Don Williams column: A day for Zach, for Texas Tech football and for all of West Texas
The list of all-time lettermen in the Texas Tech football media guide runs 11 pages of names in tiny type. That doesn't even count the few thousand more who dotted the roster as walk-ons without making the lettermen's list for posterity.
Tech has fielded a college football team for 99 seasons, even before the A-J's Collier Parris had the idea to call them the Red Raiders.
Only one of those who suited up in the scarlet and black is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and it's fitting that Zach Thomas, West Texas born and bred, be the first.
What a pathway to the immortals: Two major-college scholarship offers, fifth-round draft pick to the NFL, a Hall of Famer in his 10th year of eligibility, just before he turns 50.
But then, Zach never did stuff the easy way.
Zach Thomas almost didn't make it, much less to Texas Tech football
On Saturday, leading off the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Canton, Ohio, Thomas noted it was 27 years to the day that Dolphins coach Jimmy Johnson entrusted him to be starting middle linebacker as a rookie. After that thank-you, Zach sent his next to the Lord.
"At 2 years old, I was run over by a pickup truck," Thomas told the crowd, "but you know what saved me that day? Dirt. If it was on concrete or pavement, I wouldn't be standing here right now."
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Given that reprieve, Thomas began making his own luck playing football, first in White Deer, then in Pampa, then at Tech, then during a 13-year NFL career spent mostly in Miami. As a linebacker who didn't look the part, he had to create his own workaround.
Admirers believed he had sublime instincts for the position. Thomas says otherwise. If he considered himself tops at anything, that trait was relentless film study, to the point he could detect cues for what play was coming before the snap.
"I wasn't the biggest," Thomas said when he went into the College Football Hall of Fame. "I wasn't the fastest. I wasn't the strongest, and I definitely wasn't the smartest. But the one thing I was, I was the most confident, and it was all from preparation alone."
Zach never fussed about all those years he was up for the Hall of Fame and didn't get in. Given where he'd come from, he once told me he considered it a win just to be in the conversation.
Even Texas Tech football coaches weren't sure about Zach Thomas
He worked all the angles. When Thomas committed to the Red Raiders, aware Tech coaches had been hesitant to offer him a scholarship, I wrote that the kid cut like a tree stump had "pedestrian speed." Years later, his greatness established with the Dolphins, Thomas would periodically reference that specific knock, "pedestrian speed," when the subject of his motivation came up.
Unlike many athletes, Thomas never pretended to have not read what was written about him.
On his rare occasions of so-so play, when he fell short of the standards he set for himself, Thomas explained, he'd pull out clips of stories that lauded him. And when things were going swell — maybe he'd been named All-Southwest Conference or All-America or All-Pro — he'd reread ones that detailed his shortcomings.
Never wanting to lose his edge. Ever on the hunt for motivation.
He did it so well, now he has a bust in Canton. Speaking of numbers, how many would you figure have ever played football in America? Well, Thomas is one of 371 judged to have done it better than all the rest.
No need to bring up his pedestrian speed anymore.
Now he's on a pedestal where he belongs.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Don Williams column: A day for Zach, for Texas Tech football and for all of West Texas
