Rating the linebackers

He wears the term "throwback" as if it has been placed over his shoulders as some mantle of potential greatness. He relishes the imagery and the connotation of the two syllables like a player imbued with the nastiness of those middle linebackers who lent the position its gritty reputation. He clings to the instant respect the word implies like a shipwreck victim hanging for dear life onto a hunk of floating driftwood.

For former Brigham Young defender Rob Morris, the premier middle linebacker prospect in this year's draft, there is no higher honor than to be regarded as a little off-kilter. You know, in much the same manner as Dick Butkus or Ray Nitschke or Jack Lambert were viewed as social misfits, so does Morris hope to be remembered.

To be assessed as a borderline zany, only one misstep shy of being strapped into a straitjacket and led off to some institution exclusively reserved for middle linebackers who have lost their mental equilibrium, would be like Valhalla for this maniacal Mormon.

That isn't to suggest Morris is not a man of substance. After all, he has a very high grade-point average and a well-tested social conscience. Last season, he passionately questioned the strict honor code at Brigham Young and expressed concern that black players in the mostly white campus environment were victimized by a quiet prejudice. His points were so eloquently made that they were published in a local newspaper and precipitated a university review of its support system for athletes.

But it seems Morris is almost embarrassed by such ennobling events and prefers concentrating on perpetuating his reputation as the demented defender.

To him, the outside linebackers in the draft pool are members of the same fraternity, but only like half-brothers. Players such as LaVar Arrington (Penn State), Brian Urlacher (New Mexico), Keith Bulluck (Syracuse) and Julian Peterson (Michigan State) might all go off the board ahead of him. But those guys are the "pretty boy linebackers" of the draft, a new breed of "edge" player that did not exist when the game was invented. They play a style that Morris, a mano a mano kind of warrior, wants little part of. Any man who plans to earn a living by trying to simulate a train wreck approximately a thousand times over the next 10 autumns, Morris reasoned recently as he contemplated his future, earns the right to be labeled an idiot. Refer to him as eccentric, he acknowledged, and Morris is liable to thank you for having been politically correct. Note he exited the field with blood dripping from somewhere or snot running down his face and he is quick to embrace the throwback image.

"It's really an honor to be thought about that way," said Morris, who began his BYU career as a fullback and switched to the defensive side of the ball only a couple months later. "Let me tell you, a guy has to work at it pretty hard to nurture that kind of image, and, believe me, I have. It's a little like some of those relief pitchers who come into a game looking wild and half-bonkers, you know? That gives them an edge over the hitters. Well, I think being known as a little bit of a wild man helps me on the field. If (opponents) think I'm nuts, heck, that's a compliment."

Make no mistake about it, Morris is all about assault and flattery. Over his final three seasons, he averaged 110 tackles. His game was all about knocking opposing running backs on their butts and then listening to them kiss his rear end with praise the next day. Oh, yeah, in between he found time to create plenty of reasons for believing his deck didn't have the normal 52 cards. One card it definitely included, though, was the Joker.

Despite a conservative religious upbringing that included the normal two-year Mormon mission, his in Canada in 1994 and '95, Morris has done about everything conceivable, it seems, to test the limits of social convention in the staid community of Provo, Utah.

"He takes pleasure taking it all to the extreme," said former roommate John Tait, the former BYU offensive tackle who was selected by Kansas City in the first round of the 1999 draft.

The craziest stunt, arguably, came when the roommates were visiting the Everglades and Tait wanted a picture of Morris with an alligator. Morris leaped over a fence to get closer to a swamp and suddenly found himself eyeball to eyeball with a 7-foot gator. For one of the few times in his life, he had encountered a critter he didn't want to tackle. Morris ran a lot faster that day, he has admitted, than he has ever sprinted in the 40-yard dash. Even the still pictures of the episode, Tait said, howling at the memory, were hilarious.

Said Morris: "I never knew an alligator could move so well. But those suckers can run. It was all I could do to get away. It wasn't too comfortable being the 'chasee' instead of the chaser."

His other antics have included painting his toenails, eating out of a dog bowl, leading a dozen of his teammates in a hair-bleaching ritual and surfing on the roof of Tait's pickup truck. He also jumped into the swimming pool of his apartment building from a window of his third-story loft. You want to talk about degree of difficulty, try that swan dive sometime, folks.

To help promote him last season for the Butkus Award, which goes to the best linebacker in the country, the Brigham Young sports information office distributed wooden whistles to the media and season-ticket holders. They took their cue from a Morris interview in which he likened his sacking the quarterback to "a freight train hitting a Yugo," and urged fans to toot their whistles every time Morris made a tackle. The sound was so annoying to Morris, however, he smashed one of the whistles on the sideline and begged fans for silence.

"The truth is," said wide receiver Margin Hooks, "that whole whistle thing was too cute for Rob. I mean it's almost like he wished he'd said, 'You know, sacking the quarterback is kind of like dismembering somebody.' Then they would have handed out hatchets and he'd have loved it. He is a great guy, but you don't want to (mess) with him on the field because he works himself up into such a frenzy. But I think most linebackers are a little half-loose or have something crazy in their background."

Penn State's LaVar Arrington is expected to be the top linebacker drafted Saturday.(Allsport)

Besides the intense Morris, this year's draft certainly has its share of players who could qualify for that kind of status. Arrington is infamous for his lack of discipline on and off the field, a shortcoming that was always a source of irritation to Penn State coach Joe Paterno. There might be no bigger trash talker in the draft than Arrington, who also has been known to deliver the more-than-occasional cheap shot.

Matt Beck, a middle linebacker from the University of California, was arrested for DUI in high school and was a self-proclaimed "over the edger" as a kid.

Bulluck of Syracuse also has a DUI arrest, and even Dustin Lyman of Wake Forest, who was raised in a straight-laced and rural environment, allows to having run with a suspect bunch in the summer before college.

Given the revelations involving Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis in the wake of his arrest for murder, the NFL scouts are investigating even more closely a player's background. But the fact is, league teams, while they deny it, want their linebackers to have an element of deranged in their gene pool. One general manager agreed with Morris' assessment that most of the linebackers in the Hall of Fame were sinister characters who learned to channel their rage.

"Hell, you wouldn't take a guy off his rocker or a menace to society," the general manager said. "But you want a guy with an attitude and some nastiness in his background. You want a player who has some street smarts and, sometimes, you only get those one way."

Coming Tuesday: The defensive back prospects.