UNH's Ball has almost all the answers

DURHAM, N.H. -- Maybe someone will ask him how the foliage is going to be up country. Or what he thinks of his home state's artisanal cheddar. Anything but the two queries that David Ball has been hearing for weeks now: How will you feel when you break Jerry Rice's records? When is it going to happen?

``It's just the same questions," says the man who had rewritten the receiving records at the University of New Hampshire even before the season began. ``I don't have different answers for the same questions."

So, how will he feel?: ``It'll be exciting when it happens."

When will it happen?: ``I have no idea."

One of the records could fall this afternoon, when the University of New Hampshire plays at Dartmouth. Ball, who has 47 career touchdown receptions, needs four more to surpass the Division 1-AA mark Rice set at Mississippi Valley State in 1984. He's scored four before, against UMass last season, and finished the season with three straight three-touchdown games. ``That would be sweet," says Ball, who needs 1,064 yards to equal Rice's career mark.

Sweeter still would be that people could start focusing on what Ball thinks is the real story -- the top-ranked Wildcats and their quest for their first national title. ``David's a humble kid and I don't think he wants to be the center of attention," says coach Sean McDonnell. ``But he's ended up that way because of the situation."

Ball isn't chasing just any old-time One-Double-A guy nobody ever heard of. He's nipping at the elusive heels of the greatest NFL receiver of all time, a man who won three Super Bowl rings and was named to 13 Pro Bowls in 20 years.

``I take my hat off to the guy and congratulate him," says Rice, who retired last month from the 49ers. ``I'm a firm believer that records are made to be broken, and I'll be the first one to call him."

Ball, who considered football his third sport in high school, figured to be one of Rice's least likely pursuers. He came out of a small town in the middle of Vermont (Orange, pop. 965), was recruited as a high jumper and somehow ends up as an aerial octopus in a helmet, grabbing everything in the vicinity. ``Some of the stuff he does is unimaginable," says Hamilton coach Steve Stetson, who urged McDonnell to recruit him when he was a UNH assistant.

Ball is the ultimate walk-on at a school that relishes them. Linebacker Dave Rozumek and offensive lineman Ken Kaplan both walked all the way to the NFL from Durham. Over the last decade, half a dozen walk-ons (including Ball) ended up captains. ``David Ball epitomizes a lot of kids who've been through here," says McDonnell, a former UNH walk-on himself as a defensive back.

Most of them, though, arrived here as football players. Ball was a track and basketball star who viewed himself primarily that way. ``Vermont football is so overlooked that it's hard to think of yourself as just a football player," says UNH tricaptain Tucker Peterson, who lives in Clarendon, Vt., and played against Ball in high school.

At best, Ball figured to play Division 3. Spending a postgrad year at Worcester Academy gave him more visibility, but nobody was tossing scholarships his way. Only Stetson, who'd watched Ball play basketball and was entranced, sensed what he might do on a gridiron. ``I said, `Omigod, I've seen this before,' " says Stetson, who was Hartwick's coach at the time. ``This is Billy Brooks."

Meaning, a leaper (37-inch vertical) with grabby hands. ``David could jump higher than any kid I ever saw," testifies Boston College assistant Mo Cassara, Ball's basketball coach at Worcester. ``Fans wanted me to put him in the game just so he could catch an alley-oop. He made some sick dunks."

Brooks, who played for more than a decade in the NFL, was a high jumper-turned-football player at Boston University when Stetson was coaching there. When Stetson arrived in Durham, he related his Ball-is-Brooks vision to a skeptical McDonnell, who'd also been at BU then. ``He thought that was ridiculous," Stetson recalls.

All it took was a couple of practices for McDonnell to offer Ball a scholarship. ``I didn't have a crystal ball," he says. ``If I had, I probably would have given him a scholarship before all this started."

But who knew? Ball had played for a Division 2 school (Spaulding, in Barre, Vt.) with a losing record. ``He didn't have speed," recalls Stetson. ``He was very thin, and he was a little brash coming out of high school."

Nobody foresaw numbers like 222 receptions, 3,629 yards, 47 touchdowns, and 17 100-yard games (Rice had 23) -- except for the man on the other end of them. ``We came up on the same recruiting trip and we were joking around," recalls quarterback Ricky Santos, a Bellingham product whose only scholarship offer was from UNH. ``We said, if we both ended up here, we could make big things happen."

