University of North Carolina Athletics
Tar Heel Monthy: See Rabbit Run
August 17, 2002 | Football
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There is another reason. Big Mike, what are the odds that your son will come into your house with a tattoo on his body?
"The odds are one in 900 trillion that he will walk into my house with a tattoo on his arm," he booms. "You tell Dex that my son better be the lone holdout."
That's the attitude that kept Waddell out of trouble growing up in Rockingham. It can be easy for football players to live above the law in a community that worships their gridiron heroes. The Raider rosters of the past are littered with players who swell up under the adulation of their high school peers, only to burst when they enter the real world.
Waddell doesn't have to look far to see an example. One of his closest friends, Marcus Ellerbe, was a teammate on that 1998 state championship team and signed with NC State. He got into trouble in Raleigh and has since bounced through at least two other schools. He is currently out of football, trying to take some tech classes at a school in Tennessee.
"Richmond is different from most other places," Barnes says. "We don't have malls or coliseums or this and that. In Richmond County, kids grow up wanting to be a Raider. The town kind of closes down on Friday nights. Rabbit was the man in Richmond County. Every kid in town wanted to be like him and wear number 18."
Unlike some of his teammates, however, fame couldn't slow down Michael Waddell. As it turned out, there was only one thing that could deter his fast train to success.
Pete: Trying to get the scores was really tough for him.
Elisha: Everybody wanted to know how he was doing, was he going to be able to play. You don't want to have people all in your business like that.
Pete: He had a good GPA, it's not like he was a bad student. That test was just too much.
That test was the SAT, and it proved to be a fiend. During the spring of his senior year, Waddell spent two hours a day, three days per week studying to try and make the requisite score that would make him eligible to play at Carolina as a freshman. He had the required GPA with plenty of room to spare. But the test, that standardized demon that has bedeviled many a high school student, would not be cracked.
Waddell wound up 10 points--one correct answer--short of the needed score. He had to enter UNC as a partial qualifier, which meant that he would be able to practice with the team during his freshman year, but not play in the games. It is the equivalent of a forced redshirt year. It also decreases a player's eligibility from four years to three years.
Being held away from the playing field was not something that came easily to the star cornerback. He had played football since the age of nine, never been told he couldn't play, never been held back from participating with the team. When freshmen reported to Chapel Hill for orientation and it hit home that he would not get a chance to compete for playing time, it overwhelmed him.
In a bathroom within the Kenan Football Center complex, the 18-year-old put his head on his father's shoulder and wept. It was the first time in almost 15 years that his father had seen him cry. It was also the last time.
"Here's a guy who doesn't know anything about a bench," his father says. "And you're telling him that he can't play this great game he loves because of one question on a test. It showed me his love for the game. In the bathroom that day, I told him that it would work out for the best."
It didn't seem that way at the time. Waddell had to participate in practices, occasionally making plays that would make observers swoon. On game days, however, he was a forgotten man. Some days, the hurt was so great that he couldn't bring himself to watch the games.
"It was really hard," the player says. "It was the kind of thing where I almost felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I'd be out there having a great practice and then you realize, 'Dang, when Saturday comes, I can't play.'"
Football coaches will tell you that there is nothing wrong with being a partial qualifier, that you're not treated differently from anyone else. On the practice field, that may be true. But away from football, in the classroom, you hear the whispers. You know that some professors cut a wary eye at your work, that they expect you to be subpar.
Michael Waddell has never even been close to being in academic trouble at the University of North Carolina. He hasn't served a suspension for cutting class, or needed a dramatic late-summer turnaround to get eligible for the fall. He has, with the help of the academic staff, been a model student.
"I really had a point to prove," says Waddell, who says his toughest class was biology. "There were a lot of people out there saying, 'He's a partial, he's not going to make it.' It bothered me, but I didn't pay any attention to it."
The former partial qualifier is on track to graduate at the end of his fourth year of college, which means that under NCAA guidelines he will earn back an extra year of eligibility. That's a nice gift, but it doesn't mean as much as something else he will earn in May--a college degree.
"There were a couple of older female cousins, but I'm the first male on my mother and father's side of the family to go to college," he says. "It's exciting. At the same time, it's embarrassing because it's taken this long for someone in my family to graduate from college."
Pete: He never talks about the NFL.
Elisha: We're the ones who always bring it up to him. We were talking about it the other day and I said something about, 'When you get to the League...' and he said he didn't want to hear that.
Pete: I've only seen two players that I knew right away would play in the NFL. One of them was Marcus. The other was Rabbit. You think there are other guys out there with that kind of speed? Even Deion doesn't run a 4.19, man.
Elisha: We're going to get to see it this year. I don't know why they haven't put him on offense more, play him at wide receiver. You've got to get him the ball.
Rabbit may not want to talk about the NFL, but everyone else does. At a summer
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"It was really hard. It was the kind of thing where I almost felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I'd be out there having a great practice and then you realize, 'Dang, when Saturday comes, I can't play.'"
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"I think Michael Waddell can cover anybody in the country," says Tar Heel head coach John Bunting. "Last year we flopped him, we put him up against the best receiver week in and week out and he performed with a great deal of consistency."
The best evaluation came last year against Texas receiver Roy Williams, a 6-foot-4 specimen who has pro scouts drooling. Williams caught just four passes for 38 yards and no touchdowns against the Rabbit. The pair will meet again on September 14 in Kenan Stadium.
That type of coverage ability is what makes scouts hungry. Waddell would shine in the numbers-intense world of the NFL combine, where a good workout can vault a player from unknown to first-round pick. Let the scouts come to Chapel Hill, let them watch the Rabbit run, and they will be suitably impressed.
They may see another side of his athleticism this season. With the departure of Bosley Allen, the job returning punts for the Tar Heels is open. Sophomore Jarwarski Pollock was sporadically electric in that role in the spring, but has never fielded a punt in a Division I contest. Waddell returned a punt 89 yards for a touchdown against Oklahoma last year.
He will have a chance to win that role in the fall, when he will have to prove that his hands are solid enough to depend on in the helter-skelter world of punt returning, which is a little like being forced to try to cross a freeway on which all the cars want to maim you. If he succeeds in that quest, it will give him an added element of marketability to the pros.
The scouts may have to wait another year. Or they may not. With at least 12 games left in his college career, he has made no pronouncements about his professional readiness. Bunting thinks he needs another year to get stronger physically. The cornerback thinks that if he has a good year--a Dre' Bly freshman season type of year--he may want to explore the possibilities.
"The NFL is something that you dream of," Waddell says. "If I have a good year, it's something that I will look at, but there is a whole season left. Nobody knows what will happen this year."
If he has the type of year everyone expects, there's no doubt that he will consult with his father before determining his future.
"It's his dream, and he is not stupid," says Big Mike. "If he has a great year this year and he's predicted as a first-round draft pick and they offer millions of dollars, it makes it very hard not to go when he is in college and isn't even allowed to have someone buy him a sandwich."
If he goes to the League, the sandwiches will be on him at The Barber Zone on Stellys Tabernacle Church Road in Rockingham. And there will be new stories to tell, new feats for his friends to brag about--because they know that he will not do it himself. Until then, though, pull up a chair.
Pete: There was this one playoff game, I think it was his senior year. He must have scored at least four touchdowns. Ran back a punt, caught two passes, and ran one in. He started off running and threw that head back...
Players Mentioned
