The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 32

M02 C-12SportS THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER Sunday, October 30,1988 The legend of lekey Nickname, ponytail are long-time trademarks of rookie runner BY TIMOTHY W. SMITH The Cincinnati Enquirer The three things people ask Ickey Woods about most are his nickname, his ponytail and his touchdown dance, which looks like an Irish jig. Here is how each came to be: Nickname: "Ickey comes from my brother and my mother. When we were little, my brother, who is older than me, couldn't say Elbert, so he called me My mother said I looked like some little cartoon character that she used to watch on television, so she started calling me Ickey. It stuck.

That's what everybody has called me all my life. I hate Elbert. I only use it for business reasons. "My mother wanted to name me Roderick, because my oldest brother was named Rodney. But my grandfather, who hadn't named any of his grandchildren, wanted to name one of his grandchildren.

"My mother told him to name pulled it back and tied it up so it wouldn't get in the way. "I don't want to cut it off now, because it's more like a superstition. It's like if I cut it I might lose my strength. But if I had to, I would cut it off." The Ickey Shuffle: "It's just something I made up. I don't know where it came from.

It's an original dance. I do it only after the first touchdown." me Roderick, but my grandfather named me Elbert. I don't know where he got it from, but my mother hated it. She cried when she woke up and heard it. I hate it too." Rodney has a nickname too Cokey.

"Because they said I had a head like a coconut when I was little," Rodney Woods said. Ponytail: "I had the pony-tail in high school, but I cut it off when I got to UNLV. I didn't grow it back until my senior year. It really wasn't a ponytail. I just Bengals CONTINUED FROM PAGE C-l teams we have to play the rest of the year," center Bruce Kozerski said.

"To have those guys three games behind us would certainly be peace of mind. "One game behind, there's really no room for error. Three games, and I know I'll sleep better at night." The Bengals beat the Browns by a touchdown last month while Kosar was sidelined. He's back, but Cleveland today is without its best receiver, Webster Slaughter, and maybe without its best running back, Kevin Mack. Bengal players are split on which Browns team they'd rather face one without Kosar or one without Mack and Slaughter.

"Kosar's a good quarterback, no question. But without Mack and Slaughter, I think they're a lot easier to contain," Thomas said. "Slaughter's a good receiver and Mack is a concern of ours. He's such a tremendous power back and with the offensive line they have, I think it's harder to play them with those two than without Bernie "Kosar does so many things, but when you're minus players like Mack and Slaughter, it's hard to replace those players. I don't think they have any receiver the caliber of Slaughter.

(Tim) Manoa's a good fullback, but he's not a Kevin Mack, of course." Linebacker Carl Zander has a different view. "Bernie Kosar adds a lot to their whole team," he said. "Mack is probably one of the best fullbacks going now, but not having your starting quarterback is more of an emotional letdown than any other position. And it's still going to be determined whether Mack is going to play." The Pro Bowl fullback, who suffered a pinched nerve in his neck and shoulder last week, has not practiced all week and will not start. Schottenheimer, while declaring him doubtful on Friday, said he'll wait until today before deciding whether to place Mack on the inactive list or not.

So there's still a chance he'll play. If he doesn't, or is held to spot duty, it probably means Earnest Byner will take over the bulk of the ball-carrying load. He has five fumbles in just 79 carries. "No question, if Mack's out of there, Byner will definitely get the ball," Thomas said. "That's something we've been looking forward to, because he's been known to put the ball on the ground, from what we've seen." The Browns' defense, meanwhile, is definitely stronger than in the first' meeting.

Rookie Charles Buchanan came off the injured list two weeks ago and has five sacks. And the cornerbacks, Frank Minefield and Hanford Dixon, are healthy. Minnifield missed the first game and the Browns played more zone than expected as a result. Today, they should resort to their traditional man-to-man, bump-and-run coverage. "We had to play a little more zone because of the personnel situation there," Schottenheimer said.

"Now that Frank and Hanford are teamed up together, I'd like to play a little more man-to-man than we did." The Bengals have hit several big touchdown plays against man defense and the last two teams held them without a big strike by playing a lot of zone. But Schottenheimer says that won't make him reconsider. "When you get ready to play a very good team, you'd better do the things you do best and not concern yourself with the other side," he said. In a sense, that's the Bengals' goal too not having to worry about other teams down the stretch. "We don't want it to come down to somebody having to beat somebody else for us to get in," Kozerski said.

