Player Spotlight: Brad White
9/15/2002 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 15, 2002
By Sam Walker
Although Brad White played in the game, he has watched on videotape of Wake Forest's 42-41 season-opening loss to Northern Illinois eight times. He'll finish off homework about midnight and then pop the tape into the VCR and just watch. Sometimes he'll watch with teammates, and other times he just watches alone. Each time it's just as painful as the night it actually happened.
Understand that Brad White had neither played in a college football game nor real football game in two years. Seeing his first action since high school in Wake Forest's 2002 season opener was a moment for which he had longed. The result was far from what he had envisioned.
"I just want to see how close we came to victory," White said when asked why he watches the game over and over again. "We just gave up some big plays. We didn't play horrid. There were a lot of good things, so I like to look at the good things and get fired up about the bad things. I played in three state championship games in high school and lost all three, my senior year losing in double overtime, and this loss hurt the worst. On the sideline watching the two-point conversion fail, it was like someone took my heart out and stomped on it. So I watch that game, and I'll do whatever it takes not to have that feeling again."
White has traveled a long road just to get to play Division I football. It was a dream on which he refused to give up, and it was finally realized when he landed on the Wake Forest campus last year as a transfer from the University of Georgia.
White initially committed to play football at Yale of the Ivy League. But he turned down their offer because it didn't fulfill his dream. "Needless to say, not everybody was thrilled," White said. "People thought I was crazy leaving the Ivy League, leaving a great future after college. I was going to be able to play all four years no problem at Yale. The coaches were surprised I turned that down. But I'd go to sleep thinking it just didn't feel right. Worse comes to worse I could always go back, so I went to Georgia."
White's name surfaced in the SEC because he had a scholarship offer to Vanderbilt. But Georgia kept "popping up," and although the Bulldogs said they liked his tape and wanted him to come, they told him they would not give him a scholarship. Joe Tereshinski, Georgia's recruiting coordinator at the time, told him he had a chance to earn a scholarship, and that was all he needed to hear.
"I played pretty well and Coach (Jim) Donnan called me in and told me that he couldn't offer me a scholarship in the fall, but that if I would keep playing I could have one in the spring," White said. "That was a big motivation for the rest of the season to work. I knew I was going to redshirt. But Coach Donnan and I really hit it off."
But after Donnan's contract was bought out and Mark Richt was brought in to head the Bulldogs' football program White's future at Georgia became uncertain. During his stint at Georgia, White got to know Coach Brad Lambert, who was the defensive backs coach on Donnan's staff. Lambert joined the newly hired Jim Grobe at Wake Forest as a linebacker coach when Donnan's staff was let go, and Lambert quickly told Grobe about a walk-on he watched at Georgia.
"He didn't feel like he wanted to be there if Coach Donnan wasn't going to be there," Lambert said. "When this opportunity came up, I talked to Coach Grobe and Brad, and it worked out well for him. Down at Georgia, some of our guys who were redshirts, we'd take them out and let them play live once a week, and he was one who stood out. So we talked about as a staff down there that he was going to be a factor for us and saw him as a good player. I was able to go to Coach Grobe and say here's a good guy, who's a good student and has great character and just based on what he was able to do in the fall at Georgia felt like he was going to be a good player."
White and Lambert got to know each other basically because of one play. A cover three where the middle linebacker stays vertical on the tight end was something White covered well. It was also a play most of the starters had trouble covering. "That always made it easy on the secondary so he'd always say great job," White said. "Pretty much that one play was a big reason we got to know each other."
At the end of the 2000 regular season, Georgia had earned an Oahu Bowl bid, and it was already known that that would be Donnan's last game as head coach at Georgia. Before the bowl game, Georgia celebrated its football accomplishments at a senior gala where 1,500 boosters dined with the players in a huge auditorium. White was named scout defensive player of the year and had to give a speech in front of the team and boosters. Looking back, White says it was the turning point.
