GATORS IN THE 80s

Smith Proved Detractors Wrong

By ANDY STAPLES The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jul 16, 2006

GAINESVILLE - As predictions go, recruiting guru Max Emfinger's 1987 assessment of a young back from Pensacola might be the gridiron version of Dick Rowe's 1962 evaluation of a four-piece band from Liverpool.

"We don't like their sound," Rowe, Decca Records' pop music chief, said when denying the Beatles a contract. "And guitar music is on its way out."

Emfinger's prediction was more emphatic.

"Emmitt Smith isn't big or fast and he can't get around the corner," Emfinger wrote in his 1987 recruiting annual. "I know all the folks in Pensacola will be screaming and all the Florida fans will be writing me nasty letters, but Emmitt Smith is not a franchise player. He's a lugger, not a runner. The sportswriters blew him out of proportion. When he falls flat on his face at Florida, remember where you heard it first."

Not only did that "lugger" smash Florida's rushing records in his three seasons in Gainesville, he also helped keep the program relevant as the Gators struggled to recover from NCAA sanctions imposed in 1984.

Unlike Emfinger, Florida's coaches believed the back from Escambia High would be special. That's why Gators assistant Dan Brooks entered the football office one day in 1986 to find a note on a bulletin board warning him that Smith would be signing with some school in 362 days.

"Poor Dan was out [in Pensacola] every other weekend," said Bo Bayer, who served as Florida's recruiting coordinator at the time.

Brooks' effort paid off in February 1987 when Smith spurned Auburn and Nebraska to sign with Florida. The Gators were coming off a 6-5 season in which they ranked last in the Southeastern Conference in rushing, and scholarship cuts imposed by the NCAA for the sins of former coach Charley Pell and his staff had hit Florida hard.

Smith began the 1987 season as Florida's third-team tailback, but in the season's third game Smith set a Florida single-game rushing record with 224 yards, and the Gators upset Alabama, 23-14.

A legend was born.

Smith would go on to break the school records for career rushing yards (3,928, since broken by Errict Rhett), rushing yards in a season (1,599), rushing yards in a game (316 against New Mexico in 1989) and career rushing touchdowns (36). Smith left Florida after his junior season. He was drafted in the first round by the Dallas Cowboys, and he went on to set NFL records for rushing yards and rushing touchdowns.

Bayer, now a prosecutor in Union County, said Smith had some unnamable quality that made him special.

"It was just something. That's all I could say," Bayer said. "He just made things happen."

Of course, as Emfinger and Rowe demonstrated, sometimes greatness is tough to predict.

"I thought he was going to be a great player, and I knew he was going to be a great young man," Bayer said. "But you can never be 100 percent positive."

Reporter Andy Staples can be contacted at (352) 262-3719 or astaples@tampatrib.com.