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Herschel Walker (born March 3, 1962 in Wrightsville, Georgia) is a former professional American football player in the United States Football League and the National Football League.

College (1980-1982)

In college football, he played running back for the University of Georgia, where he was an All-American and won the 1982 Heisman Trophy. Walker's freshman season in 1980 is widely regarded as one of the best seasons ever by a first-year player where he was teammates with Buck Belue, Lindsay Scott, and Jimmy Womack. His college career is also widely considered to have been one of the best in American college football history. In its list of the 100 greatest college football players ever, CollegeFootballNews.com ranked Walker #2; ESPN ranked him #1.

In the formation of USFL, he saw an opportunity to do something then forbidden by NFL rules, namely, to turn professional after the end of his junior season rather than wait for his collegiate class to graduate (four years after the high-school graduation of his peer group). He also sought to choose where he would play professionally, as he felt he could make considerable money from product endorsements; as he was quoted on one occasion: "I don't know if I would want to play in the NFL unless it was for the two New York teams or the Dallas Cowboys." (As it turned out, however, Walker attracted only one major advertising deal, in a joint promotion by McDonald's and athletic-shoe manufacturer adidas; in the ad, Walker's line was, "First the Big Mac meal—then the adidas deal," referring to discount coupons on adidas merchandise that accompanied the purchase of a Big Mac at McDonald's).

USFL (1983-1985)

With endorsement considerations in mind, Walker signed with the New Jersey Generals in 1983, owned by Oklahoma oilman J. Walter Duncan, who after the 1983 season sold the team to real-estate mogul Donald Trump. In order to circumvent the league-mandated $1.8-million salary cap, Walker signed a personal services contract with Duncan (later compensated by Trump) to the protest of no one, as the other owners appreciated Walker's name value to the league. Similar arrangements were made later when other big-name college stars signed with the league. Although this move was challenged in court, Walker and the USFL prevailed, and Walker began play with the Generals.

He went on to win the USFL rushing title in 1983 and 1985 and in the latter year also gaining over 4,000 yards. He holds the Pro Football Record for Single-Season Rushing Yards with 2,411 in 1985. In total, he had more than 5,500 yards rushing during his three seasons with the Generals. In 1983, he rushed for more than 1,800 yards in 18 games. In his second pro season, his rushing yardage dropped to 1,250, but he caught passes for more than 800 giving him over 2,000 yards in total offense.

NFL (1986-1997)

The NFL's Cowboys, suspecting that the USFL was not going to last, acquired Walker's NFL rights by selecting him in the fifth round of the 1985 draft. When the USFL in fact succumbed after its technically successful, but financially fruitless antitrust suit against the NFL in 1986, Walker went to play for the Cowboys, eventually establishing himself as a premier NFL running back with two consecutive Pro-Bowl seasons (1987,1988). In 1989, at the height of his NFL career, the Cowboys traded him to the Minnesota Vikings for a total of five players (LB Jesse Solomon, DB Issiac Holt, RB Darrin Nelson, LB David Howard, DE Alex Stewart) and six draft picks (which led to Emmitt Smith, Russell Maryland, Kevin Smith, and Darren Woodson). This was judged to be one of the turning points in the rise of the Cowboys to the top echelon of the NFL.

Walker performed well by most standards for several seasons with the Vikings before his rights were later acquired by the Philadelphia Eagles, and, subsequently, the New York Giants. Eventually, he was re-acquired by the Cowboys. In this second stint with the Cowboys, he was used not only as a running back but as a flanker and other offensive positions as well. In addition to running and catching passes, Walker was also often used to return kickoffs throughout his career.

Career Overview

If Walker's USFL and NFL numbers are combined, he ranks as one of the most productive professional football runners in history. Many are reluctant to do this, however, because of the disagreement as to whether the level of play of the USFL was comparable to that of the NFL.

Even without taking his USFL numbers into account, his NFL stats are outstanding. In 12 NFL seasons, Walker gained 8,225 rushing yards, 4,859 receiving yards, and 5,084 kickoff-return yards. This gave him an impressive 18,168 total combined net yards, ranking him high among the NFL's top 20 all-time leaders in that category at the time of his retirement. As of 2007, 10 years after his retirement, he still ranks 8th in all-purpose yardage. He also scored 82 touchdowns (61 rushing and 21 receiving). Walker is the only player to have 10,000+ combined rushing and receiving yards and 5,000+ combined return yards(all of which were on kickoff returns). And also the only player to gain 4,000 yards three different ways: rushing, receiving, and kick off returns. He is one of six players (Jim Brown, Lenny Moore, Marcus Allen, Marshall Faulk, and Thurman Thomas) to exceed 60 TDs rushing and 20 TDs receiving. This is all the more impressive considering that he spent his first three years in another league.

