ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 25, 1996 TAG: 9610250069
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
WEST VIRGINIA'S freshman tailback wastes no time putting himself on the college football map.
When an unforeseen force thrusts itself upon the masses, the masses usually rush to put a label on he, she, or it.
Such is the case of Amos Zereoue, the freshman phenom for West Virginia's football team. In Long Island, N.Y., they liken him to Jim Brown, whose rushing records Zereoue broke in high school. Others, including Zereoue himself, fancy him as another Barry Sanders, the Detroit Lions star and former Heisman Trophy winner.
Desmond Robinson, the running backs coach at West Virginia, has his own opinion.
``I had a chance to play with Tony Dorsett in college,'' said Robinson, a 1978 graduate of Pittsburgh. ``I get as excited watching him play as a I did Tony. You know at any time he can break it.''
Robinson's and Dorsett's college coach was Johnny Majors, who guided the Panthers to a national championship. Now in the fourth year of his second stint at the school, Majors saw what Robinson was talking about in Zereoue's first collegiate game, a nationally-televised contest. The 5-foot-10, 190-pound redshirt freshman had a 69-yard touchdown run the first time he touched the ball.
``I was impressed,'' Majors said. ``We made him look like an experienced senior. Either he's good, or we're one of the worst tackling teams in the nation.''
Majors was right on both accounts. Pitt is bad, but since that opener Aug.31, Zereoue has proven that game wasn't a fluke. He leads the Big East in rushing with 117.4 yards per game (822 total). He gains 5.6 yards per carry and scores 7.7 points per game.
``I was really hyped up for my first carry,'' Zereoue said. ``I wanted to get it out of the way. When it was over, I said to myself, `Wow, I can do this.'''
Zereoue, 20, said he never expected to make such an early splash on the college football scene. Yes, he has a picture at home in Hempstead, N.Y., of himself beside Charlie Ward holding the Heisman Trophy at New York's Downtown Athletic Club. But it was Zereoue's trophy, an exact replica that is given to the top high school players in metropolitan New York. And yes, Zereoue broke all of Brown's high school records, although he can't remember what they were.
Colleges pursued him, but many were scared off by a low score on the Scholastic Assessment Test. West Virginia was the one Division I-A school that never wavered in its interest.
He committed to the Mountaineers, but even they didn't expect him in Morgantown, W.Va., last year. His name was omitted from their 1995 media guide.
Zereoue was left out because he thought for a long time he'd spend that year at Fork Union Military Academy. ``I had all the papers signed and everything,'' he said.
Zereoue knew he could make the adjustment to a military lifestyle. He spent most of middle and high school at Hope for Youth, a home for troubled children in North Bellmore, N.Y. Born in the Republic of Ivory Coast in west Africa, he came with his father, Bonde, and three siblings to America at age 7. While his father developed a successful photography business, Amos was getting in trouble in Hempstead.
``It wasn't a big adjustment,'' Zereoue said of the United States. ``I dealt with and worked through it.''
He also worked hard enough to have an outstanding varsity football career for four years at W.C.Mepham High School, where he had 5,360 yards, 59 touchdowns and 879 points, all Long Island records.
``He made some bad choices early in life,'' Robinson said. ``Later in his career he made good decisions. Like at the group home, after awhile he could have left, but he decided to stay there.''
All that time, West Virginia stayed put, too. ``Don Nehlen has always been a coach who is patient with kids,'' Robinson continued. ``He shows some patience through the recruiting process.
``He takes an attitude that there are no bad kids, only kids that got bad direction.''
Now Zereoue and the Mountaineers are headed in the right direction. He won the starting tailback job in August, West Virginia is 7-0 and Zereoue is a local icon. He said he loves the good feelings people have for him, but he doesn't live off the praise. Instead of prancing around campus on Saturday nights to absorb the afterglow of West Virginia's wins, he sits in his dorm room with a few close friends. Zereoue wants people like Majors to know that he doesn't only look like an ``experienced senior'' on the field, but also off it.
``He does things like a mature kid should do, like he's been there before,'' Robinson said. ``I'd like to say we had a master plan, but we didn't. I know he's just touched the surface of what he can accomplish.''
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: JOHN WICKLINE/Wheeling News-Register. Amos Zereoueby CNB(left) has left a lot of defenders in the dust as a freshman
standout at West Virginia. He leads the Big East in rushing,
averaging 117.4 yards per game. color. Chart by staff. KEYWORDS: MGR