Jamie Spencer knelt on one knee on the sidelines during practice while the special teams worked on kickoffs.
His eyes were burning. The big freshman fullback could barely lift his head. The motion on the field before him made little sense, bodies running up and down, out of control. His head spun. His eyes watered. All he wanted was to close them, lie down and forget it all.
Marcus Thorne, a teammate who is a premed student, came over and knelt down beside Spencer.
“You OK?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Spencer replied.
Notre Dame was counting on him to be a star. Now he was dog-tired, discouraged and thinking of giving it all up.
By the time practice began at 4 p.m., he had been awake for 31 hours. It would be seven more hours before his head hit the pillow. It was only Wednesday, but already it was a bad week.
He was in for only one play in Notre Dame’s game the previous Saturday against Purdue. All of a sudden, he was not only unsure about his talents to play football on the collegiate level, but he also was deluged with academic assignments for which he saw no way out.
On top of that, head coach Lou Holtz had called a 6 a.m. meeting two days before and told the team he was undergoing serious spinal surgery and would be gone from the team for an unspecified time. Spencer didn’t want to deal with any more upheaval.
“It was so easy for me to just say, `I can’t do this,’ ” Spencer said later. ” `I may as well let things happen. If I get kicked out, I get kicked out.’ “
In an attempt to illustrate the transition from high school to America’s highest-profile college football program, the Tribune is shadowing Spencer this fall.
Spencer, a 6-foot-1-inch, 250-pound bulldozer, came out of Ouachita Parish High School in Monroe, La., touted as the best college fullback prospect in the nation. Like hundreds of high school football players, he hoped to sparkle on the field and live a dream that might lead to a pro career.
Very few of these kids make it that far; many have a difficult time just trying to graduate, and a great number use up their playing eligibility without ever getting their college degree.
Not invincible
In his modest way, Spencer figured he was a cut above the rest, that possibly he could be a superstar on the field who could more than hold his own in the classroom. But now he was in the midst of a painful transition, one to which he never gave a second thought when he chose Notre Dame over the scores of other colleges that had wooed him.
It wasn’t the violence of the game, the mayhem or the lingering pain in his sore shoulder and lower back that was about to do him in. It was calculus, biology, sociology, history and English.
Spencer’s first-year course load was ganging up on him. He had several papers due, and tests for which to prepare. He achieved a 3.4-grade-point average in high school, and it came easily for him. He had enrolled in Notre Dame not only seeking to pursue a football career, but also to prepare for a hoped-for medical degree.
Now he found himself behind, in a morass of work.
“It was one of those periods in the first semester when you think there’s no way I’m going to get all this done,” Spencer said later. “I had a real fear that I wouldn’t have the self-motivation that I needed.”
To try to catch up, Spencer did what many college students do at one time or another: He stayed up all night. Unlike the ordinary college student, who might study, go to class, take a test and then crash for the rest of the day, Spencer had an unforgiving schedule.
There was no time for a nap; there was no way he could go to one class, skip another and sleep. His coaches require players to sign what Spencer calls a “truth statement” each week, in which he must cite his own academic progress or lack of it, mention any courses he’s having trouble with and whether or not he attended his classes.
Fudging on the form is a violation of team rules and results in discipline that could include suspension from the team.
Sleepless nights
Spencer’s 38-hour day without sleep began Tuesday morning at about 9 a.m. Then he walked across campus to the training room to get treatment on a sore shoulder that he first injured in preseason practice. He went to his calculus class at 11, had lunch, and met with his position coach and viewed film before getting ready for practice.
He was on the practice field before 4 p.m., and he didn’t get off until after 6. Spencer showered, changed and had dinner. Then he was off to a study hall in the library required of all freshmen, which lasted from 8 to 10 p.m. He tried to get caught up on his reading, but he felt the world closing in on him.
He wasn’t practicing well; he had carried the ball in a game only once; the coaches wanted him to pick up his intensity; he had papers due; tests coming up; more papers and then midterm exams.
“I was really down. The academics were just bombarding me,” he said. “It was hard concentrating in practice. You just couldn’t get focused. You want to conserve your energy because you know you have to work so hard on studies at night.
“I was really up in the air. I knew I had to separate my two lives, but it was hard trying to do, making that transition. Being in the classroom, giving it that extra effort, taking the initiative and finding your own way; and then going out on the field and trying to do just about the same thing.
“It wears on you.”
After study hall, Spencer sat down at his desk in the dorm room he shares with three other students. He called his mom about 10:15 p.m.
“She could tell I was down,” he said. “She told me to pray and to do what I had to do.”
Spencer tackled his English first, working on two papers that were due the following morning. Then he went through calculus, working through a series of 18 problems. He did some reading in history and then began writing a history paper on the “Nature and Need for Progressive Reform.”
The paper wasn’t due until Friday, but things get hectic as a game weekend approaches, and Spencer wanted to get a head start.
