Sometimes life calls an audible, as it did last year in an unexpected handoff between two Northern Illinois tailbacks.
One player took the ball and never stopped running. The other, temporarily empty-handed, improvised a route to daylight.
Their lives intersected because one had an enlarged heart, but both men are clearly bigger people for the experience.
Former Huskies running back Thomas Hammock was forced to give up the game last year when doctors diagnosed a potentially life-threatening thickening of his heart walls.
Initially devastated, Hammock closed one door behind him and wedged another open when he sent a blind e-mail to Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez.
A few months later, the marketing major and two-time academic All-American walked away from a steady job at a bank to become a student assistant on Alvarez’s staff.
“I play through them,” Hammock said of the Badgers players he works with now.
Meanwhile, Hammock’s one-time understudy, Michael Turner, became a star, making the most of the opportunity that came his way under the worst of circumstances. Currently the nation’s third-leading rusher with 1,305 yards, Turner has piled up 3,800 yards of all-purpose offense since he inherited the job.
He will be a focal point for the 21st-ranked Huskies (9-1, 5-1) on Saturday in Toledo as they try to avenge last year’s loss to the Rockets (6-3, 4-1) and move closer to a Mid-American Conference Western Division title.
The soft-spoken Turner and the gregarious Hammock waged a friendly but intense competition for the starting position for more than two years. After the abrupt end of that rivalry, Turner said, he had no choice but to put aside the shock and sadness he felt for his buddy.
“My teammates needed me,” said Turner, a senior from North Chicago. “That was the most important thing. I didn’t want to get the starting job like that, but I really didn’t have time to think about it.”
Every yard Turner gained came with encouragement and an absence of jealousy from Hammock, who remained on the Huskies’ bench for the rest of the 2002 season, occasionally giving discreet advice.
“Every now and then if he saw something on the field, like if I should have made a certain cut, or a certain move, he’d let me know,” Turner said. “He was just like an extra coach. It was great to have him next to me on the sideline.”
That unselfish role turned out to be a precursor of the passion Hammock would discover he had for his new vocation.
“Maybe it’s my calling,” said Hammock, who works with running backs under Wisconsin offensive coordinator Brian White. “That’s how I look at it.
“I wasn’t able to fulfill my dreams of playing professionally, but maybe I can help these other guys reach their potential, reach their goal of playing in the NFL. I truly think this is what I was meant to do. I enjoy it, and I’m loving each day.”
A special bond
Hammock, 22, matter-of-factly refers to his hypertrophic cardiomyopathy as an “injury.” The term refers to a thickening of the inner and outer walls of the heart that can affect circulation and interfere with the electrical signals that regulate the heartbeat.
He had some symptoms–shortness of breath, tightness in his chest–as a freshman, and was fully checked out. As with many young athletes, years of demanding workouts had left his heart slightly enlarged.
But the condition was not deemed dangerous then, and Hammock, a New Jersey native who spent his high school years in Ft. Wayne, Ind., kept playing. He was the Huskies’ rushing leader in 2000 and 2001, gaining more than 1,000 yards in each of those seasons.
People around the NIU football program say Turner–who entered Northern a year after Hammock–probably had more raw talent, but Hammock’s sheer desire and work ethic kept him on top of the depth chart.
The two first bonded when Turner was a freshman and Hammock a sophomore, as two running backs ahead of them washed out with academic difficulties.
“We were the big question on the team: Could we really do the job?” Turner recalled. “We had something to prove my first year. That’s why we were more supportive, not enemies.”
Hammock was named a co-captain at the start of his senior year. He had stayed on campus and worked out all summer, and felt he had done all he could to put himself in a position to attract interest from pro scouts.
Northern upset Wake Forest 42-41 in the season opener as Hammock rushed for 172 yards and scored the winning touchdown in overtime, a 7-yard sideline run that finished with a twisting dive into the end zone. It would be his last official carry.
