Sooner Spectator welcomes Lydell Carr on Saturday [Archive]

Jay C. Upchurch

10/16/2008, 09:53 AM

Lydell is one of those guys who played a some great teams with some other really big-name players like Brian Bosworth, Keith Jackson, Tony Casillas and Jamelle Holieway... so he didn't get the publicity that other running backs have received at OU.

The truth is when Lydell Carr was a major reason why the Sooners won the 1985 national championship. He led OU in rushing that season, as well as the 1984 season.

Here is a story Sooner Spectator ran on Lydell back in our August 2008 issue:

The Stallion

A consummate team player, fullback Lydell Carr gave his best to the Sooners

By Rob Collins

Keith Jackson’s request was simple. Heading into the 1988 NFL Draft, Oklahoma’s All-America tight end wanted to race his roommate, fullback Lydell Carr.

Both were destined for professional football success after standout careers with the Sooners. Four years earlier, Carr and Jackson had become the first true-freshman duo in school history to earn spots in OU’s season-opening lineup.

Carr always was a team player. After leading the Enid Plainsmen to the Class 5A state championship in 1983, the featured tailback changed numbers and switched his position as the Sooners returned to the wishbone. His 61-yard touchdown against Penn State was the icing on the Orange Bowl cake in 1986, sealing a sixth national championship for Oklahoma.

The NFL was calling. A total of 17 teams committed to watch Carr work out when he set a Norman tryout date. If Lydell could run a routine 40-yard dash in 4.6 seconds, his agent said the rookie would be drafted in the mid-to-late first round. That meant a possible signing bonus between $800,000 to $1 million.

Carr was in the homestretch. But his teammate had a final request.
“No one knew my roommate, Keith Jackson, talked me into racing him inside the practice facility,” Carr said.

How could it hurt?

“As I was passing him, ‘Boom!’” Carr said. “You would think I had gotten shot.”

At the high school level, Carr was true standout. The 6-foot-2, 205-pound tailback was the Tulsa World’s Player of the Year and The Oklahoman’s Back of the Year. Enid’s offensive line only averaged 180 pounds, but it played much bigger.

“They just all came together,” Carr said. “I’d tell them, ‘Slow down, give me a crease, and I’ll get through there.’

“All those teammates blocked their hearts out.”

Carr started receiving letters from USC and Notre Dame as a sophomore. His prep career climaxed during his senior season in 1983 under the tutelage of head coach Ron Lancaster.

“Lydell was such a dominating player, but he was the most unselfish player on our team,” said Lancaster, who marvels at Carr’s stature to this day.

Carr had churned out 166 yards against the Midwest City Bombers in the Class 5A playoffs, setting the stage for a David vs. Goliath battle between the Plainsmen and the heavily favored squad from Tulsa’s Booker T. Washington High School. The Hornets, ranked No. 3 nationally by USA Today, were playing in their hometown.

Tulsa Washington averaged almost 300 pounds up front on both sides of the ball, Carr said, not to mention future OU teammate Patrick Collins in the Hornets’ backfield.

Carr heard the rumblings anticipating a possible Hornets blowout. Although OU was recruiting Carr and several Washington players, the Sooners were on the road at Hawaii during the state championship game and had to keep tabs via telephone.

On the game’s first play, Carr needed just 13 seconds to return the opening kickoff 90 yards. He would finish with 164 yards as Enid stunned the Hornets 14-0.

“They were all waiting patiently and calling us, trying to find out what the score was,” said Lancaster, now the coach at Broken Arrow High School. “I can still remember them calling (and) hollering in the background.”

Carr grew up watching the Sooners, and his father had always wanted him to attend OU. Carr narrowed his other four possibilities to Nebraska, Arkansas, Southern Methodist and Georgia, according to The Oklahoman.

The Georgia Bulldogs enticed Carr with phone calls by Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker. Lydell also contemplated the Cornhuskers, but realized Nebraska didn’t play freshmen. Carr also knew Thurman Thomas would attend Oklahoma State, so that fact helped rule out the Cowboys.

Negative recruiting perpetuated the rumor that departed tailback Marcus Dupree would be rejoining the Sooner squad, but Carr didn’t buy it. He did, however, want to be the featured back in the I-formation, according to Lancaster.

“Coach Switzer said I was his No. 1 recruit at tailback,” Carr told The Oklahoman in February 1984.

Following Dupree’s departure, Switzer wrote in “Bootlegger’s Boy” that the Sooners were “floating and scrambling,” searching desperately for an identity. It didn’t help when the Tulsa World ran the headline “Switzer admits job on line.”

During the recruiting process, Carr emphasized wanting his jersey to remain the No. 44 he wore in high school. The coaches said this would be no problem.

“I signed at a press conference and was presented a jersey with the No. 44,” Carr said. “Then I got a call from the equipment manager.”

The trainer called Carr to say his name was being taken off the No. 44 jersey. Carr said Switzer heard he was upset and called to clarify that the number was already requested by redshirt-freshman Brian Bosworth.
“I found out they were giving it to Boz,” Carr said.

