Page 2-The Michigan Daily - Rose Bowl Preview- December 10, 1992
EVERITT.
Continued from page 1
Oakland Raiders. Football gave us
guys named "Hacksaw" Reynolds
and "Mean" Joe Greene. Football
gave us Fred Dreyer, Dick Butkus,
Conrad Dobler and scores of other
maniacal men who desperately
wanted to die, but have fun doing it.
So Steve Everitt can't be
considered anything more than a
chip off the old block when it
comes to staying loose.
"I think I'm like everyone else,"
Everitt says in his defense. "I mean,
there's stories that go around about
everyone. But it seems like every
time there's a big story, I'm right in
the middle of it."
"There's been some crazy stuff
said about me since I've been here,"
he adds. And then with a chuckle
and a shake of his head: "I mean,
there's been some really unbeliev-
able stuff."
Take his freshman year, for
instance.
"It was a Sunday morning. I
wake up and on the answering
machine there's a message from the
Ann Arbor Police Department
saying, 'We'd like you come down
to the station for some questioning,'
and I'm like, 'What in the
hell ...?!?'
"So I go down and they're like,
'Yeah, we have about three or four
witnesses that said you flipped over
a VW bus last night behind the
Quad.'
"And I was just sitting there with
my mouth open just staring at the
guy, and I'm like, 'OK. Whatever,
pal. I didn't do it.' "
The police weren't buying it.
"'Well, we've got three or four
people that watched you do it,"'
Everitt continues, in his best
"Policeman" voice. "'Two people
were standing right next to you, and
one was looking out their window
in the Quad.'
"I was terrified, because this was
during the season. So I went in to
see Bo. I was so scared. I told him
the whole story, and he just said,
'Did you do it?' And I said, 'No."'
And that was that. Almost.
Everitt was called in for ques-
tioning three or four more times
before the police dropped the case.
"It's that kind of stuff that's
always happening to me," Everitt
says. "It's just ridiculous."
That's not the only stuff that
keeps happening to him, though.
He keeps getting hurt.
"I think anyone would have
done what I've done," Everitt says,
trying to make some sense of all the
major injuries he's suffered since
coming to Michigan. "I just think
I've had more chances to prove it."
The self-justification is a bit
wacked:
"At least with me, it's been
broken bones. It's not like a
recurring thing."
A broken foot kept him out for
five games in 1990. A broken jaw
kept him out of one game in 1991.
Then, an ankle injury sidelined him
for two more. And a knee injury
forced him to watch the Rose Bowl
last January.
Right now he's battling with a
broken right hand. I lis snapping
hand. So he wears a cast and snaps
with the left.
Over the last three seasons,
Michigan is 18-1-3 with Everitt in
the starting lineup, 9-4 without.
Which is why the coaches don't
mind his attitude about playing with
pain:
"There's a point where - if you
can walk out on the field, if you can
practice - you might.as well give it
a shot," Everitt says. "And that's all
I did."
That's all. Take a look at the
game films for the 1991 Notre
Dame contest, though, and, "That's
all," takes on new meaning. A
routine play turned into a night-
mare.
"I pushed the nose guard over to
(offensive guard Joe) Cocozzo,"
Everitt says. He's told the stories
countless times. "And I cane off on
the linebacker who had stepped up
and was kind of out of my vision.
By the time I turned and got off to
shield Ricky (Powers, the Michigan
tailback), the linebacker -- who
was shorter than me - his helmet
came up and under my chin."
The collision knocked Everitt's
helmet up and the impact of the
linebacker's helmet shattered
Everitt's jaw by his right ear. It also
cracked the jaw in half, from his
middle front teeth to below his chin.
The jaw simply dropped straight
down.
"And I was just in
NeverNeverland," he says. "Every-
one asks me if I was unconscious or
not. And I always say, 'No, but I
wish had been."'
But what's the first thing Steve
mentions about the play?
Powers scored a touchdown.
---
About the only thing that has
stayed intact is Steve Everitt's sense
of humor. His desire to simply do
what he feels like doing, whenever
he feels like doing it.
"In some ways, it helps us not to
play as tight," says Cocozzo, an all-
Big Ten selection who shares an
apartment with Everitt.
Wolverine strong safety Shonte
Peoples, who gets to watch Everitt
from a safer distance, agrees.
"Before a game, when we
huddle, he'll start going crazy -
verbally and through his actions -
and lie sort of demonstrates the
Michigan attitude that each player is
going to take," Peoples says. "He
keeps everyone going."
And he usually does it by
keeping everyone laughing.
Cocozzo remembers when the
two were both true freshmen in
1988. In the middle of a scrimmage,
a time when the rookies usually
stand and watch, Everitt was thrown
in because the starting long-snapper
had moved to tackle.
He promptly sent the snap
sailing over the kicker's head and
the football hit Bo, coach Bo
Schembechler, before coning to
rest somewhere downfield.
