He’s an old-fashioned guy. Prop up an aged movie screen, dust off a dated projector, slip on a reel of film and that could be his grainy, black-and-white image flickering there in front of you.
Watch closely now as he accepts the handoff from his quarterback, reads his blockers, pops through the line, breaks a couple of tackles, skirts into the end zone and–just hands the ball to the official.
Sixteen times this season Northwestern running back Damien Anderson has crossed the goal line and each time he has done only that. It did not matter if he scored on a 73-yard run, as he did against Indiana, or on a 66-yard run, as he did against Duke, or on a 12-yard run, as he did on the final play of the Wildcats’ riveting, double-overtime victory at Wisconsin.
Not once did he dance or prance or pose for the cameras.
“I’ve always been respectful of football,” he explains. “One of the guys who always stuck out in my mind was [former Lions running back] Barry Sanders. He never celebrated and he scored in the most outstanding ways, juking a guy, losing his shoe, jumping over a guy, almost falling down. It was like, `Wow, how can a guy have so much class?’
“I feel my running style’s my own. But when it comes to class, I want to be like guys like Walter Payton and Barry Sanders. They handled themselves in respectful ways. I respect the game and the people around it. I don’t want to disgrace football by putting on an after-school special in the end zone.”
Inside, though, how does it feel?
“I can’t really describe it,” he says. “It’s like I’m in my sanctuary. It’s like I’m where I belong. It’s where I work my whole off-season, basically my whole life, to get. So it’s like I feel I should have got there. That’s another reason why I don’t celebrate or anything like that. It’s like we as a team should be there.
“I just feel the work’s paying off. But once I step out of the end zone, I’m back on the war grounds again.”
He’s an old-fashioned guy who heeds the lesson he learned as a kid in Wilmington, Ill. He did not grow up with a sense of entitlement, nor did he ever believe a shortcut was the quickest way to success. He burned for success, still burns for it to this day. But as he chased it, he always reflected the ancient advice offered up by his parents, Bradley and Diane.
“Whatever you do,” they told him often, “do 110 percent.”
This is one reason why he was such a willing student when Randy Walker took over as NU’s coach. Walker too is an old-fashioned guy, an adherent of the aged philosophies of Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler. As soon as he landed in Evanston, he began preaching the virtue of ardent labor.
Many Wildcats recoiled in dismay and felt the demands of their new coach were both unreasonable and unattainable. But not Anderson, whom Walker soon pulled aside.
“There’s a bunch of good running backs out there. Hundreds of ’em,” he told him then. “Here’s what you can do to be special.”
Now, Walker says, “He makes that choice every day.”
Anderson always has been determined to excel.
“I was blessed with my parents,” he says. “I feel like I’d not only be letting myself down, I’d be letting them down too if I did something, I don’t want to say halfway. If I did that I’d feel like I was a loser.
“I feel if you go into something and don’t put your heart and soul in it, what’s the point? I’m not just playing the game for fun. Yeah, I’m having fun. But I want to make it my life. It’s one of those things I look forward to doing every day. And I understand I’m blessed with the opportunity to be around a coach who really respects running backs and likes to showcase them.”
He’s an old-fashioned guy even as he earns acclaim and headlines in his payoff season. The 5-foot-10-inch, 210-pound junior running back is averaging 166.9 yards per game, the best in the Big Ten and third best in the nation.
He is the star of the No. 21 Wildcats’ surprising season, which finds them a half-game out of first place in the conference as they await a Saturday visit from No. 12 Michigan.
He is an All-American candidate, a Heisman Trophy candidate, a candidate to be showered weekly by the kind of praise offered up by Wolverines coach Lloyd Carr.
“I think he’s having an absolutely outstanding year,” gushes Carr, who recruited him. “He always has had great speed, but now he has matured physically and is in an offense that gives him an opportunity to make a lot of great plays. You better be a great tackler to tackle him. He’s difficult to bring down even when you have him surrounded. When he’s one-on-one in the open field, he’s very difficult to bring down. He’s no secret anymore, that’s for sure.”
He is instead the stuff of highlight films, the only Wildcat to post back-to-back 200-yard games, the only Wildcat to have three 200-yard games in a season, the Wildcat best fit for both superlatives and a swelled head.
But still he’s an old-fashioned guy with an old-fashioned coach, and after each game, he deflects attention from himself and talks only of his linemen and the team.
“It’s a little hard for me to start putting people on pedestals. I do struggle with that,” Walker says. “At what point is it Damien’s 16 touchdowns and 1,300 yards? I kind of suspect our line had a little to do with that.”
That line likes to share the credit.
“I love him. I love blocking for him,” left guard Lance Clelland says. “I’m definitely happy for his success. It’s the fruits of our hard work, so we’re probably happier about it than he is.”
Right guard Jeff Roehl concurs.
“It’s definitely a blast to block for him,” he says. “A lot of things he does are on his own. But a lot of things are because of the line too. It’s nice to see a running back who’s mature enough to realize that. It’s a big honor to have a running back mention his line in the paper.It means a lot. It just shows he’s a class person.”
No big deal, says Anderson.
“That’s just understood here,” he says. “I know I wouldn’t have my success without them. They know they’re the most important thing. There has to be a cover boy, you know what I’m saying? But we’re all just a part. I as an individual am just a reflection of the team.
“When you keep modest, you don’t get ahead of yourself. I always want to get better. What I tell myself is there’s someone out there working twice as hard as me.”
He’s just an old-fashioned guy.
