STILLWATER, Okla.—Justin Blackmon grabs great big handfuls of used golf balls out of a bowl, five or so in each hand and dumps them onto his friend Jarrod Fields’ shirt, which Fields is holding by the bottom and using as a basket. Then Blackmon grabs two more handfuls and piles them on top of the first set. Fields takes them to the counter.
The clerk counts them. Twenty-two in all, a buck apiece.
That seems like a lot for one round of golf.
Then Blackmon and Fields, lifelong friends and Oklahoma State teammates, step to the first tee and swing.
And it seems like they’ll need a few more handfuls.
Eureka! We found it! Something Blackmon can’t do!
He was a state champion in the long jump and runner-up in the high jump and an all-state basketball player who threw down incredible dunks. Roller hockey, snowboarding, baseball; good, good, good. Nice man, strong character, works hard; yes, yes, yes. He won the past two Biletnikoff awards as the best receiver in college football. He has made more circus catches than a trapeze net, and his high school football coach calls him “the most fierce competitor I’ve ever seen.” He will be the first receiver taken in this year’s draft and is widely seen as a future star in the NFL.
Take all of that, savor it, understand it, celebrate it ... and throw it in the trash can when it comes to golf. But give him this: He laughs at himself. How many superstar athletes will go do something they aren’t good at with a writer?
On his first shot, Blackmon looks like an octopus trying to catch butterflies, all arms and legs flailing all over. Rube Goldberg thinks Blackmon’s swing has a lot going on. He pops up like a jack in the box when he makes contact. By the time his swing is done, both of his feet have left the ground and he is facing forward. It sounds like he crushed the ball, but he hit it straight into the morning sun, and nobody sees where it went.
“It might have disintegrated,” he says.
When it does not reconstruct itself, he throws another one down near Fields’ ball in the fairway. “Let me show you how it’s done, young Grasshopper,” Blackmon says after Fields swings and misses.
“Just in case my ball’s not on the green,” he adds, “I’ll hit mine from here.”
He unleashes another octopus-butterfly-Rube-Goldberg swing ... whiff! ... and strides with fake confidence toward the green as if he were watching the ball sail there. He returns to his ball smiling broadly. “That was still my practice swing.”
He 'says things that make your day'
This is an in-between phase for Blackmon and every other NFL prospect. He lives in Stillwater. He’s taking online courses. But he’s not a college football player anymore, and he’s not a pro football player yet. A life of change awaits him, but those closest to him—his family and friends back in his beloved Ardmore, Okla.—hope he stays the same. “I’m very proud of him, but sometimes I just want my boy, my son,” says his mom, Donna Blackmon. “My kind, loving ‘Mom, that sure is a pretty dress you have on.’ That’s the kind of kid he is, says things that make your day.”
Every small town loves its football heroes, and Ardmore is no different. Though it’s in Dallas Cowboys country, Ardmore is sure to become an ardent supporter of whatever team drafts him
Blackmon returns there whenever he can. Before his senior year of high school, his dad, Warren, was transferred to South Carolina. But Justin and his mom and younger sister stayed behind so he could stay at Plainview High School. (He also has an older brother). When Justin went to Oklahoma State, his mom and sister joined Warren in South Carolina. On breaks from Oklahoma State, Justin went to Ardmore and stayed with friends instead of going to South Carolina. His family has since moved back to Ardmore.
His supporters in Ardmore are not blind to his mistakes. They bring up his DUI on their own and say they are proud of the way he handled it—with remorse. But even calling it a DUI isn’t completely fair because it wasn’t a DUI in the normal sense. In October of 2010, he was pulled over for going 92 mph in a 60 mph zone at 3:45 a.m. while on his way home with some teammates from a Dallas Cowboys game.
He was not given a breath or blood test, and police said there was no suspicion that he was legally drunk. The ticket was based on a field sobriety test. He was underage at the time, and Texas law allows a ticket if the underage suspect has consumed any alcohol. That ticket is called a DUI; a DWI is issued for people whose blood alcohol is above the legal limit. Blackmon says he was not drinking, but he paid the fine and was suspended for one game.