"This game can pretty much put the season in our hands." 1 Wi Mm 1 The Cincinnati EnquirerAnnalisa Kraft Schondra, Germaine and Amber Woods (from left) with Ickey in their suburban home. Woods CONTINUED FROM PAGE C-l go. 'After a slow start in the preseason and the first two games, the Bengals' 6-foot-2, 230-pound rookie fullback caught fire and caught the fancy of Cincinnati. His hard running has made him one of the hottest rookies in the NFL this season, and his ponytail, his torn-towel headband and his touchdown dance the Ickey Shuffle has made him one of the fans' favorites. He is the Bengals' second-leading rusher with 88 carries for 347 yards, and he leads the American Football Conference with eight touchdowns.

With three more touchdowns, he will break the team's rookie record set by Stan Fritts in 1975. Before the Bengals took the 22-year-old Woods in the second round of the college draft, Ickey was not on anybody's lips. Few had even heard of him before he led the nation in rushing as a senior at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. It's almost as if he came out of nowhere. He has beaten some long odds to make a name for himself a childhood engulfed by gang violence and ghetto strife; a college career marred by lingering doubts by his coaches; and a last-ditch run for the pros that hinged on him leading the nation in rushing.

With all that behind him, Woods is now settling into a slice of the good life here. It is the life he envisioned for himself and the life his mother envisioned for him. Fulfilling his promise Woods' mother, a single parent, used the streets of their old neighborhood to scare Woods and his brother Rodney, a musician, into a better way of life. They lived in the projects of west Fresno, Calif. Their two rooms were filled with love and encouragement and provided a shelter from the death, drugs and destruction that lurked outside.

"I would sit Ickey and his brother down and make them look out the window at the guys out there on the streets," said Sylvia Taylor, Woods' mother. "And I would tell them that there is something better than that for them, and they could get it if they wanted it bad enough." Ickey wanted it bad enough, but not many people thought he would make it. "To do what he has done, I didn't think he had that kind of potential," said Barry Lamb, who recruited Woods and four other Fresno players for the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, the only major college to offer Woods a scholarship. Woods didn't have an outstanding high school football career and was coming off an injury, but Lamb viewed Woods as a good gamble. "I would have put Ickey as the fourth most likely to make it," said Lamb, now coaching at Idaho.

"Ickey had potential, but I didn't think he had this kind of potential." Woods is the only one of the five to make it in professional football. Three are out of school and out of football. A fourth is dead, gunned down on a Fresno street in a drug-related slaying. Beyond the ghetto Woods did not travel the same route to the pros as most second-round picks. Most take the Rolls Royce ride, with sterling college credentials, shining high school achievements.

Woods took the Yugo ride. His high school career was spotty; his college career was lackluster if you take away his senior season. He had to blaze his own trail to success over treacherous terrain. "Nobody in his family had even graduated from high school," said Mrs. Jimmie Echols, an Edison High School counselor who helped Woods look beyond the ruins of his ghetto environment.

"He had nobody in front of him to follow. I kept telling him that he could make it, just to believe in himself." Ironically, Woods' father, Bobby Woods, was an all-city running back at Edison High School 20 years before Woods became a two-time all-city running back at the same school. But Ickey didn't know that until recently. His father abandoned the family when Woods was too young to know much about him. So, Woods took the advice of his mother and Echols.

He is not surprised that he succeeded. He speaks in the easy, relaxed tones of a man who knew it all along. His easy-going, laid-back manner suggests that he likes to keep people guessing. "I'm not shocked that things are going well for me now," Woods said. "I just needed a chance to prove what I could do." Escaped the gangs It was a chance that could have been snatched away from him.

The gang violence that surrounded him daily was almost inescapable. In high school, Woods led somewhat of a dual existence one as a talented football player and one as a gang member. It was an existence that could have stranded him in Fresno. 'You want to hang out with your buddies, but at the same time you don't want anybody to know that you are doing bad things. You have to liveup to people expectations on both Bearcats CONTINUED FROM PAGE C-l "He was the key to them winning," said UC defensive end Andrew Stewart.

Stewart sacked Gruden four times last year. Saturday, he had some pressures but couldn't drop Gruden. "He's improved. He's mobile, and we couldn't get him on the ground," Stewart said. "He got the ball off on a dime even when I was in his face." Stewart and his linemates gave Louisville only 105 yards rushing, but of scored on two short runs to take a 14-0 halftime lead.

