University of North Carolina Athletics
Tar Heel Monthly: See Rabbit Run
August 17, 2002 | Football
Aug. 17, 2002
Tar Heel Monthly is the premier magazine devoted to the stories and personalities behind UNC athletics. For more information, visit www.tarheelmonthly.com.
The following is the cover story from the most recent issue of the magazine.
By Adam Lucas
Come on in, if you've got a minute. You don't really have to get in line, because there isn't a line. Just remember when you came in and Pete will take care of you.
You're here to see Pete, right? Pete Marshall, who has been Michael Waddell's buddy longer than anybody else, operates the second chair from the right at The Barber Zone in Rockingham. Even if Pete isn't there, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out which place is his. It's the one with the 2002 Tar Heel football schedule featuring a picture of Michael on the front tucked neatly between the counter and the mirror.
First thing, though, you've got to quit calling him Michael. 'Round here, everyone knows him as Rabbit. Michael--or Big Mike--is his dad. You'll meet him later.
Right now, let's get to letting Pete tell this story. Because if you want to hear the truth about Michael Waddell, this is the place to come. Sit right down there in that chair and tell Pete to start talking. You don't need a haircut? That's OK. They don't mind at The Barber Zone if you just show up to chat. Especially if the subject of your chat is Rabbit.
So this is Pete, and he's going to be your host today. He's working on a customer at the moment, so his brother, Elisha Marshall, will be helping him along. And when they finish, you might not have a new haircut, but you will know everything there is to know about Michael Waddell, even the stuff he doesn't know that you know. Like the time he was nearly locked up in the Ellerbe, North Carolina jail. Or the only time anyone has seen him cry in the last 15 years. And maybe, just maybe, you'll know what his plans are beyond this year, because the NFL doesn't wait long for cornerbacks with blistering speed and tight coverage skills.
They just better make sure that when they call his name up at that podium on draft day, whether it's this year or next year, that they use the right name.
Pete: Nobody calls him Michael. Down here, he's Rabbit. Always was, ever since his grandmother gave him that name. Something about the way he ran away when she was trying to give him a spanking.
Elisha: Man, could he run. Outran every one of us every time we raced. Never saw anybody drag him down from behind, that's for sure. You won't see it, either, because it's not going to happen.
Pete: When he got to running he would throw that head back and then you knew he was cutting it loose.
Elisha: Remember when we used to run on that street outside the house?
Pete: We'd be running, and Rabbit would stop and say, 'Hold on, man, I've got to take off my shoes.' He'd take them off and carry them in his hand and you'd see those feet going, 'slap-slap, slap-slap,' right down the road and he was gone, man. Fast like nobody I've ever seen.
Rumor has it that there are two people in the world who have caught Michael Waddell from behind, and neither instance happened on the football field. In addition to being a star football performer growing up in Rockingham, Waddell also ran track. According to Waddell's father, an athlete from Raleigh named Randy Pulley (who would later go on to play basketball at Saint Louis) caught him from behind in the 100 meters at an event in Virginia.
The elder Waddell, who is known to most in his hometown as Big Mike, laughs.
"Yeah, I never let him live that one down," he says.
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"Never seen that happen before," says close friend Vagas Jackson, a former Richmond County player who now plays linebacker for Wingate. "Never seen that happen since, either."
Rabbit made believers out of the Tar Heel football staff the summer before his senior season at Richmond County. Football camps used to be glorified daycare, but in the mid-1990's they evolved into virtual tryout camps for Division I prospects. It's the only chance for coaches to evaluate in person players they have mostly only seen on film. The young cornerback from Rockingham was well known to Carl Torbush and his assistant coaches, but they also knew that prep coaches have a tendency to exaggerate the attributes of their top players.
So when Waddell lined up to run the 40-yard dash that day in Chapel Hill and blistered down the track, his high school coach, Daryl Barnes, was reluctant to tell the Tar Heel coaches what time flashed on his stopwatch.
"I didn't want to tell anybody what he had run because he was my kid," Barnes said. "So I called Carl Torbush and [former defensive backs coach] Ron Case over and said, 'You time Waddell next time.' I think he just ran a great time but I'm not going to tell you what he ran."
Barnes had clocked Rabbit at 4.22 seconds in the 40, a scorching time that would have been the envy of most NFL defensive backs. When Waddell ran the sprint again, with Case and Torbush timing, he clocked a 4.19.
