Mackey in the field of his dreams off the field

Willis Ray Mackey came to Washington shrouded in mystery. He left under even more.

Mackey, a 6-foot-1, 185-pound blend of speed and power from Luling, Texas, arrived in Seattle in the fall of 1979 as one of the most-heralded recruits the Huskies had ever landed, even if few in these parts had ever seen him play.

A newspaper report at the time said that "no freshman ever recruited by Washington in Don James' five years as head coach has received more advance notice" than Mackey, whom the Huskies had lured away from Texas in large part due to the presence of an uncle who lived in Tacoma.

Barry Switzer, then the coach at Oklahoma and who had also heavily recruited Mackey, said at the time that Mackey "does more things" than another running back from Texas who also gained a lot of attention that year — Eric Dickerson.

Mackey showed signs of living up to his billing when he averaged 6.2 yards per carry as a true freshman in 1979. He scored a touchdown late at UCLA to clinch a victory over the Bruins after Joe Steele had been injured, and also scored the winning touchdown in a 14-7 victory over Texas in the Sun Bowl. That's the only time the Huskies have ever won the Sun Bowl, a game they will play in again Tuesday.

"It looked like all the expectations were justified," said former UW kicker Chuck Nelson, also a freshman on that 1979 team.

Then, after leading the Huskies in rushing in the spring game and appearing to win the starting job heading into the 1980 season, Willis Ray Mackey returned home to Luling and never came back, giving little explanation other than that he was homesick.

Mackey never played another football game and, as far as most UW fans knew, simply vanished into thin air and was never seen or heard from again.

"I'm sure most people around here figured that here was a guy who left here and flamed out and was just sitting on his porch back home kind of languishing around," Nelson said. "I'm sure the perspective of most people here was that he didn't turn out to be much."

'I wanted to prove people wrong'

Willis Ray Mackey knows he left a few hard feelings in his wake.

"I heard people say I was a quitter," he said.

But Mackey didn't quit when he left UW.

He just changed direction.

And instead of going through life with titles such as "all-time single-season leading rusher" or "Hall of Famer" — distinctions earned by Dickerson, the player Mackey was so often compared to in high school — Mackey has earned a couple of others: superintendent and doctor.

In fact, on the day last week that Mackey talked of his past, he first relayed a bit of good news. "I just finished defending my dissertation at Texas A&M today," he said.

In May, he will officially receive his doctorate degree from Texas A&M to add to the master's degree he earned a few years ago from Prairie View A&M.

When he's not earning degrees, Mackey is serving as the superintendent of the Navasota (Texas) Independent School District, overseeing the education of about 3,000 students from kindergarten to high school.

"I had no idea he had done so much," said Nelson, who found out a couple of years ago. "He gives you a real perspective on the fact that not turning into a major college football star doesn't mean you are going to turn into a failure."

No, if anything, Mackey says it might have been having football not work out that ensured that he would make something of his life.

"That made a better person out of me," he said. "It was very damaging to hear some of the comments from people, and I felt like later on I wanted to prove people wrong, that I wasn't a quitter. I did make some bad choices, but I've moved on."

Not, though, without wondering every once in awhile — just like everyone else on Montlake — what might have been.

'The next Earl Campbell'

A newspaper headline during Mackey's freshman season at the UW called him "a reluctant gridder."

In fact, his favorite sport growing up was basketball. He had to be talked into playing football as a junior in high school and started only two games that year.

But as a senior, he blossomed, gaining 2,126 yards, catching passes for 480 yards and scoring 24 touchdowns in 12 games.

Texas Coach Fred Akers told Mackey he could be the next Earl Campbell, who had won the Heisman Trophy with the Longhorns two years earlier. Switzer, meanwhile, told him he could be the next Billy Sims, another Texas native on his way to winning the Heisman.

Mackey, in fact, signed a Southwest Conference letter of intent with Texas, though that letter did not prevent him from signing with a school outside of the SWC if he wished.

And in the final hours before signing day, the Huskies won him over, thanks in part to the influence of uncle Isaac Ellison, who still lives in Tacoma, the city he has called home since 1967.

"I used to go to some of the Husky games and became a fan of the team, and he just followed me up here," Ellison said.

Said Mackey: "I really wanted to get out of Texas and go someplace else."

But from almost the minute he arrived in Seattle, he began missing Luling, located about 45 miles south of Austin. "I mean I'd never even seen snow before," he said. "I stayed sick the entire time I was up there."

Mackey also struggled to adjust in the classroom, though he said he had a 2.8 grade-point average his one year at UW.

"I had classes with more people in them than were in my entire high school," he said. "I was really scared academically that I couldn't survive in that environment."

