Un-be-Faulking-lievable coincidences
Standing in line for Marshall Faulk's autograph and flooded with San Diego State memories
Marshall Faulk was in Albuquerque yesterday and I paid money to stand in line at All-In Autographs for about 30 seconds of his time. Even though I usually don’t care about autographs and memorabilia, Marshall Faulk is an exception because enough of my life has overlapped his career that I feel a connection.
Faulk and I were both freshman at San Diego State in the Fall of 1991. The first Aztecs football game I attended, as a student, he came off the bench to rush for 386 yards and seven touchdowns in a victory over the University of the Pacific. He was an overnight sensation, local and nationally, and he put SDSU on the map.
I recall eating dinner at the Courtyard Café with people from the dorms and inevitably someone would point, “look, there’s Marshall!” and we’d all be amazed that one of the best college football players in the nation was eating the same crappy food as us.
Faulk’s three years on campus were a mix of pride in his performance, frustration it didn’t lead to more winning, and my introduction to the real world of competitive Journalism and celebrity.
Long before “Name Image Likeness” was a thing, an entrepreneur made “Faulk U” T-shirts that were illegally sold on campus and proudly worn by students, which apparently you can still buy.
Faulk is actually one of the main reasons that I stayed at SDSU. I don’t tell this story very often, mostly because I forget it happened, but I had dinner with my friend Amy recently, she asked about my start The Daily Aztec, and I told her all the confluence of coincidences that ended up changing my life.
My sophomore year, I finally got the courage to talk to someone at The Daily Aztec. My first story was – quite fitting, in retrospect – about an autograph signing to benefit the SDSU Baseball program. I interviewed head coach Jim Dietz, a guy named Benji Grigsby who lived on the same floor as me at Olmeca Hall and had recently been drafted in the first round by the Oakland A’s, and Tony Gwynn. Yes, my first bylined story in college had quotes from Tony Gwynn.
The sports editor was a guy named Eric Winter. I remember talking to Eric on the phone. He liked my story, yet gently told me, “we had to make some changes. Compare your version to the version in print, so you can use that AP style for your future stories.”
Eric didn’t have a full-time spot on the staff that semester but told me I could contribute stories occasionally. A few days later, in serendipitous timing, Todd Villalobos left the student paper for a full-time job with KFMB-TV, and Eric offered me Todd’s old job as baseball beat writer. I quit my job at Chili’s and joined the student paper. [By the way, Todd stayed at KFMB for three decades, before retiring last year.]
My original collegiate plan was two years at SDSU, then I’d transfer to Syracuse because they had all these famous sportscasters and that seemed like the way to become one. I applied and got accepted. I spent the Summer after my sophomore year back home in the Bay Area and was set to move to upstate New York in the Fall.
I remember visiting San Diego that summer for some reason – probably to just party with friends one last time, maybe to pickup whatever stuff I forgot to bring home – and happened to be on the driving range at Mission Trails Golf Course.
Lo and behold, Eric Winter happens to be there and walks by. Think about the faulking timing of all this. We had no cell phones to plan this. Eric had just finished playing a round and was walking to his car. I was being an idiot on the range. Eric checked again to see if I was really transferring to Syracuse. I told him yes. He told me that if I stayed at SDSU, he’d made me the football beat writer to cover Marshall Faulk’s junior season and bid for the Heisman Trophy award.
It’s been too long to remember the exact timing of all this. I don’t think I said yes on the spot. I probably thought about it while driving back to the Bay Area. But my thinking went something like: “why would I move across the country, start all over, hope to meet great friends and get an opportunity to cover important collegiate sports at Syracuse – where, oh by the way, it’s totally freezing – when I can just stay in America’s Finest City and keep this momentum going?”
So I stayed at SDSU.
I’m not a huge “God has a plan” or “everything happens for a reason” but the timing of all this is mindboggling.
I stayed at SDSU, covered Faulk’s final year in college, became Asst. Sports Editor, wrote about the Colts drafting Faulk second overall, became Sports Editor, went on a football roadtrip to BYU the next year with Greg Block, got introduced at halftime to Mike Aresco from ESPN, which led to an internship that summer in Bristol, Conn., then spent my final year on campus as the Editor in Chief.
Eric remains one of the most important people in my life, the older brother I never had, and I don’t make a professional decision without consulting him. I watched Faulk win a Super Bowl with the Rams from Eric’s apartment in Los Angeles. Eric published my first book, This Gracious Season: Barry Bonds & the Greatest Year in Baseball.
Before yesterday, the last time that I saw Faulk in person is when Eric paid for the book to be one of the hole sponsors for Faulk’s charity golf tournament in San Diego before Super Bowl XXXVII.
Faulk was a national story, written about in Sports Illustrated, discussed on ESPN, he appeared on TV joking with Bob Hope, and yet I also interviewed him. I cringe at whatever terrible questions I asked back then. I know that it took half a semester before I stopped shaking each time I interviewed him.
The education about competitive Journalism was significant.