UC didn't get inside Louisville's 20-yard line until late in the third quarter, when Hoog found McKin-ney for a 6-yard TD pass. "Defensively we played well at times. Our defense kept us in the game," Currey said. "But turnovers and penalties And quarterbacking. With Far-kas having his troubles recently and his line not supplying much protection, Currey decided he'd seen enough after one impotent quarter Saturday.

Farkas completed 3-of-8 passes for 26 yards and was sacked once, and left with UC down, 7-0. "I've never been pulled from a game in my life," said Farkas, noticeably hurt and depressed afterward. "I'm mad, but I'm happy for him (Hoog)." Hoog, who has seen spot duty this year, acquitted himself well. The East Central (Ind.) product completed 18 of 34 passes for 198 yards and UC's only score. Currey explained the switch: "I didn't think we were getting anything done early." Of Hoog, Currey said, "He does some good things for a guy that hasn't played much." Said Hoog, "We moved the ball in between the 30s, but then something would happen." Such as fumbles and penalties.

The total yards were deceptively close, of getting 371 to UC's 365. UC was a poor 3-of-13 on third down conversions, UC of 7-of-19. As if UC doesn't have enough problems, it now has a mild quarterback controversy for the first time in recent memory. So now who starts at QB? "We'll have to look at it. I don't need to make that decision right now," Currey said.

Said Hoog, "I really have no comment. That's not up to me." Farkas, who viewed the final three quarters with arms folded on the sidelines, vowed, "I'll be back. I'm not going to lose my job that easily." But will Currey lose his? As the losses mount, UC athletic director Carl Meyer will only say that Cur-rey's status will be reviewed after the season. "We just have to work our way through this," Hoog said, "and try to get better." Louisville .7 7 7 021 Cincinnati 0 0 6 0-6 Lou Booker 1 run (BeH kick) Lou-Ware 2 run (Bell kick) Lou Cummings 14 pass from Gruden (Bell kick) Cin McKlnney 6 pass from Hoog (run failed) A-19, 193 Lou Cin First downs ...18 If) Rushes-yards 37-105 32-141 Passing yards 246 224 Return yards 5 12 Passes 28-48-0 21-42-0 Punts 8-38 Fumbles-lost 0-0 4-3 Penalties-yards 5-50 13-87 Time of Possession 33:26 26:34 INDIVIDUAL LEADERS RUSHING-Louisville, Booker 13-41, Stephens 8-32. Cincinnati, McKinney 17-94, Davis 2-18.

PASSING-Louisville, Gruden 28-47-0-266, Nagle 0-1-0-0. Cincinnati, Hoog 18-34-0-198-1, Farkas 3-8-0-26. RECEIVING-Louisvile, Booker 7-53, Swabek 6-44. Cincinnati, Mukes 5-69, Hice 3-60. Lohr sides," he said.

Woods decided to live up to the expectations of his mother and his counselor for a better life in lieu of what the gangs offered. His uncle, Jess Cooley, a funeral director in Fresno, thinks some of the things Woods saw at his funeral parlor might have changed his mind. "He'd come in and see his friends who were in gangs on the table (in the morgue)," Cooley said. "He was even the pallbearer at some of his friends' funerals. I know that had to have some kind of effect on keeping him straight." In his junior year in high school, he decided to cut off his gang activities and concentrate on school and football.

Then he suffered a physical setback, injuring a knee during his senior season at Edison. He played only six games. Nobody, except UNLV, came looking for Woods with a scholarship. Languished on the bench At UNLV, Woods and all his talent sat on the bench for three years waiting to explode. As a freshman, he had 57 yards in two games.

As a sophomore, he was a kickoff returner. As a junior, he had 240 yards on 60 carries. "We had sort of given up on him ever playing pro football," said Schondra Woods, Ickey's wife. "After what he had been going through at Las Vegas, we didn't think it would be possible. We thought it would have taken a miracle to make it to the pros.

We even started to joke about it." "They claim that I had an attitude problem," Woods said. "I don't think that was what it was. I thought I was better than the guy who was playing and they weren't playing me. That made me upset." Wayne Nunnelly, UNLV football coach and Woods' position coach for those three years, said Woods just wasn't ready to play. "It was a combination of Ickey's immaturity in dealing with coming into a college situation and the fact that we had some very talented backs that were ahead of him," Nunnelly said.

