There's a temptation to describe running back Darrin Nelson (1977-81) as one of the most versatile players in Stanford history, but that does him a disservice. The word versatile conjures up images of utility infielders who aren't good enough to play every day, but are good enough to start once in a while at second base or shortstop.
Nelson wasn't good at a few things, he was great at almost everything. When he retired after the 1981 season, his name sat atop almost twenty different Stanford all-time lists, including career receptions, single-game receiving yards, and single-game, season, and career touchdowns. He still holds the school records for career rushing, single-game scoring, and career all-purpose yards.
As a freshman he became the first player in NCAA history to catch fifty passes and rush for more than a thousand yards -- and then he did it twice more. Nelson is the only player in Stanford history to be named first-team All-Conference four times, and he was a consensus first-team All-America and an Academic All-America in 1981. Not surprisingly, he is also a member of the Stanford University Hall of Fame.
He was kind enough this week to speak with me about his time at Stanford and in the NFL, as well as his current career in athletic administration. Enjoy...
GoMightyCard:
Recruiting today is a year-round sport, beginning when a player is in the ninth or tenth grade and culminating with televised announcements on National Signing Day. What was it like in the 1970s when you were being recruited? What was your process like, and what drew you to Stanford in the end?
Darrin Nelson:
Number one, there was no publicity whatsoever. I think I was finally Stanford’s last recruit, because they all thought I was really small, which I was. I’m gonna guess I was probably a big surprise when I got there.
GMC:
Where there other schools that you were considering?
DN:
Oh, yes. Nebraska, Utah, Oregon State... I got recruited by a few schools. Quite a few, actually, but I wasn’t real big on going too far away from home, so my parents could come watch me play.
GMC:
Was that the biggest factor, the proximity? What drew you to Stanford?
DN:
Well, actually, Dennis Green recruited me, and he’s a really good recruiter. [Laughing.] First of all, my dad really wanted me to go to Stanford. My dad was a teacher, so he wanted me to go. He didn’t put a whole lot of pressure on me to go or not, but I had a really good time on my recruiting trip. I liked the fact that Stanford really has this passion for two-sport athletes, because I ran track, too, and I wanted to continue to do that. Bill Walsh was certainly in favor of that when he was here, so it was a pretty easy choice for me, really, to tell you the truth. In fact, I loved UCLA my whole life, and I had a chance to get recruited there. I didn’t even go.
GMC:
Freshmen don’t always contribute, but you were able to rush for over a thousand yards your first year at Stanford. What do you remember about that first year and the adjustments you had to make to playing in the Pac-8 then, right?
DN:
Yeah, it was the Pac-8. You know, the biggest adjustment for me was learning Bill’s offense. Bill’s offense was complicated, to say the least. I started out a little slow, but I think as training camp went on I kind of picked up the offense a little bit more, a little bit more every day. I had to learn how to catch the ball a lot, because I did not do that in high school at all. And I had to learn how to pass block and all those things. I picked that stuff up pretty well, and I got an opportunity to start as a freshman.
GMC:
That’s funny, there’s a question that’s farther down my list about your pass catching ability. Not too many running backs have that, but looking at your numbers, pretty early on you were catching a lot of balls out of the backfield. Was that just a product of the offense, or was it something you wanted to do just to make yourself more versatile.
DN:
[Laughing] Oh, no. You couldn’t play in Bill’s offense without being able to catch the ball, and that was very clear. Matter of fact, you couldn’t play unless... You had to be able to catch, you had to be able to pass block, you had to be able to run. I could always run, I wasn’t really worried about that. Catching passes out of the backfield and doing various things and pass blocking, because I wasn’t the biggest guy in the world, was a little bit of a concern to me. But pass catching came pretty easy to me, to tell you the truth, and I don’t know why because I caught maybe five passes in high school. But it came pretty easy. It’s probably because I learned how to juggle. A lot of people say it’s the hand-eye coordination. I actually learned how to juggle during my freshman year just as a hobby, so I picked up the pass catching part pretty easily.
GMC:
You’ve already talked a lot about Bill Walsh, and I obviously wanted to ask you about him. What were your perceptions of him then, back in the days before he had burst on the national scene and been labelled as The Genius? What did you see in him then? I’m not sure as an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old you had the perspective, but did you see him as the great football mind that we see now when we think of him?
DN:
You know, it took me about a year. My freshman year we played LSU in a bowl game and we beat ‘em pretty easily. And then we came back the next year and we played Georgia. His game preparation was the best I’ve ever seen. Period. As far as being ready for what the defense is going to do to you, and having us prepared to react to what the defense was going to do. There were a couple of occasions when everything just happened the way he said it was gonna happen, and we ended up scoring touchdowns. You just go, “Wow, he’s brilliant!” And obviously it carried on with the 49ers and carried on throughout the rest of his career. Playing for him in college made my pro career really that much easier, because a lot of the things I did in the pros, I learned in college. In fact, almost all of it.
GMC:
Do you mean the physical things, like fundamentals, or understanding the game?
