The Modesto Bee from Modesto, California • 27

c-1 The Modesto Bee FRIDAY OCTOBER 31 1980 Whited: More to life than NFL in his second outing last Sunday he played effectively no mental against Kansas City and drew rave reviews from television analyst John Madden who tends to know a good effort when he sees one Through it all Whited has emerged as an integral factor in offense which with super-rookie Billy Sims running and Gary Danielson passing is top-ranked in the National Conference Already though Whited has learned that life in the NFL is not Utopian As meteoric intoxicating and glamourous as his climb has been it also has been sobering The bittersweet experience has triggered a reassessment of values by the huge intropective athlete Perhaps the anticipation was greater than the realization for Whited Perhaps the NFL merely has served to clear the muddled thoughts regarding his priorities and his See Page C-5 WHITED He was ignored in the college draft so last summer Whited vascilated between applying to medical school and accepting a peekaboo tryout offer from Detroit head coach Monte Clark He chose invitation have the self confidence to try med school at that he says and two months ago won a job as the snapper on the Lion punting and place-kicking teams At that point he had already achieved the impossible Typically the survival rate for free agents in the NFL is abysmal I first saw him I give him much of a Clark admitted he really worked hard He almost changed the structure of his appearance (putting on 18 pounds to 255) He was just a Two weeks ago Whited became a starter for the Lions taking over at offensive right tackle for second-year man Keith Dorney who was shelved indefinitely with torn knee ligaments Whited says he played and in his first start against Chicago But By BOB SLOCUM Bee staff writer In less than a year Mike Whited from the demoralizing bowels of college football oblivion to a starting job in the National Football League Some people believe in them but Whited does been a he says It also has been one of the great educational experiences of his life Holdouts and injuries hastened his ascent but Whited a prep standout during his days at Downey High will start his third straight game for the Lions at offensive tackle Sunday when Detroit leader in the NFC Central Division takes on the San Francisco 49ers in a televised tilt from the posh Pontiac Silverdome A year ago Whited was a frustrated lete struggling through his senior year at the University of the Pacific His play was erratic By his own admission his attitude was not very good is a job a means to an end My goal is not to become a greatNFL tackle What I want to do with my life is work in medicine and help people Mike Whited Gold dust twins Fur will fly as Carolina's Rogers meets Georgia Herschel Walker From Bee news services AP photos South Carolina's George Rogers goes up for a pass Rarely do a pair of football players so dominate pregame hoopla that the game between their teams seems almost incidental to the individual matchup But that is the case for nationally-televised meeting between fourth-ranked Georgia 7-0 and 14th-ranked South Carolina 6-1 The game shapes up as a stage on which a pair of running backs sensational Georgia freshman Herschel Walker and South Carolina senior All-American George Washington Rogers will take turns in the spotlight reminiscent of a pair of tap dancers who take turns strutting their stuff then turn and say to the other Both Walker and Rogers are being heavily touted by their schools as Heisman Trophy candidates Walker a 220-pound third-stringer when the season started ranks No 7 in the nation with an average of 1253 yards a game Rogers is a destroyer at 6-2 224-pounds He is averaging 1556 yards a game the second best in the nation game is as important to Rogers as it is to the University of South Carolina Gamecocks the only major-college football team named after a chicken South Carolina has been low on the pecking order of intercollegiate football for 85 seasons They had never been rated in the top 10 never beaten a team in the top 10 never won a bowl game never produced a consensus all-American and never until last season when What makes Rogers the most exciting college back in years is his ability to run through and over his defenders bouncing off the most crushing blows In the North Carolina State game Rogers and safety Hillery Honeycutt collided head on with a sickening thud Rogers leaped up and jogged away Honeycutt wobbled up and staggered to the bench In the same game Rogers cracked and finally shattered the helmet of 212-pound junior linebacker Robert Abraham who later moaned worn that helmet since my freshman all-world I mean said Carlen after the game never seen anything like that George he buried people There were bodies lying Walker on the other hand is a precocious freshman At tiny Wrightsville High he was named Parade Back of the Year and was the mostly highly sought after running back in the country receiving scholarship offers from nearly every major college During his senior year Walker ran for 3167 yards and 45 touchdowns while leading his team to the state Class A championship In addition he won state titles in the 100-yard and 200-yard dashes and shot put and w'as an A student as well as his class Valedictorian Herschel Walker carries a tackier across the goal line field into opposing lines His background is classic poverty Eight moves around the state of Georgia In junior high school he used to skip classes to work When he was 13 he forged his age to get into a job program washing dishes and carrying mortar He said did not even have the $2 needed for athletic insurance so he could not play football He moved in with an aunt He was better off than he had been