The Football Star Who Never Was...

The Last Two Pointer

by Mojack

February 7th was national signing day. Highly recruited athletes, five stars, four stars, etc., faxed in signed letters of intent to their chosen Division 1 schools, thereby cementing their future for the next year (at least) up to the next five years of their lives. See, there are no guarantees in college football, no written promises that a Jeff Schweiger or a Rocky Hinds will be the next Trojan superstar, no guarantees that they'll get the playing time or even the practice time that a highly recruited athlete thinks they deserve. Those thoughts are already in their head; gotta get that face time, that TV time to shine and make it to the next level. Not many players have that Matt Cassell attitude, I will stay and play and contribute to the team no matter what my personal feelings about this situation is.

Because Division 1 college football is bigtime, and it's been bigtime throughout our lives, even back when Mike Garrett was winning his Heisman and before that to the Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard days. The media is just bigger now, the internet and TV and cable and podcasts, etc., it makes the players strive for that playing time to get in the limelight to get noticed so they can get to the next level and a bigger limelight.

And all that above is just stream of consciousness because I mentioned one date, February 7th, and my mind started racing, and here I was going to write about a football player at Chaffey High, back in the day, back in 1978 when there was no internet and the normal fan or even the rabid fan didn't have a daily outlet to track high school studs and high school All-Americans, wondering what school they'd finally sign with on their national signing day. Before the TV cameras caught hundreds of high schoolers knocking other hats off tables, while picking the one true hat from their pocket, the hat of their school for the next year or two or three or four or five years.

This is a football post. It is relevant to the Herd and Trojan fans for just as Ryan Powdrell's possible career ending injury shook a little reality into the game we all have passion for, I remembered a career ending injury I saw once, and it made me think of what could've been, not for me, of course, but for the player, Mike Newman, quarterback of Chaffey High. (photo left: Ryan Powdrell at the Huddle)

This wasn't a Carson Palmer and Oregon type injury. That game was close. Carson was in a battle. He made a bad choice by not stepping out of bounds, by lowering that shoulder and colliding with that defensive back head on. Bad choice. Loss of a season. In hindsight though, that choice won Carson a Heisman Trophy. If he had gingerly stepped out of bounds, he would've continued the game and the season, and probably never redshirted. He would've graduated in 2001, the Utah loss at the Las Vegas Bowl would've been his swan song. He never would've made it to the Downtown Athletic Club in New York.

But not all bad decisions turn out well in the end.

In 1978, I was a freshman at Chaffey High School in Ontario, California. Anthony Munoz had recently graduated from Chaffey, in 1976 I think, and had started his career at the University of Southern California. Chaffey played some good football back then, in the Citrus Belt League with Fontana and Eisenhower, Ronnie Lott's alma mater, i.e., so the quality of high school ball was high. And 1978 was another magical year of Chaffey football, led by quarterback Mike Newman and his acrobatic receiver Scott Bennett. If memory serves me right, Newman was around 6'1" or 6'2", but he was very mobile and he had a rifle arm. The guy would not be sacked, and he would scramble in the backfield and finally Scott Bennett would get open and Newman would heave the ball downfield and no matter where it was, Bennett would catch it. He made Dominic Byrd-type catches in every game. Leaping, stretching, diving, his hands were like glue, a high school Freddie Biletnikoff, and Bennett looked like Freddie B. too, long blonde hair, just running down the field catching everything that Newman threw up.

And though it was rumored that Bennett had scholarship offers for lots of colleges; Washington and Washington State off the top of my head, it was Newman who was the real leader of the team. He was also getting scholarship offers from schools such as Stanford, for one, a PAC-10 school that had produced a Heisman winner in Jim Plunkett eight years earlier. These kids were talented, and the games they played in were exciting. It was a good time for Ontario football.

To me, they were gods. I was a freshman, they were seniors, and on top of that age disparity they were the leaders of a team that was winning the Citrus Belt League (or coming in 2nd) in front of a sold-out Graber Field. That Chaffey team was highly ranked as it started CIF playoffs, the Division 1 of CIF playoffs, and people were talking that this might be the year they actually won CIF. The first playoff game was a blowout at Graber field, against Edison or Loyola, some consistent Division 1 Southern California high school powerhouse that we've all heard of, and with the blowout came more talk in the local papers and around school, "this is the year we go all the way."

And the 2nd game of CIF started off in that fashion. Chaffey was playing a tough Servite team, and Chaffey was just dominating. Servite couldn't stop Newman and Bennett, and Chaffey just overpowered them. There were 2 minutes left in the 4th quarter when Chaffey scored again, making it 35-7 or 30-9 or something ridiculous, my memory fails at this point, but the game was over. Mike Newman was still in the game, and as Chaffey lined up to kick the extra point, in that spread extra point formation that I've never understood, Newman was back to hold the ball. But as Newman called the signals, the team never came back to line up in the standard extra point formation, they stayed spread for the trick play. The ball was hiked. Newman stood up and started scrambling for the two points. The defense surged. Newman ran for the flag. A Servite man dove at Newman, cutting his legs out, and the play was dead. No extra point.

Except Newman rolled around on the field, writhing in pain. The coaches ran out to him. The excited stands, with our 30 point lead, were suddenly silenced. Minutes went by. They ran a stretcher across the field, and slowly put the injured QB on the stretcher. He wasn't moving, he was on his back, still. The tension grew in the crowd. As they carried the stretcher back across the field towards the locker room, Mike Newman raised up and lifted his fist. The crowd went wild. That was his last heroic effort. His apex. He was carried off the field, and carried into oblivion. The game ended, Chaffey won, and later that weekend or on Monday, we found out that Mike Newman's knee was damaged extensively, and he needed major knee surgery.

Days or weeks later we found out that Newman's injuries were so great, he would need more surgeries and never play football again.

All for a 2 point conversion as his team held tightly to a 30 point lead with 2 minutes left. No Stanford scholarship, no other PAC-10 school free ride. No schollie to Montana University. Nothing. Football career over because the star quarterback was still in a game that had been decided 40 minutes prior. Glory gone in a flash, in a second, by such a futile decision, or a string of futile decisions. Who left him in? Who called the split formation on a extra point play that was unnecessary? Who decided to bootleg?

In hindsight, it really doesn't matter. The game ended. Chaffey won or lost the next CIF playoff game, I don't remember, but they didn't win the championship. Scott Bennett decided he wanted to play guitar instead of football so he didn't accept any scholarship offers. And Mike Newman didn't do anything, he was angry and bitter, he wanted to still be the hero, still out there calling plays and throwing that ball a long ways down the field. But, that wasn't going to be his destiny.

So when I think of the February 7ths every year, I hope these players take the opportunity to make good decisions and go to schools where they'll get the chance to play, and also the chance to get an education, because there are Whitney Lewis' out there still, and Ryan Powdrell's, the guys who get to the big stage of college football, but through lack of effort or injuries, they fall short of their dreams.

At least they got to the big stage of college football. Mike Newman never got there. And that's too bad, he probably would've been fun to watch. Really fun.