This pup ready to run with big dogs

Just how badly Georgia wanted — nay, needed — running back Isaiah Crowell to complete the promise of its 2011 signing class was evident last month.

The fans made their case Jan. 22 as Crowell, a Carver-Columbus standout on his official visit to the school, sat in the stands watching a UGA-Mississippi State basketball game. Ignoring the action on the court, the spectators broke into a spontaneous chant: “I-ZAY-UH! I-ZAY-UH! I-ZAY-UH!”

That next morning Mark Richt — the coach who takes stoicism to new frontiers, the one so criticized for his lack of sideline showmanship — staged an elaborate production for Crowell’s benefit.

The 18-year-old and his family were shown to Richt’s new office, overlooking the recently completed indoor practice facility. As they visited, the Crowells noticed activity down below. Players began filing onto the practice field.

“We got up and looked out,” said Debbie Crowell, Isaiah’s mother. “I didn’t know what was going on, but Isaiah could tell that they were getting into formation. And there wasn’t a tailback.”

The stage was set. Richt escorted the family down to the field. Crowell was handed a Georgia jersey — No. 1 on the back — and a helmet and asked if he wanted to take that empty spot in the backfield. Debbie Crowell remembers Richt painting the scene of next season’s opener against Boise State, asking her son if he could see himself in that jersey and helmet, behind that offensive line, starting his career in the din of the Georgia Dome.

“Yes, sir, I can,” Isaiah said.

“My baby was excited. He was ready to go,” Debbie said.

It was official: The hunt for a difference-making running back had turned the staid Richt into P.T. Barnum.

You know the rest.

Tailback U

Last Wednesday afternoon, at a Columbus banquet hall, with the ESPNU broadcasting the news to the National Signing Day cultists, Crowell held aloft a borrowed bulldog puppy as his way of announcing his choice of Georgia.

The Bulldog faithful immediately were lifted above the morass of the last two seasons and the embarrassment of most recently losing a bowl game to the Central Florida Whatevers.

And impartial observers were left to wonder how cool it might have been had Crowell gone with his other leading candidate — Alabama — and attempted to dead-lift a baby elephant.

The Tide’s Nick Saban certainly had put in his work wooing the Crowells. Just as Richt had done during his visit to Columbus, the Alabama coach met with Crowell’s mother at the assisted living facility where she works as a nurse/administrator and signed autographs for the residents. Debbie said she probably preferred Alabama in the end, but bowed quietly to her son’s decision.

The signing of Crowell satisfied deep Georgia cravings. The running game has been nothing of note since Knowshon Moreno went pro in 2008. Meanwhile, the Bulldogs bore witness this year to the immediate impact a star back can have. South Carolina freshman Marcus Lattimore — to whom the 5-foot-10, 210-pound Crowell is often compared — took the Gamecocks to their first SEC Championship Game and even converted Steve Spurrier into a proponent of the simple hand-off.

Then there is the symbolic importance of the position Crowell occupies, the chance to restore UGA’s status as “Tailback U.”

“(Such reputations) come and go like everything else,” said Vince Dooley, who coached the running back most responsible for that reputation, Herschel Walker. “That carries for a period of time and you might have a drop-off from that. Maybe Georgia did a little bit.”

“I liked Thomas Brown, Kregg Lumpkin — a lot of them,” Crowell said Wednesday, speaking more for his generation. “I never thought I’d be playing at the University of Georgia, but my dreams (about joining the line of Bulldogs backs) when I was younger are coming true.”

All that is asked of him now is to restore the high gloss to that near sacred tradition of Georgia runners, and to be the point man in a return to meaningfulness.

“I think I can help them, as much as I can. I’m going to try my best,” he said.

It is left to others — recruiting analysts who deemed him among the top backs in the country and Carver-Columbus coaches and teammates who went with him last season to the Class-AA semifinals — to describe just how Crowell might meet lofty expectation.

“Athletically, Isaiah can play with the best of them,” said his head coach at Carver-Columbus, Dell McGee. “He’s going to have to make sure he learns the inside and outside of the pass protection. Running with the football, that’s easy for him because he’s so instinctive. That comes so naturally.”

When asked how it was for high school opponents who tried to tackle Crowell, Georgia’s other signee out of Carver-Columbus, defensive back Quintavius Harrow, laughed. “I felt real bad for (would-be tacklers). When he ran up on somebody, I said they might as well go on and lay down because they’re going to get run over or get shook.”

No guarantees

Underscored by other backs currently on the Bulldogs roster, nothing is guaranteed as Crowell makes the transition to college football. Backs like Washaun Ealy and Caleb King, who signed with trumpets blaring, too, and have yet to achieve anticipated acclaim.

From what he knows about Crowell, former Bulldogs quarterback Buck Belue said what could separate him from other recent Georgia backs, “is something we haven’t had since Knowshon — elusiveness.”

Those around Crowell say he is an exceptionally quiet sort — the bulldog puppy stunt caught them all by surprise — and he already is well accustomed to outside pressures.

“Seems like he always has been in the media eye,” said his father, Chuck Crowell.

Not everyone in the family has become inured to public perception. His mother tells of crying after reading what some blog responders were writing about her son after Carver-Columbus lost in the state semis to Calhoun. That’s nothing compared to the scrutiny that awaits him in Athens. Isaiah simply advised her to change her reading habits.

So much can happen between signing day and opening day, and so much needs to happen in turning a high-caliber recruit into a legitimate big man on campus.

“A lot depends on who’s blocking up front for you,” began Dooley. “Herschel, when he came, he inspired blockers. But he had a pretty good offensive line his very first year.

“So much of it has to do with attitude, how badly do you want it and how much you want to work to be as good as you can be. Herschel was awfully good but there was nobody who was more self-disciplined or who worked harder or had a better attitude.

“Then, of course, you have to be relatively free from injury.”

Presently, in a cold winter following a bleak season, the warm whisper of potential is all fans have to see them through to next kickoff.

Today, Bulldog fans celebrate the signing of a player for whom a head coach staged gridiron kabuki to attract, as well as a recruiting class that so-called experts have judged prime.

Some have gone so far as to call Crowell the centerpiece to a “Dream Team” of Bulldog recruits.