Even so, most football experts rank Walker's professional career as something of a disappointment. This must be due to the high, perhaps unrealistic expectations that were placed upon him due to his college career and the scrutiny which was entailed by so much being traded for him by the Vikings. Additionally, he never played on a championship NFL team. Some observers, however, claim that Walker was at least in part a victim of the package of rules changes the NFL had adopted in the spring of 1978, which were widely assumed to discourage offenses from running (rather than passing) most of the time; in addition, the NFL teams on which Walker played seldom used the I-formation, out of which he ran so successfully throughout his career.

Legacy

Walker was a highly popular and visible personality, even in his college days, as evidenced by the fact that both a thoroughbred and a standardbred race horse were named after him, the former while he was still in college; the thoroughbred, whose name was officially spelled as a single word — "Herschelwalker" — broke the track record for 5 furlongs (1006 m) at Belmont Park in his first start, then lost narrowly to Conquistador Cielo in a stakes race run at Saratoga in 1981 (the following year Conquistador Cielo would win the Belmont Stakes by 14 lengths and be named the champion 3-year-old colt of 1982). Since his retirement he has attracted little publicity, although he did make a guest appearance on The Hour of Power, hosted by noted televangelist Robert Schuller. He also made several appearances in the sports documentary Damn Good Dog (2004). Despite Walker's performance as a Minnesota Viking, his trade was widely perceived as an exceptionally poor move for what the Vikings had to give up in order to get him, and remains one of the most frequently vilified roster moves of the team's history (indeed, in the history of Minnesota sports). "Herschel the Turkey," a mocking "honor" given out by the Star Tribune newspaper to particularly inept or disgraceful Minnesota sports personalities, is named for him.

He was one of the first NFL players to take to the idea of heavy exercise training and physical fitness. He was noted for doing at least 1,000 crunches and 1,500 push ups every day in the off season and combining that with weight training.

On the Fox Sports Net show Sports List, Walker was named the best college football running back of all time, beating out the likes of Ricky Williams and Barry Sanders.

Quotes

• "Mistakes should be taken as a training tool to help you to get better."
• "Strive to be the very best you can be. Run the race against yourself and not the guy in the other lane. The reason I say this, as long as you give it 110 percent, you are going to succeed. But as long as you're trying to beat the guy over there, you are worried about him, you're not worrying about how you've got to perform."
• "The ball ain't heavy." When asked if he ever got tired carrying the ball 30 times a game.
  
  "If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat."
  
  "My God given talent is my ability to stick with training longer than anybody else."

Trivia

• Walker had his jersey number "34" retired from his Alma Mater, The University of Georgia; in Walker's honor, his jersey number was retired not only in his sport of football, but in every athletic team fielded by the university.
• Walker competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics in bobsled, finishing seventh.
• He also won back-to-back American Superstars competitions in 1987 and 1988.
• He is a sixth-degree black belt in tae kwon do.
• He was also a world class sprinter, and nearly made the Olympic team in the sprint relay. He ran the 100 meters in 10.22, the 100 yards in 9.3. During his second tenure with the Cowboys, he occasionally trained with multiple Gold Medalist and Dallas native Michael Johnson.
• He is a born-again Christian who frequently talked about his faith during his USFL interviews.
• Walker stated in a phone interview on The Jim Rome Show on November 20, 2006 that he still performs 2500 situps and 1500 pushups every morning. He has been going through this same routine every morning since high school.
• His high-school team, the Johnson County Trojans, won their only state championship with him in Johnson County, Georgia.
• He was awarded the first Dial Award for the national high-school scholar-athlete of the year in 1979.
• Walker publicly trained with the Fort Worth Ballet during his tenure with the Dallas Cowboys. Many laughed at him for doing so and--after one of his best seasons-- he was excluded from the "All-Madden team" because of it.
• Played with many teams but at the end of his career, he admitted that he wished he could have played for the Atlanta Falcons, his favorite team, at some point in his career.
• While at the University of Georgia, Walker was inducted into the mysterious, exclusive and imaginary Gridiron Secret Society.

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