No ordinary Joe

Sporting News, The, Sept 13, 1999 by Dave Kindred

Joe Hamilton doesn't have a computer. So the little quarterback has no need for the mouse pad bearing his heroic portrait above the words, "Hamilton for Heisman." Nor does he watch a CD-Rom suggesting he might be the first Georgia Tech player to win the award named for the first Georgia Tech coach, John Heisman, a hard man famous for many things, among them the night he went to the Tech chapel and announced, "Gentleman, we are destitute of people. If you weigh 150 pounds or more, please come out for football."

Yet Hamilton has the Heisman Trophy on his mind. "In my room, by myself, I think about it. But I don't say anything to my teammates because it can be a distraction, definitely. They joke around about it. But you don't want to portray to your teammates that you're really thinking about it. We all have to do our jobs, offense, defense, special teams. The Heisman, it's definitely a team thing."

Words fail. For a true sense of the Hamilton persona, it's necessary to read his quotes again. Read them aloud, in a chirpy voice, and read them so quickly the words allruntogetherlikethis. The magic of Joe Hamilton is that he skitters around a football field almost as quickly as words leap from his lips.

Can he win the Heisman? Doubtful. He did decent work in three quarters of Georgia Tech's 49-14 victory at Navy: 12-of-17 passes for 139 yards and two touchdowns, 11 carries for 39 yards and another touchdown. That won't lose the Heisman. But you win it in games such as Saturday's, when Georgia Tech and its little big man go against the big big men of Florida State.

"We'll be looking at Florida State film, studying them, putting in our game plan all week," Hamilton says. "We know what we have to do. We'll show up. Definitely, we'll show up.

Fasffasterfastest, those words leap from Joe Hamilton's lips so quickly a sportswriter taking notes sprains his right wrist. Doctors list him as questionable for next week's interviews. BefOre the injury, though, the sportswriter makes several notes, including these from a conversation with Tech's offensive coordinator, Ralph Friedgen ...

"Joe's better than ever at reading defenses, looking off defenders, making decisions quickly. And he's confident in what he's doing. He's like Boomer that way (meaning Boomer Esiason, Friedgen's quarterback in the early '80s at Maryland). At a bowl one year, Boomer told the press, `Ben Bennett can't carry my jock.' I asked him, `Why say that about the other team's quarterback?' Boomer said, `Coach, the game needs some ink; they're not selling any tickets.' Joe'll challenge you, too."

We stood in Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, one of the beautiful places in college football. It's small, maybe 30,000 seats. People bring blankets and sit on an end zone's grassy incline. Get high enough in the ballpark, you can see the Chesapeake Bay Bridge standing tall outside Annapolis.

Before kickoff, the brigade of Midshipmen marches onto the field, 5,000 strong, every man and woman in dress whites, stirring no matter how many times you've seen them, standing tall as we read on the stadium walls a listing of battles: PEARL HARBOR ... MID WAY ... IWO JIMA ... NORMANDY ... INCHON MEKONG DELTA ... "Tough schedule," the wit Beano Cook once said. "And all on the road."

The stadium's one elevator came scavenged from a battleship, the USS Enterprise. It carries six people, maybe seven if they haven't eaten recently. It carries them ever so slowly.

"When Tech played here in 1977," says Tom Bates, a Navy assistant A.D., "President Carter came over because he attended both Tech and the academy. He's in that elevator going upstairs and it's taking its usual 47 seconds to go one level, and the Secret Service up top is going crazy, `Where is he? Where IS HE?'"

By this day's end, David Ryno, Navy's nose guard, might have asked the same thing about Joe Hamilton. Harassed by Navy's blitzing defenses, the little man--he's 5-10, 190--dumped off quick passes or sprinted away from trouble. He did the good work that wins games you should win but none of the sensational work that wins games you should lose.

Hamilton called it an OK day, maybe a 7 on a scale of 10, though pointing out, kindly, that Navy football, a wonderful thing, is not Florida State football, an NFL thing. "You can beat Florida State, but you gotta really beat'em. They won't help you beat'em; you gotta do it yourself."

Hamilton's resume suggests he can do that Four times last season, he created fourth-quarter touchdown drives to win games seemingly lost. "We didn't play today at the level we can play," says Jon Carman, Tech's 335-pound right tackle. "And what Joe did is nowhere near all he can do." As to what more Joe Hamilton must do against Florida State, Friedgen smiles and says, '71 lot."

Dave Kindred is a contributing writer for THE SPORTING NEWS. Look for additional commentary from Dave weekdays at sportingnews.com and on AOL (keyword: TSN).