I’ve linked to this remarkable Joe Posnanski piece about Herschel before, but since he chose to repost it in the wake of Willis Walker passing, I thought it was worth mentioning it again. Read it; you won’t regret it.
My favorite bit in there? Hands down: “And then there was this freshman from a little town in Georgia who people were whispering about. He was the new thing. Rogers was Pat Boone. Herschel was James Brown.”
Get The Picture 
I am speechless, have cold chills and am weeping…..:(
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good way to start a tuesday.
fired up for sure.
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also makes you realize who dumb all those “next walker” type comments are about anyone, anywhere, doing anything.
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Thanks for giving us the link to this one. I hadn’t read it before. Having seen many of those runs in person I still get chills reading about them.
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“Of course he still did miraculous things. There was that third down and 1 against Ole Miss, and Georgia called for him go get the ball and do what they called, “the patented Herschel Walker leap.” It seems unlikely that he ever patented it (undoubtedly Walter Payton would have beaten him to the U.S. Patent Office), but he did it about as well anybody ever. His vertical jump was supposedly measured at 40 inches.
“So Herschel went up, and some Ole Miss guy went up with him (well not quite as high) and the two collided in mid-air. They both fell to the ground, only Herschel fell on his feet. He then walked into the end zone for a touchdown.
“’Rest of my life,’ Walker would say, ‘people asked me to do that again.’”
My favorite play of Herschel’s college career. Yet again I was left saying, “Thank God he’s on our side.”
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Wow.
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Man. That was an excellent read. Thanks for posting that one, Senator.
That write-up does make me think about something I’ve been confused about for awhile. There seems to be two conflicting narratives about the 1980 Summer practices. In this piece, it talks about Herschel demolishing the older defensive player (which I’ve heard before), and basically that Herschel was Herschel when he first got to Athens. But then there are the stories of Vince calling him a “big, stiff” fullback type that was clumsy, unsure on his feet, etc. I’ve come to the conclusion that, as this writer alluded to, Dooley’s conservatism just made him less likely to see what exactly he had. Also, I’m sure there was the thought of holding the cards close to the vest and not publicly revealing just how incredible he was.
That ’81 Florida game was amazing. 47 carries!
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I would go with “cards close to the vest” part about Vince even though I was familiar with his conservative play-calling. Just go to all Vince’s SC games for evidence of that, but to not recognize what he had would not fit Vince’s image at all: no such thing.
Heroic read, Senator, and one we can be proud to say occurred at UGA.
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And to think Poz used to write for our pathetic little Augusta daily tripe-page….
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I remember reading him in The Agusta Chronicle. Thanks for sharing this.
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Augusta why autocorrect didn’t catch that I don’t understand.
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