It’s not supposed to be this easy – dealing with the publicity, facing players double his size while combating the everyday rigors of a college freshman.
The week before facing Michigan, one of Northwestern’s most publicized practice weeks in years, freshman running back Tyrell Sutton was the center of attention.
When asked to do a television interview, he hesitated, saying his hair was messed up, but before long he stood in front of the camera.
On a phone interview, senior quarterback Brett Basanez shouted in Sutton’s direction.
“Stand up taller, Tyrell,” senior quarterback Brett Basanez said.
The undersized back, listed at 5-foot-9 but admits it may be an exaggeration, put his helmet on the ground and pretended to stand on it before he grinned and faced the camera.
For Sutton, dealing with fame is as easy as running against high school defenses.
Sutton came to NU about as unheralded as an Ohio Mr. Football can be, but since taking over as the Wildcats’ starting running back his presence on and off the field have warranted national attention.
“He’s a good football player and a good back, we all know that, but there are a lot of good backs that have no maturity,” NU coach Randy Walker said. “It’s hard to be in the Big Ten, be the guy, bust out for 1,000 in your first year. There’s a lot of things on this kid, and I think he’s handled it pretty well.”
Sutton has handled competing against players sometimes five years older than him, as he’s used to competing against older and more experienced competition. He competed against Cleveland Cavaliers’ star Lebron James, also an Akron, Ohio native, when Sutton was playing against competition two years older than him.
“I’ve always played with the older guys, and it kind of developed me for a situation like this,” he said. “I never liked playing with guys my age because I always thought I was on a different level than they were.”
PASSED OVER
He should have known it was coming.
After all, Sutton’s older brother Tony had a stellar high school career and was shafted in the recruiting process. And Sutton was even less of a prototypical running back.
Going into his senior season poised to rewrite the Ohio football record books, Tyrell Sutton, Ohio’s future Mr. Football, wasn’t entertaining many offers to compete at the next level.
“Actually, going through it myself, I told him, ‘Look, teams are going to look away from you because of your size. They’re going to say you’re too small and you’re just going to have to live with it,'” Sutton’s older brother said. “He’s not six feet, 200 pounds, and he doesn’t run a 4.2 (40-yard dash) so they turned away from him.”
Sutton received scholarship offers from two Big Ten schools, NU and Illinois, and numerous Mid-American Conference schools.
Rarely at a loss for words, Sutton fumbled through his answer when trying to identify the beginning of his recruitment.
“I don’t know if it actually ever did start, honestly,” he said. “I got all these little crappy letters that they send to everybody, they just stamp it and send it out to all the prospects. I was getting like 30 letters a day that meant nothing.”
Bowling Green recruited Sutton, but wanted to turn him into a defensive back.
NU was the first major-conference school to offer Sutton a scholarship, and he accepted the offer early in August of 2004. During his stellar senior season, when he set two Ohio high school state rushing records, more teams showed interest in the back, but no other opportunities arose.
Ohio State began seriously recruiting the in-state prospect well after he signed with NU, but nothing ever materialized.
“Unfortunately after the fact, whichever guys from Ohio do very, very well, and they don’t have to be playing for us, that’s going to be a topic of conversation,” Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said. “We’ve got a lot of good Ohio guys too.”
Sutton’s coach at Archbishop Hoban High School, Ralph Orsini, said he learned a lot about recruiting and why his player wasn’t being recruiting as much as others when he went through the process.
“The coaches take a lot from the different combines they send kids to,” Orsini said. “Tyrell’s not the kind of kid that when he runs the 40 (yard dash) by himself he’s going to blow everyone away. He needs the competition there to really show what he’s made of.”
ALMOST FAMOUS
If football is king in Akron, Ohio, then Sutton was its crown while he was in high school.
Four years of domination at Archbishop Hoban led Sutton into celebrity status in his home city, a city that pronounced Dec. 7, 2004 as Tyrell Sutton Day.
“I went back to Hoban this year for the Homecoming game, and actually had (Tyrell’s) jersey on,” Sutton’s older brother said. “As soon as everybody saw it, they just started clapping. So I guess he was some kind of celebrity.”
