ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 20, 1997 TAG: 9704210137
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
St. Louis and Seattle make the most noise on the first day of the 1997 NFL draft.
Some of college football's biggest stars had plenty of time to kill at the NFL draft.
Danny Wuerffel and Troy Davis, 1-2 in the Heisman Trophy voting, were not selected in the first two rounds Saturday, and several big campus heroes had to wait until the second round to hear their names called.
That was not the case for Orlando Pace.
Pace - the biggest name and one of the biggest in size, at 6-foot-7, 340 pounds - was taken No.1 by the St. Louis Rams. He is the first offensive lineman taken No.1 in 29 years - since Minnesota went for Ron Yary with the top pick in 1968.
The Seattle Seahawks seemed to reap the most from this draft, trading up to get two of the top six picks - cornerback Shawn Springs, Pace's Ohio State teammate, and offensive tackle Walter Jones of Florida State.
San Francisco, shopping for a young quarterback for the first time after nearly two decades of Joe Montana and Steve Young, took Virginia Tech's Jim Druckenmiller with the 26th pick of the first round. But Jake Plummer, the Arizona State quarterback who took the Sun Devils to the brink of the national championship, didn't go until 42nd overall. He gets to stay home, however, a second-round pick of the Arizona Cardinals, who play at Arizona State's Sun Devil Stadium.
Plummer was in the middle of a second-round run that included Texas Tech's Byron Hanspard, a 2,000-yard rusher for Texas Tech, who went to Atlanta; Corey Dillon of Washington, who went to Cincinnati after a series of teen-age arrests hurt his NFL stock; and Joey Kent, Peyton Manning's favorite receiver at Tennessee, who went to Houston.
Then, with the 52nd overall choice, Buffalo took the draft's worst-kept secret - Marcellus Wiley of Columbia, a 280-pound defensive end who entered college as a 195-pound running back.
Wuerffel still was waiting to be picked after the third round. Davis, the Iowa State running back, was chosen by New Orleans with the second pick of the round.
George Young, the New York Giants' general manager, used college achievement to justify his team's choice of Florida wide receiver Ike Hilliard, Wuerffel's favorite target, with the seventh overall pick.
``The guy is a real good player on a national championship team, and on national television before 100 million people he had as good a game as a wide receiver has ever had,'' Young said, referring to Florida's victory over Florida State in the Sugar Bowl. ``Seven catches for 150 yards to win a national championship.''
Not only was the draft big for the Seahawks, it was a big draft for offensive linemen, cornerbacks, Florida State, Ohio State, Virginia, the state of Florida, and El Camino High School in Oceanside, Calif., where cornerbacks Bryant Westbrook of Texas and Michael Booker of Nebraska were teammates. Westbrook was chosen fifth overall by Detroit and Booker went 11th to Atlanta.
Four of the top 11 picks were corners and three were offensive linemen.
Pace and Springs gave Ohio State the first and third picks in the draft. Florida State had four of the top 14: Peter Boulware by Baltimore at No.4; Jones by Seattle at No.6; Warrick Dunn by Tampa Bay at No.12; and defensive end Reinard Wilson at No.14 by Cincinnati, which is expected to make him a linebacker.
Five UVa players were selected in the first three rounds: linebackers James Farrior (New York Jets) and Jamie Sharper (Baltimore), defensive end Jon Harris (Philadelphia), running back Tiki Barber (New York Giants) and his twin brother, cornerback Ronde Barber (Tampa Bay).
Nine of the top 18 picks played at Florida colleges - two at Florida and three at Miami, in addition to the Seminoles contingent.
The first round delivered a fitting theme for this era of franchise free agency - step right up, grab some top players and hope they help keep the team from moving.
That's exactly what the Seahawks did, putting themselves in the spotlight of a draft that produced few surprises.
They even got a little help from Bill Parcells and the New York Jets, whose second trade of the first round helped the Seahawks land the sixth pick overall.
At the same time, the Seahawks' prospective owner, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, was at the state Capitol in Olympia lobbying for a proposal to get a stadium vote on the June ballot.
If the software magnate is to exercise his option to buy the team and keep it from moving, voters must approve a referendum for a new $425 million stadium.
``Things went exactly the way we wanted today,'' coach Dennis Erickson said.
The Seahawks got Springs with the third overall choice and then traded up with Tampa Bay for the No. 6 selection to get Jones, a 6-foot-5, 301-pounder. The Bucs obtained the pick from Parcells just a few minutes earlier.
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Pace. color. KEYWORDS: FOOTBALLby CNB