Tigers by the Tail : Four Pacific Players Are Looking to Make Their Mark in the NFL, but It’s a Longshot That Any Even Will Be Drafted

STOCKTON — “Touch your nose to the grass.”

Greg Bishop does as he is told, contorting his 6-foot-6 frame from a sitting position until he is sniffing soil on a soccer field.

Later, on this same field, he will waddle backward, bounce forward, and eventually grab the neck of Keith Rowen. They will shuffle, as if dancing.

Rowen, the offensive line coach for the Atlanta Falcons, is on the road in search of offensive lineman for today’s NFL draft.

This, the University of the Pacific, is his last stop.

Bishop, one gets the feeling, is his last resort.

“I’ll do whatever they want,” said Bishop, an all-conference tackle in a weak conference. “Just, whatever.”

On the other side of this tiny campus, past weathered brick dormitories and underneath lush sycamore trees, sits running back Ryan Benjamin.

No coaches, only scouts, have come to test him. Few look very closely at a 5-foot-7, 186-pound player unless he can kick.

Benjamin was a second-team All-American last fall, the first player since Marcus Allen at USC to lead the nation in all-purpose yardage in consecutive seasons. Yet he wonders if he will ever get closer to the NFL than his daydreams.

“I’ll be walking down the street and all of a sudden I’ll stop and think, ‘Man, what would it be like if somebody said, “Let’s take a chance on Ryan Benjamin,” ’ “ he said. “Just one chance.”

Several blocks away, driving a catering truck to earn extra money, is quarterback Troy Kopp. He is another Pacific star who is tired of hearing people tell him no.

After overcoming the pains of his much-publicized homelessness while performing as a star quarterback at Mission Viejo High, Kopp began this season as the NCAA’s top returning passer in every statistical category.

But an ankle injury and mediocre postseason play in all-star games has turned a certain high-round pick into an uncertain, sometimes bitter young man who has dropped out of school because he can’t concentrate on anything but getting drafted.

“I wonder, when it is ever going to be easy for just a little bit?” he said.

An hour away in Oakland, the fourth member of “the Pacific Four” is worrying so much about the NFL that he is waking up in the middle of the night.

He is Aaron Turner, the most prolific receiver in college football history, with career records for catches, yards and touchdowns.

“All of a sudden I was thinking, what would it be like to walk into an NFL locker room and be part of that team,” he said. “Couldn’t go back to sleep until 5.”

If only the scouts, who question his speed, dreamed with him.

Contrary to what will be preached by ESPN today, the NFL draft is about more than impact players and expensive first-rounders and big men holding up jerseys in front of podiums.

It is about equal opportunity. It is about players from colleges whose teams dress in P.E. locker rooms finally receiving a chance to compete on a level playing field with those from Nebraska.

For the four celebrated seniors from University of the Pacific, the second-smallest Division I school in the nation with an enrollment of 4,000, it is even more than that.

After overcoming hardships, it is their chance to get even.

“The one thing we share is that we all have something to prove,” Turner said.

But will they get a chance to prove it?

In a 12-round draft, all four probably would have been selected. But the recently signed labor agreement reduced the draft to eight rounds, making their situations more precarious.

That change was made at the request of the players, who wanted to give college athletes more freedom to pick their teams as undrafted free agents.

The Pacific Four is not completely buying that.

“We know that it is probably better to be a free agent than an eighth-round pick,” Benjamin said. “But after all this time, it would be nice to feel wanted.”

A survey of league officials and observers reveals what the Pacific Four already knows. They are discussed in terms of who has the smallest chance of getting drafted.

“The least chance is that quarterback (Kopp),” said Joel Buchsbaum, nationally recognized draft expert for Pro Football Weekly. “He’s just not that good.”

Buchsbaum added: “The second-least chance of getting drafted is that running back (Benjamin). His size. Then there’s that wide receiver (Turner). Speed is an issue.”

It is agreed that Bishop has the best chance of getting picked, but only because he is an expert long snapper for punts and field goals, a rarity in the NFL.

“I think Bishop will definitely get drafted, I just don’t know where,” the Falcons’ Rowen said. “There just aren’t many guys like him.”

That is true in many ways.

Bishop may be the only player drafted who walks with a slight limp even when uninjured. Because of a bone defect, he has been unable to straighten his left leg since birth.

It has never affected his mobility. But it also never did wonders for his ego.

“When I was younger, the kids used to say I ran like a duck,” he said.

When he was recruited heavily by California during his senior season at nearby Lodi High, he decided not to run.

He enrolled at Pacific because his family was nearby. Also because his father, Larry, a former Tiger player, is so dedicated to the place that he donates his time as a general contractor on most of the school’s remodeling projects.