Thus was the legend of Rabbit Waddell born in Chapel Hill. As a senior, his speed dominated high school football in the fall of 1998. Waddell led Richmond County in rushing (1,508 yards on just 132 carries), receiving (401 yards on 20 catches) and scoring (194 points). He scored 32 touchdowns that year and finished his prep career with back-to-back state titles and a 31-game winning streak.
So it was no surprise that he was one of the most highly sought-after prospects in America. Nearly every school in the country sent him a letter, all trying to persuade him that he should visit their campus.
But Rockingham, which is straight down US-1, past the signs that read, "Custom Homes, $69,900" and "Let it rain, let it rain, open the floodgates of heaven," is Tar Heel country. So it's no surprise that when Florida State defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews paid a visit to the Waddell home one evening, he was greeted by an uninvited visitor when he got up to leave.
"I'll never forget that," said the elder Waddell. "Coach Andrews had made a really nice presentation about why they wanted Michael. When he finished, he started walking out the door and there was this big ol' SUV out on our curb. Then this big black guy gets out and says, 'Uh-huh, I see what you're doing, trying to steal one of our boys.'"
It was Carolina assistant Terry Lewis, who had heard the Seminole coach was in town and wanted to make sure the Tar Heels got the last word. The Heels also eventually got the last word on signing day. Waddell committed early to Carolina, then changed his mind and re-opened his recruitment. He took a visit to Tallahassee, where the Seminoles had a makeshift locker set up for him--right next to a locker featuring memorabilia from the patron saint of coverage cornerbacks, FSU alum Deion Sanders.
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"I wasn't fast at all as a kid. In tag, I always got caught and I could never catch anybody else. But then somehow it happened and I was like, 'Dang, I'm fast.'"
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Although his speed made him the crown jewel of that recruiting class, Waddell says he has no idea how it developed.
"I wasn't fast at all as a kid," he says. "In tag, I always got caught and I could never catch anybody else. But then somehow it happened and I was like, 'Dang, I'm fast.'"
Elisha: We've tried to get him in trouble, man. He won't do it.
Pete: He's got that quiet thing going on. Never talked much on the field even when we were kids.
Elisha: I played quarterback when we were growing up and all the other kids would be talking and Rabbit would just look at me, and I'd say, 'Shut up everybody. I'm throwing it to Rabbit.'
Pete: Big Mike kept him in line. Nobody growing up in that house would want to act up and get him mad. There was this tree branch one time, and we were going to walk out on it. We tried to get him to get out there and do it, and he said, 'No way, man, my dad would kill me.'
Elisha: Did he tell you about the candy?
Waddell doesn't volunteer the story about the candy. But his father does.
"He couldn't have been more than six years old," his father remembers. "I had him and some of his friends in the backseat of the car and I had to go into the store. They asked if they could get some candy, but I said no and left them in the car. When I got back, they were eating candy.
"I asked Michael, 'Where did you get that candy?' He didn't answer me. I said, 'How did you pay for it?' He didn't answer me. I said, 'Do you mean that you stole that candy?'"
The younger Waddell, having been apprehended but still possessing his natural instinct for survival, again declined to answer. But his father, who is a corrections officer in Rockingham County, had seen enough crimes to assess this scene. In the great tradition of small towns everywhere, he told his son to go pick out a switch. Before the youth could return with the tool, however, his father devised a new plan.
"He wasn't more than six years old, but you have to squash that stuff when they're little," his father says. "I knew the guy who ran the Ellerbe jail, so I took Michael up there, and I told the guy that I had a thief who had stolen some candy and we needed to lock him up. He took out his cuffs and started to lock him up, and I thought Michael was going to die."
He was never put in the cell, and he hasn't stolen anything since then. Point made for Big Mike.
His influence has stayed with his son even today. Before the Florida State game last year, other members of the secondary made a bet with Waddell. If the Tar Heels pulled the upset, he had to accompany them for a night on the town. That's why, with the shocking 41-9 score still on the Kenan Stadium scoreboard and fans storming the field, you could hear safety Dexter Reid's voice above the din, screaming, "Oh yeah, Rabbit! You're going out with us tonight! You've got to!"
He didn't. It wasn't to be the last time that Waddell declined to follow the influence of the other members of the secondary. Over the summer, Reid and the rest of the defensive backs decided to get tattoos. The chosen phrase was "Rude Boyz," which has been the moniker of choice for the Carolina DB's since the Omar Brown era. Reid believes he will get full participation from the secondary--except one....continued...
