AFTER SAMPLING all of the major professional sports, could it be that big Walter Watts - the XXXX-sized version of Bo Jackson - finally has found the right one?
Watts, the former University of Utah basketball player and professional baseball pitcher, is playing football these days for the Los Angeles Raiders, and maybe this time the sport will be a fit.Finally, he can eat what he wants without a certain basketball coach getting in his face. When he knocks someone down, no one whistles for a foul; coaches just smile.
No wonder Watts says, "I'm starting to like this game."
It all began when Watts was working out at a health club last winter with Ronnie Lott, the Raiders' All-Pro defensive back. Lott suggested that Watts try pro football.
This wasn't exactly a novel idea.
Watts had been hearing that kind of talk for years. He is 6-foot-7, and has weighed anywhere from 265 to 319 pounds since has freshman year at Utah. In other words, he looked like a football player. Every other day somebody asked The Question: Why don't you play football? Ron McBride, the Utah football coach, wondered the same thing and invited him to play for his team. NFL scouts asked Ute basketball coaches about their huge center, but Watts ignored all such talk and stuck with basketball.
Somehow when Lott suggested a career change, Watts listened. He asked the Raiders for a tryout, and they gave it to him. So what if he has played just one year of football in his life, six years ago as a 277-pound high school tight end. What other 6-foot-7, 300-pound man with shoulders as broad and straight as a picnic table can run 40 yards in 4.8 seconds and is athletic enough to play pro basketball.
"He's a big, good-looking guy with lots of ability, but he's real raw," says Raiders coach Art Shell.
Nevertheless, Watts so far has made the team as a defensive tackle. He survived Tuesday's roster cut - the next to last cut of training camp - and was placed on injured reserve. He broke a hand a couple of weeks ago after getting it stuck in a facemask during a scrimmage against the Dallas Cowboys.
"I'm on the team," Watts said, and then laughed, as if he too was amazed by this turn of events. "They didn't have to put me on injured reserve. They could have cut me. But they didn't want to lose their rights."
Watts, whose weight has fallen from 310 pounds to 295 in training camp, is a project and says so, but he's determined. Somewhere, somehow, he wants to earn his living playing sports, and it appears that football is his best chance of doing so.
When Watts came out of high school, he was recruited for baseball, basketball and football. He chose basketball, largely because he loved the sport's interaction with the crowds. It was more personable than playing on a distant outdoor field with a helmet on. "You can be seen in basketball," he explains. But he did retain baseball as a summer job.
Watts spent two summers pitching for minor league baseball teams in the Minnesota Twins organization. He spent his winters attending class and playing basketball for Utah. He reported for his freshman season weighing 319 pounds, and spent the rest of his career trying to control his weight to make his coaches happy. He found a mentor in Coach Rick Majerus, who prodded, pushed and counseled Watts to do two things: watch his weight and get his degree. He has done neither.
Majerus wondered how disciplined Watts would be when he no longer had the coach around to badger him. Soon after finishing his eligibility at Utah two winters ago, Watts left school still needing "30 to 40 more credit hours" to graduate, and his weight immediately began to climb.
Without a degree, Watts is banking on earning a living on an athletic field somewhere. He gave up baseball, although he still gets periodic invitations for tryouts. He played pro basketball through last winter. He signed with the Utah Jazz out of college and was one of the team's last cuts. He played instead for Grand Rapids of the Continental Basketball Association, and averaged 15 points and eight rebounds per game. When Watts was told he would have to split time with another player, he grew discontented. He had offers to play professional basketball overseas, but that was too far from home and family.
And then Lott proposed the old question: how about football? Watts left the CBA before the season was finished and reported to the Raiders.
"It's like skipping from kindergarten to 12th grade," says Watts of the jump from prep football to pro. "I'm a project. It's going to take me a year or two to learn . . . People tell me making it here is a long shot. But getting my weight down to 265 pounds in college, now that was a long shot."
And if he is cut by the Raiders? "I'll try for another team. I'm here now. I'm going all the way with it."
There are precedents. Manny Hendrix, a former Utah basketball player who never played college football, is a regular with the Dallas Cowboys. Cornell Green (Utah State) and Sam Clancy (Pitt) did the same thing.
"It's a lot different than basketball," says Watts. "I come home beat up. But it feels good to let myself go. I love that."