But sometime during his four-year career here, during which the Tigers went 14-32, Bishop questioned that decision.

As the campus grew more beautiful and stately, reinforcing an academic tradition that dates back to 1851, the football program grew more isolated.

Student apathy and constant debates over whether to disband the program threatened to tarnish the memories of former coach Amos Alonzo Stagg and former star players Eddie LeBaron and Dick Bass.

“But then I would look up and see my dad working on one of the buildings and I would think, ‘He has so much pride in this place, it must be something special,’ ” Bishop said.

All of which will be little consolation if he doesn’t receive a phone call from an NFL team today or Monday.

“A lot of guys say whatever happens, happens,” he said. “But to us, getting drafted does matter.”

Ryan Benjamin first realized the odds he faced when he shared a hotel room with Richie Anderson, highly regarded Penn State running back, earlier this spring at the national scouting combine in Indianapolis.

“He was getting all kinds of phone messages from coaches and scouts wanting to talk to him,” Benjamin said. “Me, I kind of got, well, none.”

But that silence isn’t new to him.

“Jim Sweeney (Fresno State’s coach) once told me I was too small to play for him,” Benjamin said. “People are always saying that. It’s sad, really. I guess I’ll just have to show everybody again.”

The person he really wants to show is Willie Williams, the great-grandfather who helped raise him several hours south of here in Pixley.

It was Williams and his great-grandmother who urged him to challenge himself as a runner, when he was barefoot and racing other children up the crumbling street in front of their house in that town of 1,500.

Today his great-grandmother is dead and Benjamin has completed two seasons unparalleled by any other all-purpose running back in NCAA history.

His career average of 237.79 all-purpose yards is also the best in NCAA history, heading a list that includes O.J. Simpson in fourth place and Herschel Walker in sixth.

But Williams, who can neither read nor write, still lives in the same house in Pixley, often depending on the kindness of neighbors to help him through the day.

“He is 90 now, and I would really like to do something for him,” Benjamin said. “He was the one always yelling at me that I could beat my brother up the street. He knows that I’ve never gotten anything for free.”

Troy Kopp is not expecting the best. In every other critical juncture in his life, results have been a football field short of expectations.

As a senior in high school, hoping for a baseball career, he wasn’t drafted until the 58th round by the Montreal Expos.

Then, hoping for a big-time college career, he watched Tennessee stop recruiting him at the last minute, leaving him for Pacific.

He had one more chance to play baseball after his freshman season at Pacific, when he was drafted in the 15th round by the Expos. But the bonus money, $10,000, wasn’t enough to pull his family out of debt.

“Because so many things have never worked out in my life, when I get down to these situations, I get scared,” Kopp said. “I don’t think I trust a lot of people. I’m always trying to make sure I don’t get burned.”

At least his family life, which included summers spent living in public parks during high school, has settled down.

His mother has a job, and an Orange County apartment for her and his two younger brothers.

It is his career that has become a mess.

After setting national records in his sophomore season and earning national ranking his junior year, he was hurt last fall by an ankle injury suffered from playing, of all things, walleyball--volleyball on a racquetball court.

He threw for only 1,670 yards, less than half of his previous two seasons’ totals. He threw for only nine touchdowns, less than one-third of his output the previous two years.

“Now everybody is knocking me,” said Kopp, who is 6-2. “I’m not the fastest, or tallest, and I had weak competition.”

He paused, and his mellow voice turned sharp.

“Somebody gives me a chance, I’ll prove something,” he said. “Then I will take care of my family. None of us deserve to struggle with all of this forever.”

Aaron Turner has been so embarrassed by some of his team’s struggles at Pacific that last season he even turned down an invitation to be one of the guests of honor at his high school’s awards banquet in Pittsburg, Calif.

Also invited, you see, were some football stars from the University of California, which had defeated Pacific, 86-34.

“Sometimes I regret not being able to show all my talents better,” Turner said. “But then, sometimes I think Pacific was the best place for all of us.”

Turner said other collegiate stars he met at all-star games were awed by his 266 catches, 4,345 yards and 43 touchdowns, all records.

“But then they would start talking about things they get at their schools, all the extra benefits from a big school,” Turner said. “I told them I didn’t get a lot of those things at my school, and they would laugh.”

Like the other Pacific seniors, Turner realizes that draft day is his chance to settle the score. His wife is even taking two days off from her job as a cosmetics manager at a local department to watch television with him.

“And besides,” said his wife, Maria, “if something doesn’t happen, you’ve got other things you can do.”

“I hope so,” Turner said, the bravado leaving his voice. “I hope so.”