He then continued work on a sociology paper, a six-page essay on teen suicide based on a reading of Emile Durkheim’s treatise on the subject.
“I worked on this the rest of the night,” he said. “I looked up. It was 6:20 in the morning. I was just sitting there. My butt was sore. I went and took a shower, started getting dressed and went to my 8 o’clock English class.
“I got a `Grab ‘n’ Go’ for breakfast–a bagel and juice–and got to my English class early.”
Spencer had an hour between classes, and went to his room and worked again on his sociology paper. He went to his calculus class at 10 a.m., and his history class from 11:15 to 12:15.
He skipped lunch and went back to his room to finish up his sociology paper. He went to his sociology class at 2:20, turned in the paper, and, after class, had football meetings and was on the practice field at 4 p.m.
Running on empty
“I could tell he wasn’t himself,” said Thorne, when he went to kneel next to Spencer while watching the special teams. “He was all `blew-out,’ as we say.”
Thorne, a senior, plays fullback, the same position as Spencer, and is ahead of him on the depth chart. He was a walk-on until this year when Holtz rewarded him for his hard work with a scholarship. He has a 3.75-grade-point average in a premed program, and when Spencer told him he had pulled an all-nighter to study, Thorne offered to help him with his biology.
Things got worse for Spencer.
His running-backs coach, Earle Mosley “started bearing the hammer on me that day,” Spencer recalled. “He asked me what made me think I could come to Notre Dame with a non-aggression pact. I was a little goofy, but I had to fight through it.
“I was running on empty, but I was also running on pride. You just push and you push and you push. You know sooner or later, practice has to end, and hopefully, you won’t fall out before it ends.”
After practice, Spencer ate dinner, went to his 8 p.m. study hall, came back to his room at about 10, read biology for the following day’s class and finally went to bed at about 11. It was a two-day odyssey of study, class and football.
As much as he hated it, he felt compelled to repeat the grueling regimen over a two-day period the following week.
Spencer paid on Saturday for his wandering focus in practice.
Toward the end of a 41-0 Notre Dame blowout of Vanderbilt, Spencer finally got into the game with 2:53 left and the Irish threatening to score once more.
On his first carry he fought for a yard. On the next play with the end zone less than 5 yards away, he went off-tackle, saw a hole and was hit. He twisted, turned and lurched, and the ball popped out of his hands and was recovered by Vanderbilt in the end zone for a touchback.
When the gun sounded, his teammates were jubilant over the flawless team performance and Notre Dame’s first shutout in nearly two years. They doused acting head coach Bob Davie with a tub of ice-cold water and hoisted him to their shoulders.
Spencer couldn’t share in the joy.
“I felt awful,” he said the day after the game. “You finally get in. You figure this is my chance to go. You get in there and try so hard.
“It’s really frustrating. I knew what coach Mosley was thinking: `You can’t trust him down near the goal line.’
“Everyone on the team told me that those things happen, but I couldn’t accept that things just happen. I’m just working so hard not to be the weak link in the chain. The harder I try, the more I mess up.”
To fumble is a mortal sin on a Holtz-coached team. Spencer didn’t play at all in the next two games. He was in for only one play against Washington, and didn’t carry the ball.
Finding his place
Slowly, Spencer feels, he is making the adjustment. Besides the formal tutoring sessions and occasional help by Thorne with his biology, he also participates in informal study groups with his classmates. He is beginning to meld socially on campus and find his support groups.
“I found that I have a lot of big brothers and big sisters around here, people who care about me just like they do back at home,” he said about his roller-coaster ride of emotions. “I made up my mind. I have the opportunity of a lifetime, and I need to take advantage of it.
“I’m not going to let anyone pull me down. I’m not going to let myself down.
“When you look at the big picture, you say there is no way I can climb this mountain. But if you just take it one rock at a time, you’ll get through. I just started taking it one subject at a time, and things are working out.”
He has improved on the practice field, too, and had one carry for 1 yard Saturday in Giants Stadium against Army.
“I think he’s about ready to roll,” said his position coach, Mosley. “The biggest thing with him is his intensity. He’s gotten over that shoulder thing,” from which coaches thought Spencer took too long to recover. “That set him back. He had the fumble, but he has fought back now.
“I’ve seen him become much more aggressive, and he’s sharper. He’s asking a lot of questions now.
“We expected him to play real fast here, but he had those setbacks. He’s fought back, and I’m very pleased.”
On Thursday, Spencer walked off the practice field in the fading light, and he was all smiles.
He had finished the last two of his midterm exams, biology and calculus earlier in the day. Most of the students on campus were packing and preparing to leave for a one-week, midterm break. The Irish football team would leave Friday afternoon for its game in New Jersey against Army.
Spencer would finally have some time Thursday night to party and socialize.
“Not me,” he said. “I’ve got study hall to go to; and then, I’m going to sleep.”