"That kept him in a backup role for three years." A coaching change at UNLV, plus the graduation of starter Kirk Jones, gave Woods the break he needed. John Montgomery, now offensive coordinator at Southern University in Baton Rouge, was hired as the running back coach during Woods' senior season. He saw the same potential that Lamb had seen. Didn't miss his chance Woods credits Montgomery for pushing him into the pros. "He told me that we were going to start from square one," Woods said.

"We took it from He told me that if I did everything he told me fo do and do it 100, that I would be a first- or second-round draft choice. "I didn't believe him at first. But I did what he told me to do and here I am." Montgomery said he heard all the bad things about Woods when he came to UNLV, but he ignored them. "Every assistant coach on the staff was telling me what a no-good so-and-so Ickey Woods was," Montgomery said. "But I talked with Ickey and I didn't see any of what they were saying." Montgomery's advice to Woods was simple: "Run hard the first 5 yards." It did the trick.

Montgomery set a season goal of 1,000 yards for Woods. "I set for him a standard of excellence," Montgomery said. "And I found if you set it high enough, Ickey will try to exceed it. The intangibles he possesses far outweigh his physical talent." Woods didn't even start the first two games his senior season, but he had reached the goal by the eighth game. Then, Woods started thinking higher.

"He came into my office one day with about three games left and asked me what I thought it would take to win the rushing title," Montgomery said. "I told him I didn't know, but I would go home and compute it for him." Montgomery figured it would take 1,700 yards or more to beat Pitt's Craig Heyward for the rushing title. That meant Woods would have to average 200 yards or more over the last three games. "When I told him what I had come up with, he told me that he was going to lead the nation in rushing that year and just walked out of my office," Montgomery said. "That blew me away.

But in those last three games, Ickey kicked it into another gear." Woods started the three-game stretch with 201 yards against Long Beach State. Then he rolled up 265 yards against Pacific and finished with 208 yards against New Mexico State. He won the rushing title going away with 1,658 yards on 259 carries an average of 6.4 yards per carry. "I had confidence in my ability," Woods said. "I knew if somebody would give me the chance that I could accomplish things." Miles to go Even in those dark years, Woods said he never really gave up on himself or wanted to quit.

"It would have been too easy to quit," he said. "Giving up is the coward's way out. You just have to keep working, harder and harder to prove yourself. I had to push myself last year to get here." Woods says he wants to go farther. "It's not perfect yet," Woods said.

"This is not my dream house and I've only shown a little of what I can do on the football field. Where I am now is just a stepping stone to where I want to be." he waited inNthe fairway to hit his approach, he thought he saw Beck putt for par and walk off the green a winner. But that wasn't the case. "I thought he won it," he said. "I heard the crowd, saw him coming off the green and Fuzzy (Zoell-er) patting him on the back.

So I just relaxed and tried to make a good swing. It was the best swing of the day." Lohr's 188-yard, 8-iron shot left him a 3-foot putt for a birdie. "For the putt, I was real relaxed," Lohr said. "I couldn't picture myself standing over a putt to tie for a tournament championship and being that relaxed." Lohr had $316,708 in career earnings prior to this year. Bruce Lietzke and Fuzzy Zoeller tied for third at 269, 19 shots under and six off the pace.

Lietzke shot a final-round 68 and Zoeller had a 70. Mike Donald had six straight birdies on the way to a 65 to finish at 18 under. Dan Pohl had a 66 and Paul Azinger a 73 to join Donald at 270. CONTINUED FROM PAGE C-l like I really played well all week." Beck began his surge when he drove to within 2 feet of the pin at the par-3 third hole and tapped in for a birdie. He birdied four of the next seven holes to keep pace with Lohr, who answered each time with birdies of his own.

Lohr, who began the round with a two-shot lead, fell out of the lead for the first time all week when Beck dropped a 5-foot birdie putt at No. 13 to reach 25 under. Moments earlier, Lohr drove into a bunker and then bogeyed the par-3 12th hole to drop to 24 under. Beck made a 3-foot putt at No. 14 for another birdie and a two-shot lead.

"I looked at the scoreboard for the first time on No. 15," Lohr said. "I thought I was leading and then I see that I'm two strokes behind. That really gave me a push of adrenaline. I was playing good enough to win, and that gave me a chance to show what I could do.

"I think it actually took a little pressure off me." Lohr thought he had lost the tournament on the 18th fle. As.