when living in small apartments with his mother two brothers and two teen-age sisters each with a baby He shared a bed with his brothers and sometimes cried himself to sleep While Georgia is unbeaten and has shut out three teams only loss was at Southern Cal Rogers was seventh had a player in the top 10 in the Heisman voting Adding to problem this season they have never appeared on national TV The professional scouts covet him best player graded in 15 said Jackie Graves of the Philadelphia Eagles Added Gil Brandt player personnel director of the Dallas Cowboys: will be one of the first three players taken the kind of player teams will be trying to make deals What the pro scouts like about Rogers are the things that have made him a Bunyanesque hero in Carolina football He has 19-inch biceps and 28-inch thighs and can bench-press 380 pounds yet he runs 40 yards in 447 seconds He uses his size to his fullest in barreling from the back- I-formation but now we have been running a little more and giving the ball less to the fullback w'hile still throwing the he said But no one is down on Walker at Georgia where alumni already have penned a poem entitled Cousin and where he also has gained the nickname of Goal Line Stalker Herschel seen a lot of said Texas Coach Tom Wilson I think ever seen one as good so young hard to call a freshman great but he really Dooley has not treated this special talent like anybody else more Southern California-oriented in running the tailback often We always ran the tailback quite a bit out of the Davis High's air force goes Bear hunting By RON AGOSTINI Bee staff writer The countdown is on for the unbeaten Davis High Spartans So far the count has reached 7 as in 7-and-zero Tonight at Modesto Junior College Stadium Davis reaches for No 8 in the form of the Merced High Bears Only a tie with Beyer blemishes the young Bears' league record That means winner will have the inside track to the Central California Conference title The importance of the game is clear for Davis a school that in 18 exceptional years has grown tired gathering good records but no varsity championships But for coach Don Lanphear visions of Sac-Joaquin Section playoff showdowns with Vintage of Napa Tracy and Cordova can wait Lanphear rightly calls the game one of the most important any Davis team has faced we have to do is lose Friday night and we become just another good Davis team that finished in second Lanphear said special just a good Davis squad that lost the big one again I tell you all of us are starting to feel the pressure this Across towm a game of equal intensity takes place at Downey Stadium Beyer and Modesto teams with five wins betwreen them will square off in a run-oriented intra-city matchup Turlock visits Atwater to complete the CCC schedule A look at the local contests MERCED VS DAVIS Reggie Slaton vs the Davis Air Force the Stanislaus district's leading rusher (Slaton) against the leading See Page 4 PREP FOOTBALL East Union nips Knights in final 1 7 By JOHN EBSTER Bee staff writer If it for bad luck Downey and East Union football teams would have had no luck at all this season But East Lancers salved the wounds of a disappointing season Thursday night scoring with 17 seconds to play to beat Downey 35-28 in a nonleague thriller at Downey Stadium For the Knights however it was more of the same salt in the wounds of a long season as their record slipped to 1-7 The game was battled on even terms with the two teams trading touchdowns until Fred Ulep making a diving catch of Lance 21-yard pass in the right corner of the end zone broke a 28-28 tie and capped a 28-point second-half explosion by the Lancers Until that point most of the East Union freight was towed by runringback James Mackey who scored three touchdowns all in the third quarter on runs of 11 18and seven For Downey Brett Smart made an early bid for laurels His two first half touchdowns enabled the Knights to carry a 14-7 lead into the locker room at intermission East Union improved its record to 3-4-1 The last-second heroics was poetic justic of a sort for the Manteca-based Lancers All four of their losses were suffered in the final two minutes Downey got off to a quick start scoring the first two times it had the ball Barely two minutes into the game Knight quarterback Ed Ashen threaded a 26-yard pass to flanker Smart who snagged the ball between two defenders and fell in for the touchdown East Union answered in the second period on a 14-play 63-yard drive that ended with Miller finding Ed Martin on a quick toss over the middle good By Debbie Node Bee staff photographer Downey quarterback Ed Ashen yields to Lancers Richard Lewis and Mike Siemering in three weeks because of a knee injury showed his old form and rambled for three touchdowms Terry Schultz ran 20 yards to offset one Mackey touchdown and Ashen lofted a 26-yard pass to his brother Chuck to tie the score 28-28 with 6:46 to play The Knights were ready to settle for a tie when East Union took over on downs at the Downey 46 with 26 seconds to play But on the first play the Lancers used a flea-flicker pass Miller to Billy Emperador and back to Miller for 25 yards On the next play heroics nailed down the victory for a nine-yard TD and a tie at 7-7 The Knights responded with a scoring march of their own Starting at their own 33 Downey marched to the Lancer 33 was stopped on downs but promptly recovered an East Union fumble on the next play and advanced the ball to the 13 setting up second TD a dash off tackle The third quarter belonged to East Union and Mackey a slashing runner whose 79 yards helped the Lancers roll up 305 yards of total offense Miller completed half of his 20 passes six of them to Ulep for 158 yards Mackey returning to the lineup for the first time.