When Karlos Whittaker scored on a 19-yard run last weekend against Rice, he broke a Navy record with his fifth touchdown as a freshman.
“I wasn’t really aware of the record,” he said.
A slotback in a five-man rotation, Whittaker is the first Navy player to score touchdowns in five straight games since Brian Madden in 1999.
Asked if he’s pleased with his time on the field, he replied: “I could say that. Actually, I’m playing more than I expected.”
Whittaker is averaging a touchdown every 3.4 carries and 27.2 yards on kickoff returns, equaling the third-best mark in school history in that category.
Said Navy coach Paul Johnson: “We haven’t had a kickoff returner like him since I’ve been here. He hits it up in there really hard, and if you do that, you don’t always have to block everyone. We’re excited about Karlos.”
The 5-foot-11, 194-pound tailback from North Chicago had more good news coming his way: His White Sox won the World Series.
“I’m a big Sox fan,” he said. “My [high school] coach put that in my head. The majority where I’m from love the Cubs, but I love the Sox.”
He has a clue
Southern Illinois coach Jerry Kill says he doesn’t remember the seizure that caused him to collapse and convulse during a game nearly two weeks ago–or the six other seizures he suffered in the days after.
But the 44-year-old coach, back on the sidelines after being released from the hospital, said he embraces all the support he’s gotten from his players, family and friends since then.
And he’s confident he now has the right medicine to handle the unspecified condition, which occasionally manifests itself with seizures but is not considered life-threatening.
“Life’s very precious,” he said. “I enjoy life. I figure I’m ornery enough that the good Lord isn’t ready for me anyway.
“It doesn’t matter if we win another game or not. What matters is I think we’ve got a unique bunch of kids and coaches who truly care about one another.”
Kill said he was pleased by one supporter he had: a player who came to his office to wish him well. Kill had kicked him off the team last summer for at least a season but who stayed in school at Southern.
“I’ve suspended the kid for a year, I’ve taken a year off his career because he screwed up,” Kill said. “And I had a whole different human being in my office.
“That meant a lot.”
Ways for Means
Natrone Means made his living running straight at–and sometimes over–tacklers. Yet the bruising NFL back seemed to be doing his best to sidestep the next step in a life built on football.
After injuries ended his playing days, Means, 33, dabbled in real estate. He played golf. He started a youth football association. But he just couldn’t get away from the pull of the sport he had played since he was 7.
Finally, he succumbed and became a coach.
“It almost seems like I was kind of running away from coaching,” he said.
The former San Diego Charger is in his first season coaching running backs at Livingstone, a Division II school with about 1,000 students 40 miles from Charlotte.
“We can’t all be businessmen,” Means said. “We can’t all be Donald Trump. And we can’t all come up with that invention that’s going to change the world. But football is what I know.”
Suddenly, it’s Stanford
For everyone who didn’t pay attention to Stanford after that humiliating loss to UC-Davis: Surprise! The Cardinal is 3-1 in the Pac-10 and riding a three-game winning streak. Overall, Stanford is 4-2.
“The bottom is a great thing to push off of,” first-year coach Walt Harris said.
Asked if the Cardinal would be the same team it is now without the loss to UC-Davis, Harris said, “I don’t have much time to think about what I have no control over.”
Renaissance at Rutgers
Synonymous with college football futility for the last decade, Rutgers has been neither punch line nor punching bag this season. At 5-2, the Scarlet Knights can become bowl-eligible with a victory over Navy this weekend.
The only time Rutgers went to a bowl game was 1978.
“It’s been very tough, but I knew that getting into it, that that’s what we were in for,” said coach Greg Schiano, a former Miami assistant hired in December 2000. “I’ve had some great times in my career, and some tough times. That adversity prepares you for down the road.”
Extra points
Alabama has scored 19 points in its last two games. Still, the Tide has won both, thanks to a defense that has given up 13 points in those two games. … Missouri has become a legit contender in the Big 12 North. The Tigers, who have won three in a row, have beaten Nebraska twice in the last three years after winning only once in the previous 26 seasons. … TCU is the only team unbeaten in league play in the Mountain West Conference. The Horned Frogs are in their first season in the MWC after leaving Conference USA and have won their five league games by an average of 15.4 points per game. The Horned Frogs’ lone loss was to SMU, a bottom-feeder in C-USA. … Six unbeaten teams remain, and there are four that are winless. … There have been 766 coaching changes in Division I since Joe Paterno took over at Penn State in 1966. … Is is the offense of the defense? Six Southeastern Conference schools rank 16th or better nationally in total defense. Eight offenses rank 53rd or worse. … Because of scheduled weeks off and hurricane postponements, South Florida will have played one game between Oct. 1 and Nov. 5. … When Oklahoma plays at Nebraska on Saturday, it will be the first time since 1961 that the rivals meet with neither ranked.
