Carothers makes his first start at Akbar's spot. But those are incidentals.

"That's not a big thing," Akbar said of his switch. "It's just missing Curtis right now, to look in the huddle and not see his face.

"It's going to be a big difference that you can tell, even in the game. But we're going to have to go play hard."

Others will be rooting hard. Washington will distribute 25,000 stickers with Williams' No. 25 at five main gates. Two radio stations will have large message boards or banners to be signed outside the stadium to the north and south.

UW players will wear a small emblem with Williams' initials on the upper left side of their jerseys. After the national anthem, a short tribute will follow, a ceremony to be aired by ABC-TV before its regular coverage.

Banners inside the stadium are permissible if they are non-weighted and don't obstruct views.

For a fifth-year player, Williams has always been a bit of a mystery outside the program, both because of personal problems and because he was not naturally expansive around reporters.

He is the seventh of eight children of Donnie and Viola Williams, having attended school in Coalinga, a central-California town of 8,000.

An older brother, J.D., played football at Fresno State and on Buffalo Bill Super Bowl teams. Before his junior year of high school, Curtis Williams moved 50 miles to Fresno to live with his older brother David and his wife.

"It's a wonderful family, really nice people," said Bill Stewart, who coached Williams at Bullard High in Fresno. "Curtis was a little high-strung, he needed some guidance in some areas, but he was a good young man.

"When he came to Bullard, he had a 3.0 grade average. He's done well academically. He's a kid you could always count on at practice."

Jim Lambright's Washington staff first noticed Williams in Coalinga. The coaches were looking at Tim Smith, a quarterback-safety who later excelled at Stanford, but Williams, a running back, caught their eyes and they followed him to Bullard.

"He didn't have the overall notoriety," said Dick Baird, a former assistant at the UW, "but we were thrilled to get him."

Williams rushed for 31 touchdowns as a senior, giving him 72 in high school. He came to the Huskies in 1996 along with Maurice Shaw of Sacramento, freshmen in a recruiting class that included junior-college transfer Corey Dillon.

When Williams arrived at Washington, his first position coach was Al Roberts, a first cousin to his high-school coach, Stewart. There was much discussion about whether Williams and Shaw should remain running backs or switch to defense.

"Curtis didn't want to move, and I wanted to move," said Shaw, who remained a running back until a back problem ended his career after last season. "I was going to play rover back. They didn't let me move.

"But he was like me, he just wanted to get on where he could play. He switched then."

An assistant principal at Bullard, Dan Robinson, who also played football and coached, said that was a wise move.

"I definitely saw him as a Sunday (NFL) player," Robinson says. "His forte was coverage on defense."

Teammates and coaches say Williams was married when he arrived in Seattle and had a baby daughter, Kimberly, whom he adored.

"We first clicked when we got here," Husky outside linebacker Jeremiah Pharms said. "I had a child on the way, and he had a little girl. I just remember him and his little girl, sitting in family housing, chilling.

"There was no such thing as `Can we handle this,' or `Can we make it.' There was no other way to do it."

Off the field, Williams soon struggled. He sat out the 1997 season, serving a 90-day jail sentence for assault.

It was well known in the program that his marriage became rocky, and in 1998, a domestic-violence petition was served in King County Superior Court. Williams took part in counseling and anger-management classes.

The marriage dissolved, but Williams didn't immediately turn his fortunes around on the field. In 1998, he shuttled almost weekly between running back and safety, never finding a home.

When Coach Rick Neuheisel arrived early in 1999, Williams drew new life. In an attempt to place the best athletes where they could help the quickest, coaches asked Williams if he wanted to stay at safety.

He became a fixture there, the third-leading tackler with 69 stops last season. No. 3 again this season in tackles with 55, Williams is both one of the Huskies' hardest hitters and surest tacklers.

As Williams fights his battle in a hospital bed at Stanford Medical Center, those around Washington have tried to muddle their way through something for which there is no prescription.

"My own e-mail, voice mail, it's been filled," said Bobby Hauck, Williams' position coach. "It's nice to know that people care."

Suddenly, rivals threw down their guard and became friends. Coaches from Oregon, Stanford and Oregon State called Hauck. USC players, in the midst of one of their worst seasons, sent a Trojan helmet to Williams in care of the UW, signed by players with the USC exhortation: "Fight on."

The UW Web site, gohuskies.com, has had more than 1,000 messages posted for Williams and his family since it was offered Tuesday. One came from Marcus Houston, the Colorado freshman tailback:

"Even though we played on different teams (on Sept. 16), I admired the tenacity and spirit you and your teammates displayed. I pray that you are using that same tenacity and spirit to meet this new challenge.

"I know that your teammates are giving you much-needed support, but I want you to know that you also have the support and prayers from the greater football community. My prayers go out to you for a speedy recovery."

As for the Huskies, they've practiced with an ache this week.

"Knowing the love he has for the game, I can't even imagine the pain he's going through," Pharms said. "It just hurts real bad."

Said Baird, "I always felt for this particular kid. It's been a struggle."

Baird was at the Stanford game last week and saw the helmet-to-helmet collision between Williams and Cardinal running back Kerry Carter. Musing on the random nature of a violent game, Baird said, "That's kind of what attracts kids to it. You're walking on an edge every day."

Ron Milus, a coach from the previous UW staff now with the Denver Broncos, remembered Williams had a bond with a particular brother.

"I remember him always talking about his brother," Milus said.

That came in response to a question about who was closest to Curtis Williams. Today, the number swells to about 74,000.