Freddie Whittingham sits in the chair, hearing the same old question. He has heard it hundreds of times. People always ask the same thing.
How could he do it? How did it happen? What went wrong? What is he, a turncoat?For decades, the Whittingham family had a tradition for being defensive. They were linebackers. They hated running backs almost as much as they hated quarterbacks.
And then Freddie became one. A running back. A football player who lined up on that side of the ball. One of them.
The same inquiring minds that want to know why Richard Raskind became Renee Richards want to know why Freddie Whittingham became a running back.
Freddie's answer is actually rather simple.
"As far back as I ever remember," he says, "I carried the ball. I mean, the rest of the family needed somebody to tackle."
The wonder isn't why he defected to the offense, but that he lived to tell about it.
The Whittingham linebacker heritage goes like this: Fred Whittingham, Sr., the father of the family, played middle linebacker for 10 years in the NFL after playing his college career at BYU. He made tackles for the Rams, the Saints, the Eagles and the Cowboys, and enjoyed it immensely. Fred buried the needle on the mean meter as a player, after which he became a coach. He was BYU's linebacker coach and defensive coordinator until a few years ago, when he went to work for the Los Angeles Rams.
Kyle Whittingham, the oldest son, played linebacker for BYU through the 1981 season. At 5-11 and 225 pounds, he wound up as the WAC's Defensive Player of the Year, and was honorable mention All-America.
Cary Whittingham, the second oldest son, played linebacker for BYU through the 1985 season. At 6-2 and 236 pounds, he formed, along with Leon White and Kurt Gouveia, perhaps BYU's strongest linebacking unit ever, and he was taken in the ninth round of the NFL draft by Cincinnati.
Kyle played in the USFL for the Denver Gold and New Orleans Breakers. Cary didn't play fulltime as a pro. But in the NFL's strike season two years ago, both Kyle and Cary joined their dad with the Rams for a three-game stretch.
So it was into this mix that Freddie came, three years behind Cary, and seven years behind Kyle.
He was one of their earliest victims.
Out on the front lawn, they needed a tackling dummy.
It took with Freddie. Running with the ball. He stuck with it into high school, and turned it into his own particular art form.
He runs like, well, like he's a linebacker.
As he describes it, "I'd rather attack than run away."
As his dad describes it, "He runs like his mother."
That's a compliment. Fred says his wife, Nancy, has speed genes, and Freddie wound up with them. He uses them to get from north to south in a hurry.
"He still might have been a great linebacker," says Fred. "But to be honest, he needed to be a little bigger. So he's where he ought to be."
At 5-9 and 200 pounds, Freddie is on the small side of the linebacker scale.
"He's every bit as tough as his brothers or his dad," says Dick Felt, BYU's defensive coordinator. "But his skills and his size benefit the offense."
For proof of that, there's Freddie's stats while at BYU. He played sparingly as a freshman on the 1984 national championship team. Then, after an LDS mission, he led the team in rushing in 1987, again in 1988, and is leading the team in rushing yet again this season. Going into today's game against Wyoming, he has rushed for 1,186 yards as a Cougar - no small accomplishment at Pass U. - and he has caught more than 70 career passes for another 673 yards.
A double threat, he has turned himself into a genuine linebacker's nemesis.
Still, he has pangs about his identity. Here he is a senior, and he has precisely three career tackles to his credit - made out of necessity, when the opposition managed an interception. Kyle and Cary had that many tackles before they put in their mouthpieces. Freddie admits that, off the field, he feels "more comfortable with the guys who play defense."
But for both the Cougars and their leading runner, it's worked out well enough. They have no complaints. Freddie Whittingham's defection has been their gain.