That Tuesday during practice, Hammock told NIU trainer Phil Voorhis he was having trouble breathing. Voorhis took him to the hospital for the first of a series of doctors’ consultations that all led to the same advice: Hammock should stop playing.
Many people live normal lives with the condition, but some are fatally stricken with no warning. As an athlete subjecting his body to unusual stresses, Hammock was high-risk, the doctors said. And Northern was prone to be unusually cautious, having lost a walk-on player to heart failure the year before.
“When I was first told, it hit me like a ton of bricks,” Hammock said. “I was distraught. I was feeling good, I had worked hard, did everything the coaches told me to do. At that point, I thought I was invincible. I just assumed the doctors had to be wrong.”
Before the Huskies’ next game, Hammock told Turner to capitalize on his chance. Turner responded by rushing for a conference-record 1,915 yards that season, earning his preseason nickname of “The Burner.”
“I wanted to do good and show Thomas that we miss him,” Turner said. “Not like, `We can move on without you,’ but . . . we had a group of running backs who had a goal, and if he couldn’t be there to help, I wanted to carry on.”
Hammock was advised there was an outside chance the condition would improve if he took time off. He spent some weeks clinging to the hope that he might play again before he made his peace with the situation.
“It was hard, but as the weeks went on, it got easier,” he said. “My desire to play lessened with each week. Mike had a great year, and I was happy to see that from him. I had to move on and find my niche in life.”
His fiance, Cheynnitha Pinson, marveled at how well he adjusted.
“He told me, `If it had to happen to any player on this team, I’m glad it was me,”‘ said Pinson, who is earning her master’s degree in accounting at Northern. “At that point, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this guy.”
Hammock graduated a semester early, in December 2002, and went to work as a credit manager for Wells Fargo in Bolingbrook. He liked the job, but in late February he felt a tug he couldn’t disregard any more than he could ignore chest pains.
He wanted to find his way to grad school and he missed football terribly. Maybe he could combine the two, Hammock reckoned, and began researching programs.
Wisconsin does not post Alvarez’s e-mail address on its athletic Web site. Hammock looked at other university addresses, took an educated guess and sent the coach (and soon-to-be athletic director) a note indicating his interest in a student coaching position and a slot in UW’s education administration program.
He heard back the next day. Hammock is now on track to get his master’s degree in a year. He has an educational grant to attend school and a small stipend from the athletic department. He took a pay cut when he left the bank, but you’ll never hear him put it that way.
Learning the ropes
Madison is just a 90-minute drive from Northern’s campus in DeKalb. Hammock visited recently on a game day when Wisconsin was idle and spoke to Turner.
“The guy has the potential, the skills, the ability,” Hammock said, sounding very much like the coach he aspires to be. “All he needed was the opportunity, and I was the one stopping him from having that opportunity for a couple of years. I look at it that I stole a couple years of playing time. Sometimes scouts come up and I talk to them about him. It gives me a lot of joy that he’s doing well.”
The experience, along with the premature deaths of two other teammates, has marked Turner too.
“You take every opportunity you have and live life to the fullest,” Turner said. “Life is more than just football. That’s what Thomas did, and he let all of us know that, and you can see he’s doing great now.”
Hammock is thriving, but life isn’t without its challenges. His condition doesn’t prevent him from doing moderate workouts, but he’s finding it difficult to keep weight off with his more sedentary lifestyle. He recently consulted with a dietician to help set him on the right path.
Every now and then, to illustrate a point to players, he will get out a videotape of himself.
“When this injury happened, a part of me, that aspect of being competitive, died with it because I couldn’t do it anymore,” Hammock said.
“But now that I’m coaching, I feel all the competitive juices. I’m working my way back to being the person that I was before I got injured.
“I think my competitiveness is going to help me in this profession. I’m not going to allow myself to settle for anything less than the best. I’m just going to run with it and see where it takes me.”