"Here were all these boosters looking to hype Georgia football, and all the players were so pro-Donnan," White said. "The seniors were ripping the administration, and it was getting crazy. But then I get up there, and they think at least he's going to be tame because I still have four years, and I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot. I get up there and say, 'I've had a great time at Georgia and want to thank Coach Gibbs and Coach Donnan for all their support of me, but I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to stay.' That's how I ended it, and 1,500 mouths dropped. Then, there was sort of a golf clap. It was odd coming back down because we all had to sit at a table with 10 boosters.
"But as I was walking back to my car after that gala, Coach Lambert told me wherever he ended up I could follow him. I thought it was a nice gesture. But on the flight back from Hawaii, he came to my seat and told me he was working on something and wanted my home phone number."
Lambert called White at midnight following the Florida State-Oklahoma national championship game and told him he had a scholarship waiting and that he was the new linebackers coach at Wake Forest. "At best I was thinking I'd end up at a Division III school. I had wanted to come to Wake Forest first off, but Coach Caldwell had stopped recruiting me. But I was from Rhode Island and only three people from Rhode Island got football scholarships to Division I school in the 1990s."
White accepted Lambert's offer the next day and then flew back to Georgia to settle his affairs. He told Tereshinski he was leaving, and Tereshinski immediately wanted to talk Richt into giving White a scholarship for the spring. But at that point, the decision had already been made. He was coming to Wake Forest.
White sat out the 2001 season as part of the NCAA's transfer rule. He lost one year by deciding to go to Wake Forest, but played on the scout team for a season, learning the Wake Forest defense and working out in the weight room. Then at Northern Illinois, he got his first crack at live action in two years. In his first collegiate game, White finished with seven tackles from his inside linebacker spot and finished as the team's fifth-leading tackler.
"Coach Lambert's advice before the game was, 'Brad, just don't hyperventilate after the first two plays. You're going to be so hyped up and your heart rate is going to be going 200 beats a minute," White said. "It was, but after that first series it was just football."
"I know it was nerve wrecking for him because he had never played college football," Lambert said. "We felt like he was going to play well going in, and he had done it in practice but hadn't done it in a game. There was still the unknown, but you felt good about it based on the past. Then he got in the game and played well. He wants to know everything. He's going to work and watch tape, and he really gives himself a chance through preparation to make plays. He's really got the whole package."
The next step for White is to play well and win a game. He said he's not focused on trying to be the team's leading tackler or trying to stand out in any way. But he does want to do what it takes to get Wake Forest to a bowl game. It's the kind of attitude that Coach Jim Grobe likes, and he seemed pleased to have gotten White from Rhode Island via the University of Georgia.
"I trusted Brad (Lambert) and he said Brad (White) was the right character guy, was a good student and was going to be a heck of a football player," Grobe said. "He did a good job for us on our scout team last year, never whined or complained, gave our offense a great look every day. The thing that he did was actually improve last year even though he wasn't able to play in games. He had a really good spring, is a hard worker in the weight room and does things right on and off the field. For a first game back after two years, he played pretty good.
"He's got the talent to get better and be a good player... There are guys who are bigger, stronger and faster but never develop into good players because they don't work hard enough. Brad has all the right attributes and intangibles you look for in a linebacker, plus he's got good height, good size potential - he's not the biggest guy in the world right now - but he's got the potential to get bigger and he runs well."
White has big shoes to fill. He is playing in the spot that Marquis Hopkins held a season ago. Hopkins finished the 2001 season as the Deacons' leading tackler. But White has something going for him that probably no other player in the country has. He possesses a two-year itch to play college football that just one game can't begin to scratch.
"There was no question (he wanted to play badly), he was dying last year on the scout team," Grobe said. "It was just eating him up that he had to sit another year. But he's paid his dues for a year at Georgia, paid his dues for a year here, and there's probably not another player on our football team that's enjoying playing any more than he is right now."