"Bo didn't know it was him at
first," Cocozzo says. "He didn't
know Steve had come in. le started
yelling. But then, when he saw it
was Steve, he went crazy. Steve
came back to the sideline all mopey,
and we were all j ust laughing at
him."
Always in the middle of the
laughter. Always at the center of it
all.
And always doing stupid, crazy
things.
Just like the way he would
torture his youngest. sister, Amy
(now 17), when he was in high
school. Amy's cat had kittens, she
remembers, and Steve would pick
them up by the scruff of the neck
and hurl them down the hallway.
Just for the hell of it.
And when she came to visit Ann
Arbor, Amy was drawn to the cute
squirrels that scurry around Central
Campus.
"I had seen squirrels before, but
never so many," Amy says. "And
he said, 'Yeah, they're all over the
place. One of them came up real
close to me the other day ... so I
kicked it in the head.'
"It's good to see that he hasn't
changed," she says. (The squirrel is
fine, by the way.)
No, he hasn't changed. He spent
the better part of the team meal the
night before the Notre Dame game
this fall trying to disgust everyone
with the way he ate his steak dinner.
(Let's just say it had something to
do with phlegm.)
"It was the grossest thing I've
ever seen," Peoples says.
And after Michigan won the
Rose Bowl his freshman year,
Everitt and fellow lineman Paul
Manning decided to go for a hike.
Up to the famous HOLLYWOOD
sign that hangs high on the hillside.
"That was horrible, we almost
died coming down," Everitt says.
"It was unbelievable, that thing is so
steep. It doesn't look like it, but it
is. And there's like coyotes and
stuff running around.
"But we should have brought
some spray paint up there. Or
something."
Why did they do it?
"I don't know," he says "We had
a good idea of what we were going
to do that night, but we had the
whole day. I think we went to
Universal Studios and we still had a
lot of time to kill and we were right
there, so we just drove up --just
for the hell of it."
Which goes back to his theory
- his theory about why he is the
way he is.
"Everyone wants to do it," he
says, with the emphasis on the it,
"but a lot of times somebody
doesn't want to do it until some-
body else does it."
Consider Steve Everitt that
"somebody else."
"I'm usually the first one that
starts it, but then everyone else
jumps in and, of course, I'm the one
that gets pointed at.
..,
ie's also the one that draws.
And "the only way to get
through two-a-days," Everitt says,
is for everyone to draw pictures of
each other in between meetings and
practice time.
He's kept all of them for three or
four years now and boasts a huge
stack of the auspicious art at home
"It's like the funniest stuff you
could imagine," he says. "A lot of it
is crude. And I end up drawing half
of them. And I'm also the guy that
ends up standing up at the front of
the room holding them up and
reading the quotes and stuff."
But. it's all part of the job. His
job.
"When you get on the field, I'm
not a big cheerleader or anything.
But, I mean, you've got to relax.
Sure, you've got to have a 'win-
ning' attitude, but you can't just be
a robot running around. You need to
have something to break it up."
This is what Steve Everitt sees
as his role on the Michigan team.
Someone with nothing to lose,
someone with no apprehensions.
Someone who will do what needs to
be done to make sure everyone
knows their place. It is a team
game, he reminds.
"The freshmen will come in, and
we will just terrorize them." Ile is
speaking generally here. And he
pauses before commenting on the
most recent group of recruits.
"But this freshman class came in
calling themselves 'The Fab 25' and
all this garbage," he says. There
was something they needed to
understand.
"When you come here, you're
nothing," he says with a big smile.
"This-year, they didn't think that.
So we just demoralized them for the
first couple of weeks."
Normally the pictures, for
instance - the nasty sketches that
they do during two-a-days - are
drawings of the upperclassmen.
"But this year we just ripped the
freshmen," the team's resident artist
says. "You know, the way they
looked. They shaved their heads."
The freshmen came in cocky.
One proclaimed he was going to
take all-American Chris
HIutchinson's starting job from him.
The new defensive linemen said
they were going to embarrass
Michigan's vaunted veteran
offensive line.
"After the first couple days, they
weren't talking," Everitt says.
Then there was Todd Collins,
the Wolverines' second-string
quarterback, who was rushed into
duty when Elvis Grbac injured an
ankle against Notre Dame. Collins
got the call to start the Oklahoma
State game.
"I just wanted to loosen him up a
little bit," Everitt says. "You could
just tell he was nervous. I mean, it
was his first start. Everyone's
nervous their first start. My first
start I probably played the worst
game in the history of college
football - against Notre Dame. But
I didn't want him to do that in his
first game."
So, basically, Everitt knocked
the crap out of him. Hit him hard.
Told him to quit being nervous.
of
KR~ISTOFFR Gi ILLETTE/Da
Steve Everitt is wheeled off the field after breaking his jaw against Notre
Dame in 1991.
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