After challenges, Morehouse's Brack finds balance

By Sekou Smith

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The hardest part of the journey for Morehouse quarterback William Brack is over.

Finding the right fit, as a student and athlete, wasn’t as easy as he had planned.

The Ivy League school he dreamed of attending, the games he dreamed of playing and the fun he believed he would have doing it all never happened.

But as countless others before him have learned, the path from high school football hopeful to college starter often is a long and treacherous one.

That’s why Brack will take the field in the Maroon Tigers’ season opener Saturday against Benedict College knowing he has earned the right to run the show.

“The roller-coaster ride I went through to get here, particularly last season, definitely matured me and helped me get my priorities in order,” said Brack, one of six Maroon Tigers on the preseason first-team All-Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. “For the longest time I had football at the top, but now that I have everything in order, things are running a lot smoother.”

A junior transfer from Jackson State, Brack didn’t break into the lineup until the homecoming game last season against Albany State, a 24-19 win. Morehouse won its final three games with Brack at the controls. He was the spark Morehouse coach Rich Freeman said his team desperately needed late in a tumultuous season.

The Maroon Tigers started the 2008 season 3-1 and then lost three straight games before Brack took over.

“We were a team that made too many mistakes,” Freeman said. “We had close to 40 turnovers. We just got sick and tired of being sick and tired. That’s the truth. And William’s someone we went to at the end of the season, and he brought stability back to our football program. He didn’t have as much talent as the person he beat out, but he was disciplined and a great fit for our team.”

Brack finished the season on a tear. He passed for 336 yards and three touchdowns and ran for three more, including the game-winner in a 58-55 overtime win over Kentucky State in the season finale.

It was a complete turnaround after Brack began the season fourth on the depth chart and worked at linebacker and safety on the scout team in practice and was not bad for a guy whose coach at Carver High in Memphis told him he wasn’t good enough to play quarterback at the college level.

Cornell recruited Brack despite his high school coach’s doubts. After a visit to the pristine campus in upstate New York he was sold.

“It’s still one of the prettiest college campuses I’ve seen,” Brack said. “That was my plan from my junior year of high school until late in my senior year, but my girlfriend got pregnant and everything changed. I wanted to be within driving distance from my son.”

Jackson State was close and they had an opening at quarterback, but the arrival of several transfers complicated things later, and Brack’s search for the right fit began again.

Freeman recruited Brack out of high school, when Freeman was an assistant at Lane College.

“I always told him I’d run into him somewhere down the line,” Freeman said. “He was playing behind some good [Division I] transfers at JSU and they won the [SWAC] championship that year. And I think William just had it in his head that he wanted to play right away. So he contacted me and we went from there.”

Still, he encountered some bumps along the way. He was late for a practice and a weight-training session and found himself at the bottom of the depth chart at the end of preseason camp. It was a humbling blow after he spent the entire summer studying film and learning the nuances of the offense in between working two jobs.

“It was depressing after I sacrificed most of last summer getting ready for the season,” Brack said. “It was rough mentally, to go from the supposed ‘starting guy’ to fourth string. I tuned out for a minute, but I got back and starting watching film and refocused. Everything just aligned at the right time. I got into the mix in that homecoming game and that was it.”

William Brack file

Position: Quarterback

Class: Junior

Size: 6-foot-1, 220-pounds

Hometown: Memphis

Major: Finance

Finishing kick: Brack completed 55 of 110 passes for 790 yards and 8 TDs and ran for 3 more scores in leading the Maroon Tigers to three straight wins to finish the 2008 season.

Morehouse season opener

Who: Benedict College

When: 7 p.m. Saturday.