Orsini said his team’s games attracted a large fan and media presence because of his running back.
“Lebron James was always the real star around here,” Orsini said. “But with Lebron gone to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Tyrell kind of assumed that role.”
While his hometown is still enamored with him, Sutton is also gaining recognition in the NU and even national spotlight.
The Tom Lemming’s Prep Football Report’s 20th best senior running back last season now leads all freshmen backs in the country with 1085 yards and 16 touchdowns.
At a school where football takes a back seat to Chemistry, Sutton has broken the barrier as students around campus have begun to recognize his accomplishments.
“One kid did get really excited because I started talking to him about football,” Sutton said. “That was pretty funny.”
Sutton’s roommate, freshman linebacker Mike Dinard, said he has begun to realize the impact his roommate is having on NU.
“People have begun to recognize who he is,” Dinard said. “His character kind of makes him stick out. He’s a vibrant young guy.”
Along with interactions with actual people, Sutton also faces the wrath of facebook.com.
“I think (a couple days ago) I had 43 friend requests,” he said. “That’s not even in a whole day.”
The attention doesn’t stop at his peers, as ESPN College Gameday, Sports Illustrated and numerous newspapers around the country have featured NU’s newest star.
He has taken the fame in stride, as he became used to media and fan attention as early as his freshman year of high school when he gave his first interview.
“(The reporter) asked me if it was a good feeling to know that little kids in the area knew who I was,” Sutton said. “So I go, ‘Uh, I’m not Lebron James or anything. People don’t know me like him.’ And he stopped me and goes, ‘This is not an article about Lebron James. Don’t mention him in this article.’ So that kind of prepared me for future interviews.”
Big Man on Campus
If Walker used the past to predict the future, Sutton wouldn’t have had to wait 14 offensive snaps before earning his first carry.
Orsini said Sutton began his career at Archbishop Hoban competing against two backs.
“Him being the younger guy we though he’d get some reps in there, but being a freshman we didn’t think he’d carry the ball very much,” Orsini said. “The first game he came out and gained 142 yards. Then the individual that was really our starting tailback couldn’t play next week, and Tyrell stepped in and rushed for 202 yards. (That) kind of started his legacy.”
After NU senior Terrell Jordan was injured at the beginning of this year, and sophomore Brandon Roberson went down with an injury the first game, Sutton earned his chance in college.
He has proceeded on a pace to more than double NU’s previous single-season freshman rushing record, and is seventh in the nation with more than 120 yards per game. He has rushed for 16 touchdowns this season, shattering an NU freshman record while marking the fourth-most in school history. The 16 touchdowns already rank him ninth on NU’s career rushing t
ouchdown list.
Sutton’s brother, who is three years older, said he knew his little brother would have an impact on his new team.
“I did think that it would be this year, but I didn’t think it would be as soon as it was,” Tony Sutton said. “I was saying, ‘Give him about four or five games and he’ll start to perform if he gets the chance.’ But it happened in the first game.”
The younger Sutton has struggled yard wise the last two contests, as he averaged less than 58 yards per game. But he still gained 4.3 yards per carry. Walker repeatedly says he limits his young back’s carries to avoid wearing him out.
He also said teams have put more of an emphasis on stopping the run, which has limited what his running back can accomplish.
“The combination of what you would try to do anyway as a defense (stop the run), playing against good defenses and then the fact that we find ourselves down 14-0 almost before you say, ‘Hike,” is not a typical game you get a bunch of rushing yards in,” Walker said.
Sutton has already made a lasting impact on the senior leader of the offense, Basanez, as the two have become close in a very short time.
“He definitely believes in his ability, but at the same time he’s all about the team,” Basanez said. “I know he’s a young kid and he’s obviously got some great athletic ability, and he needs to keep working on it. And I’m sure he will.”
Whether it’s to see where he takes the team after Basanez leaves, or to hear what Sutton says next, the NU and national community will watch him grow up the next three years – and it might not take standing on a helmet for this kind of growth.
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