That 'He Hate Me' is really Smart

HOUSTON — He was only going to use the name once, the one that made him so famous. What Rod Smart really wanted to do was recreate himself every week, having them stitch something new on the back of his jersey each time he played.

That would be a first, he thought.

After "He Hate Me" he was going to be "They Hate He," then something different the following week.

But the fireworks exploded, the music blared across a Vegas night and Vince McMahon bellowed "Welcome to the XFL!" In a hail of smoke and sparks the first sight America had of the most ridiculous football idea ever conceived was the running back with the name "He Hate Me."

It remembered little else.

"Don't change your name, keep that one," his agent Steve Forest told him later that night.

So he did. And because of it, he got a career.

The NFL is filled with running backs from places like his, Western Kentucky, who tug résumés filled with all-conference honors and 1,000-yard rushing seasons. They slide through the league's scouting rooms like logs floating toward a saw mill, chopped to pieces without anyone ever noticing.

Rod Smart had been cut every way imaginable. The Chargers slashed him from a minicamp almost at the moment he signed. Then he went to Canada, where he was dropped by the CFL's Edmonton Eskimos. This, more than anything else, still perplexes him.

"I got cut in Canada," he said into an almost-empty Reliant Stadium yesterday, his tone rising with disbelief. "Can you believe that? I got cut in Canada!"

He probably would have been cut in Spain and Germany and Holland as well, had he not asked the equipment man from the Las Vegas Outlaws to sew those fateful words onto his jersey in 2001. He is sure of that now. The NFL is such a pedantic league, gorging on statistics, 40-yard-dash times and psychological profiles until it can't begin to digest the flood of information.

"Those scouts and general managers have so many players to remember it's easy to lose one," Forrest says. "But when someone says 'Rod Smart' and someone goes 'Who's that?' and someone else says, 'You know, He Hate Me,' well, everyone remembers that."

Something had to work, because after he became the most famous player in the most regrettable league, the NFL started calling. First, the Philadelphia Eagles beckoned, and then the Carolina Panthers, who have taken him to a place that he never imagined on that chilly Vegas night — the Super Bowl.

Yesterday, Smart tried to clown and giggle his way through his first Super Bowl event, Media Day, in which the participants don the jerseys they will wear for the game and stand on the edge of the playing field, posing for pictures and retelling their life stories. He wore a visor backward, he repeatedly hugged his teammate Jarrod Cooper, attempted to sing and shouted at teammate DeShaun Foster, who was sitting in a special interview booth.

Everybody laughed. The television reporters egged him, pleading with him to pose and by asking such probing queries as "Who do you like in the Lingerie Bowl? I hear they have good tight ends."

But somewhere beneath the silliness was one of the best tales of this Super Bowl, the story of a player who took a joke and ran all the way to the NFL.

Smart returns kicks for the Panthers, finishing the season seventh in the NFC in punt returns. He is quick and somewhat elusive, but his most endearing quality is his ability to pound into tacklers and churn for extra yards. Which makes him just like half this Carolina team, anonymous, disposable and fighting each week just to survive.

When he returned a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown back in the regular season, the Panthers' play-by-play announcer, Bill Rosinski, yelled the final few yards, "He Hate Me! He Hate Me! We love you!"

Yesterday Smart was asked about the other XFL players who have made it the NFL. He thought for a few moments and came up with four names, then shook his head. He couldn't think of any more. And this really is the point. Without He Hate Me, he likely would be back home in Lakeland, Fla., recounting his latest minicamp releases and wondering what happened to the football career he always thought he would have.

The name made him. So much so, he had it trademarked.

"Of course the name helped," he said. "Would you guys be here talking to me if not for the name?"

Someone shouted to Smart. He turned around.

"Who is 'he' in He Hate Me?" the man asked.

Smart smiled, then turned toward the field and began pointing to imaginary players on the other sideline.

"He, he, he, he and he," he said, and then nodded with satisfaction.

The idea of someone disliking him is so absurd. He took a name and got himself a career. Who could possibly hate that?

Les Carpenter can be reached at 206-464-2280 or lcarpenter@seattletimes.com.