I remember SDSU held a Media Day before the 1993 season. Faulk was at a table and I sat there for his entire hour availability. My co-workers interviewed other players and coaches. I saw a reporter from the Union-Tribune put his tape recorder on the table when Faulk took a seat, then walked away. He never asked Faulk a question, interviewed everyone else, then came back to Faulk’s table, picked up the recorder, and wrote a massive story the next day about Faulk.
I was floored when I saw the story in print. I had a reaction that was 10% “This is Journalism!” and 90% “This is Journalism?”
During the season, Faulk’s weekly availability was every Tuesday at Jack Murphy Stadium. I was there every week. You’d have all the local reporters from print, radio and TV, occasionally some national reporters, and also some totally random people that can’t be accurately called reporters. I remember some dude who sounded like Elmer Fudd once asked Faulk about “scwapes and bruzies” on his arms when he gets tackled on the baseball infield dirt.
We all constantly wrote about Faulk. I easily wrote 30 stories, maybe 50, in one school year. It was at least three stories each week for 16 weeks in just the Fall semester. A guy from our Arts and Entertainment staff named Tim Grenda interviewed an upcoming comedian named Jon Stewart, long before he was famous, and even they talked about Marshall Faulk.
Not all the stories were positive. We were all pretty fearless, especially Eric. I remember one time a frustrated Faulk said to Eric, “you’re trying to make a quarter. You’re not the LA Times, man.”
Eric’s response was to write another column that led off with that quote.
A story emerged late in the season about unpaid parking tickets that Faulk had accrued and whether the university was illegally making them go away. (In retrospect, this seems really silly, but it was Sweeps Week and a local TV station got tipped off to it.)
This was before the internet, so all eyes were on the Associated Press reporter. If he put it on the AP wire, it was in every paper in the country the next day and might torpedo Faulk’s chances at the Heisman. The AP reporter elected not to run the story and SDSU’s administration breathed a huge sigh of relief. We debated in our offices whether to print a story and ultimately decided against it. The facts seemed flimsy and we didn’t even have all the facts anyway.
I went through my boxes this week looking for an old story about Faulk that I could get autographed. I found two front page stories, written by other people, but none that I wrote. Fortunately, the SDSU Library has digitally archived every edition, I found my story from when Faulk was drafted, and I got it re-printed so he could sign it for me.
I wasn’t expecting Faulk to remember me. That was 30 years ago. He’s probably been interviewed by over a thousand people since then. The line at All-In Autographs to get Faulk’s autograph was moving efficiently and I didn’t want to be the guy holding up everyone, awkwardly trying to get him to remember something that would be unfair for him to remember.
Before yesterday, the last time Faulk was in Albuquerque was probably 1992, when SDSU defeated the University of New Mexico, 49-21, and then-head coach Al Luginbill famously said two things after the game:
“Our team is going to have to screw this up for Marshall Faulk not to be the best player in the country.”
“Hurry up so we can get out of this Godforsaken place.”
Well, the Aztecs went 3-4 to finish that 1992 season, missed out on a bowl game, and Faulk lost the Heisman Trophy to Miami quarterback Gino Torretta. That year, ESPN analyst Lee Corso famously led the campaign for Torretta. I think that’s when I learned that TV talking heads are not objective journalists. That remains the first thing that comes to mind whenever I see Corso on TV. I haven’t cared much for the Heisman since then.
In 1994, Faulk was in the NFL, and I was in Albuquerque for the first time in my life covering a football game. U-T columnist Nick Canepa used GODFORSAKENPLACE as his dateline, instead of ALBUQUERQUE, to start his column. I remember sitting next to Canepa during the game, hearing stories about his time at The Daily Aztec and laughing hysterically the entire night.
I went back and re-read my stories from that trip because my memory was foggy. Apparently, it hailed before the game, the strong winds caused both teams to alter their kicking strategies, I didn’t bring a heavy coat, and the chivalrous Daily Aztec bros — Jacob Dalton, Andy Holtzman, Alberto Alonso and me — helped some cute UNM coed change a flat tire in the freezing rain at 4 am. after she gave us a ride and drove over an island in the middle of the road. [Yes, somehow, I considered this newsworthy in 1994.]
All of our lives were intertwined with Faulk for his three years on campus. Even when he was gone, his legend lived on, and what’s fascinating is how many of our stories about Faulk don’t even involve Faulk being there. The stories never get old to this day, even if we can’t remember all the details.
Once I finally left college, I often felt like Faulk’s career was a litmus test for my own career. In the early 2000s, I started to cover Major League Baseball on a daily basis and Faulk was the biggest star in the NFL. I always loved the way Chris Berman would say, “Marshall, Marshall, Marshall” on NFL Prime Time.
Faulk retired from the NFL in 2007, the same year that I transitioned from print reporter to broadcasting. I watched Faulk’s Hall of Fame speech in 2011 with pride and awe, thinking about how so many of my early Journalism lessons were formed covering his college career.
And to think, I nearly missed all of it because I wanted to transfer to Syracuse.
Going to the golf course that day, and running into Eric, was the luckiest moment of my life.