All Ball needed was someone to throw the ball to him. All Santos needed was someone to catch it. All it took was one game, the upset of defending national champion Delaware in the 2004 opener, for the magic to start. ``Right away, we realized that's what we had been missing," says Ball, who caught the winning touchdown from Santos in the fourth quarter. ``We ended up taking off together."

It was the breakout moment of Ball's breakout sophomore season. Two touchdowns in the victory over Rutgers, UNH's first against a Division 1-A rival. Three touchdowns and a school-record 284 yards against Villanova. Season records for catches, yards, touchdowns.

Ball, who'd originally had a partial track scholarship, was (and still is) a varsity high jumper, even though he now packs 200 pounds on a 6-foot-2-inch frame. ``He would come down after football practice and jump 6-8," testifies track coach Jim Boulanger, who also used Ball in the long and triple jumps.

But by then, there was no doubt that football was his ticket. When he came back for his junior year, Ball found every rival had drawn a circle around him. ``They'd use two guys on him every game," says Santos.

Yet Ball kept plucking balls out of the air from unlikely angles, kept piling up catches, yards, touchdowns. ``He went from being a very good receiver in our league to elite status," says UMass coach Don Brown. ``He was the difference in our game."

On a weapon-rich offense that averaged 42 points a game, he was the go-to guy. ``He's always been a comfort zone for me," says Santos. Never more than in last year's NCAA quarterfinals, when the Wildcats were down, 21-0, and Santos threw to Ball for three straight touchdowns before UNH lost on a fourth-quarter field goal. That was the game, muses McDonnell, where Ball showed that he wanted to become The Guy.

When he got back to campus this summer, though, Ball realized that he had become The Guy Chasing Rice and that Rice knew about him. ``That's kind of odd," says Ball, who grew up idolizing Rice. ``It's one thing for me to know his name. But for him to have heard about David Ball . . . "

Rice says he hadn't realized he'd set so many records until people began asking him about this kid at UNH. ``I'm very excited for him," says Rice. ``To be able to break records like that will mean a lot to him. He worked hard and I wish him the best."

The attention is flattering, Ball concedes, and it's exciting to be in the middle of the whirlwind. ``You just take it and run with it and have fun with it," he says. ``But at times, it gets difficult. I can't deny that."

UNH may be a state school but it has a small-college feel. The guy passing you the mustard at lunch at the campus dairy bar might be one of the football captains. Cowell Stadium, which seats only 6,500, is smaller than most high school facilities in Texas. The media clamor, which grows every week, isn't something Ball was ready for. ``He'd rather be playing football," said McDonnell. ``He'd rather be winning games."

What's been overshadowed amid the Rice chase is that New Hampshire has a heck of a team again. Its opening 34-17 victory at Northwestern (with Ball catching two touchdowns) was a stunner, vaulting the Wildcats to the top of the rankings. Last week's 62-7 rout of Stony Brook was over well before halftime. The sooner Ball passes Rice, the sooner the focus shifts to the team. ``It's being made into a priority," says Ball, ``but within the program it's far from a priority."

The priority is to win games, make the playoffs again, and get another shot at the title. Some Saturdays the Wildcats will need everything Ball can give them. Most Saturdays they won't, if only because opponents are so busy locking in on Ball that they forget that Santos has playmates. ``We spread the ball around," says McDonnell, who let his running backs carry the load against overmatched Stony Brook. ``If people start trying to take David away, we're going to throw to other people. When they leave him open, we'll throw to him."

The Wildcats have at least nine more games left. Barring a mishap, like the ankle injury that kept him out of the 2004 quarterfinal against Montana, Ball almost certainly will get his touchdowns, his yards, his records, even though tendinitis in both knees has him shuttling between the chiropractor and the massage therapist. ``You look at how many times we put the ball in the air and how many plays we get," he said. ``It's going to happen."

Maybe it will happen this afternoon in Hanover, N.H., with Ball's family and friends in the stands, Maybe it will happen next week at Delaware, where he and Santos first took wing together. Just as long as it happens and he gets to change the subject, he'll be content.

``I can't wait to get back to the team stuff," David Ball says. ``It's a team thing. Without Ricky throwing and the line blocking, none of this would have happened."