“When I got there, Boz said ‘Hey rookie, trying to get my number?’”
Carr was the recipient of a one-two punch as he arrived on the OU campus. He learned the team was abandoning the I-formation to return to the wishbone. And he was moving to fullback.

“To this day, I wonder if I’d went to Georgia,” Carr said.

“But, I wouldn’t trade (OU) for anything.”

Lancaster recalls Switzer calling him after Carr committed to play at OU. He asked Lancaster if Carr would be able to play fullback in the wishbone successfully at the collegiate level.

The high school coach just laughed and assured Switzer that Carr would be the toughest freshman he had ever seen.

Carr responded to the team’s request by beefing up from 205 to 225 pounds.
“I had to,” said Carr of adding the extra weight and muscle. “It was punishing.”

Playing Nebraska as a true freshman, Carr remembers running up the gut and getting the snot knocked out of him by a 245-pound linebacker.
“I don’t mind telling you this — it brought tears to my eyes,” said Carr, adding that his teammates noticed and showed concern. “I said, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’”

In the second game of the ’84 season at Pittsburgh, Carr slashed his hand. Blood stained his pants, and the knuckle of his left index finger was ripped open like a playbook.

Lancaster recalls Carr running over Pitt with 27 carries for 137 yards. Switzer called Lancaster to tell him Carr was the toughest freshman he ever had.
“Lydell was the guy who made that offense go,” Lancaster said of the OU wishbone. “They had to tackle him.”

If Tim Lashar hadn’t booted a record-breaking four field goals against Penn State, Carr would’ve been the MVP in the 1986 Orange Bowl. Carr’s right-tackle run clinched Oklahoma’s 25-10 national championship victory over the Nittany Lions.

In 1987, Carr told The New York Times the punishment sustained by the fullback position made him consider leaving.

“When you get hit as much as I do, you think about it,” said Carr. “But I have no regrets. Two conference championships. A national championship, and I’m working on another. I can’t complain.”

According to Switzer, Carr was one of the toughest and most mature players ever to wear the Crimson and Cream.

Switzer offered up this quote about Carr in the book “Tales from the Sooner Sidelines,” penned by Sooner Spectator editor Jay C. Upchurch:
“He was one tough son of a bitch, a complete stallion from the day he arrived on campus.”

As the ’88 NFL Draft approached, Carr smelled the money. Coach John Robinson with the Los Angeles Rams told Carr he was projected for the first round. If the Rams didn’t take him, the Bengals and Redskins were waiting.

Before the combine, Jackson challenged Carr to a fateful race that tore the fullback’s hamstring. Carr treated the injury before the draft, but when he couldn’t run at the combine, he heard the whispers.

It was a nightmare.

“I battle that every day,” Carr admitted. “If I wouldn’t have run that race, how would things be now?”

The New York Jets flew Carr to the East Coast because they “liked to see their first-round draft picks,” but Carr’s leg did not respond. Nearly 20 teams committed to watch Carr work out, but he had to cancel.

Eventually, nine NFL teams flew to see a hobbled Carr run a 40-yard dash in 5.1 seconds.

Stanford’s Brad Muster was the first fullback drafted at No. 23 in the opening round of that year’s draft. When the New Orleans Saints took Carr in the fourth round, he received a modest $67,000 signing bonus, well short of the money he anticipated.

“I could never get that leg back to the way it was,” said Carr, who pulled it four times during his rookie season.

Carr never played for the Saints, but got a second chance when he signed as a free agent with the Phoenix Cardinals in 1989. That season, Carr played in five games before suffering a calf injury due to the fact he had been favoring his hamstring.

Stallings was fired during the following offseason, but new coach Joe Bugel expressed interest in Carr.

“He’s a tough nut and a good pass protector,” Bugel told the Associated Press. “He will move the pile. He’s not a flashy guy. He’s not going to run 50 yards every time he touches the football. But I think he’s going to hurt you running 4 yards a pop, and that’s what we’re looking for — a splatter type of guy.”

But he simply never recovered to the point where he was the same back he was in college. The Cardinals cut Carr in August 1990.

After decent stints with the Barcelona Dragons and the Ohio Glory in the World League of American Football, Carr gave the NFL one last try. He experienced a good camp with the Minnesota Vikings, where fellow running backs Roger Craig and Terry Allen were hurt.

“I took a hit from linebacker Jack Del Rio and someone else,” said Carr.
“That pretty much shut down the left side of my body. That’s when I called it quits.”

Barely four years after leaving OU, Carr’s playing days were over.
Today, Carr works as special finance director at Freeman Toyota in Hurst, Texas. He lives in nearby Plano, Texas, with his wife and three children. He frequently shares football stories on the phone with lenders. And he shows his battle scars to his 17-year-old son, a senior safety at Plano Senior High School.

Although his football career did not have the happy ending he had believe it would, Carr looks back on his time at Oklahoma with great fondness. He still ranks 10th on the Sooners’ all-time rushing leaders list with 2,726 yards.

“I still bleed that Sooner red,” Carr added.