It’s His Turn : After Three Seasons in Brother’s Shadow at Notre Dame, Reggie Brooks Steps Out With a Senior Year for the Ages

Notre Dame tailback Reggie Brooks hated football when he was a kid.

“He used to hide under his bed when it was time to go to football practice,� said Brooks’ mother, Algerita. “We went through this every summer with him, and so I told him, ‘Reggie, if you don’t want to play football, you don’t have to.’

“After a year of playing I said, ‘Reggie, if you still don’t like football, you don’t have to play,’ and he said, ‘I do like football.’ He became real adamant about it and, of course, he just loves the game today. I’ll never understand why anybody would love football, but he does.�

And Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz loves Brooks.

“Is there a better running back in the country?� Holtz asked. “No. He has done a tremendous job for us, week in and week out.�

The first 1,000-yard rusher in the Holtz era, and only the fourth in Notre Dame’s history, Brooks has run for 1,116 yards and 10 touchdowns with Saturday’s regular-season finale against USC at the Coliseum to go. Averaging 7.5 yards per carry, he is within reach of the school record of 8.1, set by the legendary George Gipp in 1920.

A 5-foot-8, 200-pound senior, Brooks has rushed for 100 or more yards in four games. After running for 157 yards and a touchdown in the 42-7 season-opening victory over Northwestern, Brooks had 205 yards and three touchdowns in a 48-0 triumph over Purdue. Hampered by a hip injury, Brooks gained 112 yards in a 42-16 victory over Brigham Young, and he had 174 yards and two touchdowns in the 54-7 rout of Boston College.

Although quarterback Rick Mirer and fullback Jerome Bettis were expected to be the focal points of Notre Dame’s offense, Brooks has played a key role this season. He has probably benefited from opposing defenses having concentrated on containing Bettis and Mirer.

The younger brother of former Irish tailback Tony Brooks, the sixth-leading rusher in school history, Brooks languished on the bench his first three seasons at Notre Dame, gaining only 165 yards in 31 carries and scoring two touchdowns.

“I don’t know if anyone expected me to do what I’ve been doing,� he said. “I’m not so sure that I was expecting such a highly successful season, but I knew that the position I was in was going to be a key to our success and I just wanted to prove to everyone that I was capable of carrying my part of the load.

“I’ve never had a problem being compared to my brother, because I don’t listen to what people say. He’s always been there to help me and he still does. I talk to him every day.�

Brooks has exceeded Holtz’s expectations.

“Reggie’s productivity has surprised me,� Holtz said. “I felt Reggie would be a very, very fine back going into this year, but I had no expectations that he would gain 1,100 yards.

“When I watch the way he’s performed this year, you say, ‘Gee, he obviously had that talent in the past. Maybe we should have played him earlier.’ And yet, there was nothing to indicate he would have this type of year.

“I think there’s a place for Reggie in the NFL. He’s gained a lot of yardage, and it wasn’t because people slipped. But the thing that’s surprised me the most is, Reggie’s caught the ball.�

Brooks caught a two-point conversion pass from Mirer with 20 seconds to play as No. 5 Notre Dame rallied to defeat Penn State, 17-16, two weeks ago. It was only the second pass he had caught in a game.

Brooks, who normally wears glasses, wears contact lenses during games. But he doesn’t wear them during practice because they irritate his eyes, so he has trouble catching passes because he can’t see the ball clearly.

“Let’s put it this way, Reggie Brooks is not the first guy I would throw to,� Holtz said.

Mirer agreed.

“It seems like on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays he has problems catching the ball,� Mirer said. “But on Saturdays, he makes it work.�

Brooks comes from an athletic family.

Brother, Tony, 23, now a rookie tailback with the Philadelphia Eagles, rushed for 2,274 yards and 12 touchdowns in four seasons at Notre Dame, gaining 894 yards and scoring five touchdowns last season.

Their father, Raymond, was the first four-sport letterman at Booker T. Washington High in Tulsa, Okla., playing football, basketball, baseball and track.

He was Oklahoma’s leading prep rusher as a senior in 1944 and helped the basketball team win the national black high school championship. He also set state records in low hurdles.

The elder Brooks said he was offered a football scholarship to Northwestern, but World War II was going on and he entered the Army, where he played football.

He quit playing football after being discharged but kept his love for the game, coaching his sons in youth leagues.

He realized early that Reggie was talented.

“He made the fifth-grade team when he was in the second grade,� the elder Brooks said. “They would allow Reggie three touchdowns a game. He never got to play in the second half because he’d have his three touchdowns on the first three or five carries. That’s how good he was.

“Nobody has seen the real Reggie Brooks at Notre Dame. They talk about the runs he’s had at Notre Dame, but he hasn’t done anything. In his first high school game, he averaged 20 yards a carry.

“He still calls and I’ll tell him what he did wrong. If I see something that’s an inexcusable error, I’ll get on him about it.�

Both Reggie and Tony Brooks wore their father’s high school number, 40, at Booker T. Washington High, and they have worn it at Notre Dame as well, although Reggie wore No. 41 until this season because Tony had No. 40.

Although Reggie wanted to follow his brother to Notre Dame, their mother said she believed Reggie might have been making a mistake because Tony had a troubled college career.

Tony Brooks and running back Ricky Watters missed Notre Dame’s 27-10 victory over USC in 1988 at the Coliseum after being sent back to South Bend for being late to team meetings.

Then, after running for 667 yards and two touchdowns on Notre Dame’s 1988 national championship team, Tony was dismissed from school for unspecified disciplinary reasons and sat out the 1989 season, attending neighboring Holy Cross Junior College. He was reinstated for the 1990 season.

“Tony had some problems at Notre Dame because he was an individual and didn’t want to follow the rule and order there,� Algerita Brooks said. “And I didn’t want Reggie to come in behind that negative atmosphere that (Tony) had established there.

“But he and Tony talked it out, and he felt like this was what he wanted to do. Reggie was never the high-strung person that Tony was. He was always quiet and demure.�

Her husband agreed.

“You can’t tell Tony too much because Tony’s going to be him,� Raymond Brooks said. “Sometimes that’s not always the best thing. That’s the difference between him and Reggie. Reggie rolls with the punches unless the punches get too hard. Tony doesn’t take too much of nothing, especially if he feels he’s right.�

But even Reggie had trouble rolling with the punches as a sophomore.

After playing tailback as a freshman, he was moved to cornerback because the Irish were overstocked at tailback with Watters, now with the San Francisco 49ers; Rodney Culver, now with the Indianapolis Colts, and Tony Brooks.

Reggie started three games at cornerback, making a last-minute game-saving interception of a pass by Michigan quarterback Elvis Grbac to preserve a season-opening comeback victory.

But he didn’t like playing defense and considered transferring to Oklahoma State. His father talked him out of it.

“I was dead set against it,� Raymond Brooks said. “I told them that if he’d come this far, he should get his degree, because a degree from Notre Dame means so much.�

Reggie said: “It was real difficult. But I signed a letter of intent to play at Notre Dame and my parents always taught me to finish what you start, so I made it a point to stick it out and it turned out for the best.�

And Holtz and the rest of the Irish are thankful now that Brooks didn’t leave.