Mackey said he also should have done more on the field. He finished the regular season with 111 yards on 18 carries and two touchdowns, much of it coming late in the season when he helped fill in for the injured Steele. He had a career-high 40 yards in a 17-7 win in the Apple Cup. "I felt I could have played more," Mackey said.

James, though, said this month he thought Mackey "had a real good freshman year. I think he would have been a real good player for us. He just needed a little more time in the weight room and to become a better blocker was how we looked at it."

And as Nelson says: "Don wasn't a real big play-the-freshman kind of coach, but Willis was good enough to get in that year."

UW finished 9-2 and then got matched up with Texas in the Sun Bowl, which made Mackey the center of the pregame attention returning home to play against the school he jilted.

"It was such a great story having him go home to play Texas," Nelson said.

The story got even better when Mackey — rotating with three other running backs — scored a touchdown to put UW ahead 14-0 in the second quarter. The Huskies then hung on to win 14-7, giving Mackey the winning points. He finished the game with 19 yards on four carries.

Even in the afterglow of that win, however, newspaper articles hinted of Mackey's homesickness, a story that Nelson said parallels that of current UW receiver Charles Frederick, who came to Seattle from Florida.

"It's very similar to the troubles Charles had," Nelson said. "Willis Ray didn't say five words that whole season, which maybe should have tipped us off. But he showed great glimpses of talent, certainly more as a freshman than Charles did, and you see how Charles is playing now."

Mackey hung around for awhile, however, and was the star of the 1980 spring game with 121 yards, a performance that earned him the No. 1 tailback job after an injury sidelined starter Vince Coby.

But when Mackey returned to Luling for a summer break, he didn't come back.

"It was just a spur-of-the-moment decision," Mackey said. "There was nothing planned about it. I just felt more homesick. I had a bad week and just called up and said I didn't want to play anymore."

'At least he stuck with it'

Before leaving UW, however, Mackey talked to Abner Thomas, then a volunteer in a program helping to mentor Huskies athletes and now an internal operations assistant at Washington.

"He made a promise in my living room that he was going to continue his education and fulfill his destiny, which was to work with children," said Thomas, who has remained close to Mackey and plans to attend his graduation at Texas A&M this spring. "Working with children was all he ever wanted to do."

Mackey, in fact, almost immediately enrolled at Oklahoma, which has caused James to think that part of the reason Mackey left was that "the other two schools (Texas and Oklahoma) never stopped recruiting him."

Mackey sat out the 1980 season as a redshirt, then broke his leg the following fall before ever playing a game.

Discouraged with football, Mackey walked away from the game and never played again.

"Football wasn't really the No. 1 thing for me then," he said. "What I really wanted to do was educate kids."

He enrolled the next year at Southwest Texas State as strictly a student, working all night at the Job Corps to pay the bills and attending school all day.

"But I was 21 by then and not 18," he said. "There's a difference. I'd learned my lesson that you have to finish the things you start."

Mackey received a degree in education and immediately began a teaching and coaching career. In the mid-1980s, he attended a coaching clinic in San Antonio at which James — whom he hadn't seen since leaving UW — was one of the featured speakers.

"He came up to me afterward, and I finally got to talk to him," James said. "I was pleased that even though things didn't work out that great in football, at least he stuck with it and got his degree."

Mackey coached for six years before getting into administration and then earning his master's and doctorate degrees. He is scheduled to teach a few courses at Texas A&M next fall, the same school attended by his 20-year-old son, Willis Jr. He and his wife, Patricia, a third-grade teacher, also have a daughter, Brittany, who is in the eighth grade.

"I couldn't be happier," Mackey said.

'These are my glory days'

Still, there are times the "what-might-have-been's" gnaw at Mackey.

"You don't know how much I think about the University of Washington," he said. "I couldn't even describe it to you."

He still wears his Sun Bowl watch and recently had a picture of him playing in that game blown up to hang in his office.

But only recently has he really been able to talk much about his past. He said his children didn't know he had ever played football until 1997, when the family took a trip to Seattle.

Driving past Husky Stadium for the first time in 17 years, Mackey told his kids that he had played there once, "but they didn't really believe me at first."

But he didn't bother to stop.

"I still hadn't gotten over that feeling of what would have happened had I stayed," Mackey said. "It's taken a while to get over that."

So this summer, Mackey plans to bring his family back to Seattle, and this time, maybe step inside Husky Stadium and look around.

"I feel like if I could have stayed the second year I wouldn't have ever left," he said. "You make some choices in life. That was one choice I made that wasn't as good as some other choices I've made. But I look at this way: That was the beginning of my education, and now I've got my master's and doctorate and everything. As I tell kids when I talk to them, even if you do make a bad decision, it's not the end of your career. These are my glory days right now."