DN:
No, no, no. I’m talking about audibles, learning defenses, learning what to do in various situations. Sometimes you have silent audibles, where you see the defense and you have to react to it. Various things like that. Teams trying to confuse you and doing different things and putting up different defenses, we were prepared for all that kind of stuff. When I got to the pros, I was like, “I’ve seen all this stuff before. I’ve run all this in college.”
GMC:
You also crossed paths with John Elway during his first two years. I’ve got kind of the same question, I guess. Could you see his greatness even then? Even when he was young?
DN:
Oh, absolutely. John was incredible. He is the best quarterback I’ve ever played with. Period. He was young then, so he would scramble around a lot and do a lot of different things, but in the midst of scrambling, he would throw the ball sixty yards! That means he’s running around all over the place, and he just winds up and throws the ball. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. He had one of the hardest deliveries I’ve ever seen, which was kind of interesting, because he hurt a lot of guys' fingers early in his career because he through the ball so hard. But I think the learned the touch part, he learned how to place the ball, when to release it, and things like that. He’s the best quarterback I’ve ever played with, and it’s not even close. Even better than all the NFL guys.
GMC:
You were drafted in the first round by the Minnesota Vikings in the 1982 draft. I’ve often heard it said that there’s no greater transition in sports than going from college football to the NFL. You talked about how the preparation you got from Walsh really helped you. What about physically, as far as the speed and the strength and the size of the players you’re competing with? What was that transition like for you?
DN:
Well, that’s the biggest transition right there. You have guys, you have the best of the best. In college you don’t always go against the guys that are the best of the best all the time. You might play against a team whose outside linebackers and inside linebackers can’t run with you, you can block them, but in the pros everybody’s good. They make it there because they’re good, so you have to step up your game and keep up with the speed of the game, number one. You have to adjust to that part. That was my hardest part my rookie year, adjusting to the speed of the game. But once the game slows down, which it did about half way through my rookie year, then it starts getting back to what you learned in college, what kind of player you were, and I still think I ran a harder offense in college than I ever did in the pros. I can’t even think of a team that would challenge me more, as far as offensive football is concerned, than Stanford. I just had to do so many things at Stanford. I was basically a wide receiver sometimes, too. That’s why I caught so many passes. I’d come out of the backfield and catch an eighty yard bomb.
GMC:
Did you line up as a wide receiver ever?
DN:
I’d line up in the backfield. I’d split out every once in a while, but for the most part I’d line up in the backfield, because if you line up in the backfield you still have the dual threat. If you line up in the backfield they have to keep a linebacker in. If you line up in the slot, they can put somebody else there -- if they see it coming.
GMC:
That’s really interesting to me. I want to back track a little bit. You’re at Stanford for a couple of years with Walsh, and you’re running this really sophisticated system, which I assume gave you a big advantage over a lot the teams you were playing. Would you agree with that?
DN:
Absolutely.
GMC:
Then you were injured and sat out a year, and then you came back under a new coach, Paul Wiggin. What was the transition of the offense like as you were going from the Walsh system to a different system?
DN:
Well, luckily, I think Paul was smart enough not to fix what wasn’t broken. So we didn’t change it a lot. In fact, I caught more passes with Paul’s offense than with Bill’s offense. I was used a lot more, especially downfield, way downfield, with Paul running the offense than with Bill, because Bill was more structured with what running backs could and couldn’t do. I think Paul just wanted to create these match-ups. There’s just no way a linebacker can run with a halfback for that long. So I would go forty or fifty yards down field and catch a bomb on somebody that’s trying to chase me.
GMC:
Back to the NFL. Most running backs last only three or four years in the NFL if they’re lucky, but you were able to remain productive for more than a decade. What are you strongest memories of your time in the league?
DN:
My strongest memories? Well, number one, I’m a Stanford kid, so my strongest memories are that I actually worked every off-season except for one, in finance, believe it or not.
GMC:
Really?
DN:
Yes, I did! And I loved it!
GMC:
What specifically were you doing? Just working in the business world?
DN:
I worked for a company called Piper, Jaffray, and Hopwood. I actually gave a speech at a luncheon someplace, and I met the Piper, Jaffray, and Hopwood guys there, and they offered me their first ever internship, and I did that. I helped them create their first 401K plan, I helped market the 401K plan, I sold mutual funds to their brokers, I went out and spoke to people about their plans. I had a ball. I loved it. I loved every second of it. To me that made football better, because I wasn’t dependent on football anymore after that. I always knew I’d have something else to do, so it made football easier to me. I think that’s part of it. I think what I learned in college about playing halfback -- and I still don’t think I did half the stuff I probably could have done in the pros had they bothered to do it, but I think they saw me more as a halfback. But I did return punts more, I did return kickoffs more, and I did play wide receiver a little bit on occasion. There’s an old saying in the NFL -- the more you can do, the longer you get to say. So that’s why I stayed so long.
GMC:
You were talking about working in the off season. Did you have a sense of how many of your teammates were working during the off season?
DN:
I know exactly how many were. There were three of us. Steve Jordan, who was my best friend and my roommate with the Vikings, worked as an engineer. He was an engineer in college and continued working as an engineer. We actually worked out together because we had to work out after five o’clock. He’s my best friend to this day. And another guy named Tim Irwin, who went to law school. He was taking his time. He’d leave Minnesota and go back to his home town and go to law school, then he’d come back and play. It took him a little longer than most people, but he’s a lawyer right now.
GMC:
After the NFL, you returned to Stanford to work in athletic administration. In a sense that seems like a natural progression, but it seems like most athletes are drawn towards coaching. What pulled you towards administration instead?
DN:
Well, I worked in finance for a long time, so that was kind of my interest. I was more interested in negotiating contracts and working with budgets and working with the coaches and kids in general, because I felt I had a lot to pass on. I’m kind of a “coach’s administrator,” because I think if the coaches have a good experience, the kids will automatically have a good experience. I think all those things kind of led me back.
GMC:
You were there during a time of great overall athletic success, but the football program struggled. There was a perception that while Stanford teams were amongst the elite in almost every sport, there was a feeling that the University had given up on fielding a competitive football team. From the inside, did you feel that there was any truth to that?
DN:
No. We just made some bad hires. Not at all. When Tyrone [Willingham] was there, we went to the Rose Bowl. We wanted our teams to be really good. We just made some bad hires, people that weren’t ready to coach Stanford Football, and it cost us. Then all of the sudden we bring somebody in who’s more of a football coach, that can handle our program, in Jim Harbaugh, and it turns around. Now the thing you have to do once you do that, is to make sure all our other sports stay on top. That’s the hard part. It’s easy to focus on football, but our basketball team... One of my best years there was when our basketball team went to the Final Four and our football team went to the Rose Bowl the next year. That doesn’t happen very often.
GMC:
You mentioned Harbaugh. Are you surprised at all that the team has been able to maintain that success and reach this elite level where it is right now?
DN:
Absolutely not. And you know why? Let me give you an example. Every guy I played with in the pros, if Stanford came calling for their kid, they would send him there. They would send him to Stanford. You know why?
GMC:
Why’s that?
DN:
Because the average career in the NFL is three years, so their kid is gonna have to end up doing something else at some point, if they make it to the NFL at all. So I bet you, 25% of the guys that have played in the NFL, if they had kids old enough to go to college and Stanford came calling, they would give Stanford serious consideration over their own alma maters.
GMC:
Well, there’s a kid who just arrived who’s in that same situation -- Barry J. Sanders.
DN:
Barry Sanders! Exactly! Are you kidding me? Oklahoma State is good, but where is Barry shipping his kid? That just makes my entire point.
GMC:
I know you’re now at UC Irvine. Are you still able to maintain a connection to the football program? Do you ever make it out to Stanford events?
DN:
I’m a season ticket holder still. I have my tickets on the fifty yard line, on the shady side. I’m never gonna give those up. I get to a couple games a year. My son uses most of them, but I make it to a couple games every year, and I will be there this year.
GMC:
Stanford has always been known for its quarterbacks. For instance, as you watch the Orange Bowl or the Fiesta Bowl, you see Elway is there, and Plunkett is there, and Stenstrom is around the program a lot. But there have also been some great running backs. After you, there was Brad Muster, Jon Volpe, Tommy Vardell, Toby Gerhart, and now Stepfan Taylor.
DN:
Glyn Milburn...
GMC:
Right. It seems like with the quarterbacks there’s a connection that these guys have forged. When you were on campus as an administrator, did you ever seek out relationships with these running backs? Is there any type of bond that develops?
DN:
Rodney Gilmore and I used to talk to all the incoming freshman classes about coming to Stanford and the ins and outs of playing college football and getting along with people. I don’t know if they still do that anymore, but Rodney and I used to do that. We’d talk about the good old days and how to survive on campus. It was actually a lot of fun. But you know what, I didn’t force relationships with kids. If kids wanted to come and talk to me, my door was always open. Every once in a while I would reach out to a few of them, but I had a lot of sports. Gymnasts, fencers, squash players, track and field people. So I had to work with those guys as well. On occasion, if I thought somebody needed some attention? Absolutely. If I thought somebody was going in the wrong direction? Absolutely.
GMC:
There’s a chance that Stepfan Taylor could catch you this season atop the Stanford career rushing list. What’s your opinion of him as a runner, and if it does come down to the last game of the season, and he’s close to you, will you be there to watch it?
DN:
I’m not sure if I’ll be there to watch it, but you know what? I’ll be cheering for him. I like Stepfan. He’s a great kid. I like him, and you know what? He deserves it. Playing running back, over a long period of time... that’s hard. It’s hard to stay healthy. It’s just hard. He’s done a great job, he really has. So I’m cheering for him.
GMC:
I think we all are. A lot of times as players are approaching certain records, one of the things that happens is that the names from the past are brought up again, so I hope we hear your name a lot this fall.
DN:
You know what? If Stepfan has a chance to do it towards the end of the year, I may have to be there.