Corey Cole was Blackmon’s football coach at Plainview High School and calls him a “once in a lifetime” player. “He’s still the same old kid that he was four or five years ago. I think it’s because of the way he was brought up,” Cole says. “Here’s what I like about Justin Blackmon: When I talk to him, the first thing he says is, ‘Coach, how’s your wife, how’s your kids?’ That just goes to show you the character of the kid. It’s not, ‘Coach, did you see me the other day, did you see that game?’”
Three sources independently brought up how much Blackmon enjoys playing with little kids. He’s forever out in his parents’ front yard throwing a ball around with them. “Little kids will come to the door,” Donna Blackmon says. “Knock, knock, knock. ‘Can Justin come out and play?’ I’m looking down saying, ‘Well, Justin’s still in bed.’ He’ll yell from his bedroom. ‘Tell them I’ll be out in a minute.’ They have to be in younger elementary, I’m thinking, ‘What?’ And he’s a senior. ‘He’ll be out in a minute.’ Their eyes light up. It’s those type things. I don’t want him to lose those type things. I know it’s going to be hard.”
Defensive backs around the Big 12 are scratching their heads and saying, “Are we talking about the same Justin Blackmon?” The Justin Blackmon they know couldn’t possibly be sweet to his mom and adored by little kids because the Justin Blackmon they know plays mean. The Justin Blackmon they know plays with a chip on his shoulder. “I do play aggressive, try to get them before they get me,” he says.
He blocks, he makes tough catches in traffic, he runs for huge yards after the catch ... but good luck trying to get him to explain how he does any of it. He simply says he likes to play hard and have fun.
Justin Blackmon might be Justin Blackmon’s least favorite thing to talk about. At the very least, other people are far better talking about him. He doesn’t like being the center of attention. “Whenever he would sit at his desk, he did not mind making funny comments, he did not mind answering questions,” says Johni Bell, who was Blackmon’s ninth grade English teacher, his track coach and across-the-street neighbor. “He did not mind asking questions, like many kids, from the safety of his desk. But whenever we did demonstrations where he had to be in front of the room and be very serious, that was not as simple for him.”
The same goes for being a playmaker in a football game and doing an interview afterward. One he’s great at and loves, the other he’s OK at and tolerates.
About that 40 time
It’s Sunday night at a Stillwater steakhouse called Freddie Paul’s. The place is almost deserted. The TV is playing ESPN’s documentary about the day Magic Johnson announced he has HIV. Blackmon was a year old when that happened.
BlaThe talk turns to Oklahoma State’s pro day, which was a few days ago. Blackmon made news by posting a great time in the 40-yard dash after not running at the NFL Combine. Not running was almost worse than running poorly because crazy NFL draftniks are just that, crazy. Still, putting up a good time was important, even though he was already unanimously seen as the No. 1 receiver.
He wonders what the fuss was about and why he was ever considered “slow” in the first place. No defender has ever caught him from behind. Why should a few sprints that are the barest fraction of a second faster than what he was expected to run make him more valuable?
It’s a stupid question, and he knows it. But he also knows there’s a lot of money at stake and teams want to be sure about the guys they draft. And besides, he stands to benefit from it. All in all, he wants the pre-draft mess to be over with. He wants to get back on the field. Playing football is fun. Being picked over like a steak with too much fat is not.
Failure is not an option
Blackmon leaves Oklahoma State with one year of eligibility left. Opposing coaches are glad to see him go because they are tired of seeing him go. “We had two guys on him, and it was a go-route down our sideline, and we all thought it was going out of bounds,” says Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville. Every story about a great Blackmon catch has this part, where nobody thought there was a play to be made until he made one. “And he jumped up in between both of our players and made a great catch then kept in bounds and went and scored. I knew then he was the real deal. He will have lots of success on the next level.”
This is Iowa State head coach Paul Rhoads’ version: “It always felt like there was the danger of him taking every play and turning it into a touchdown. And he did one. The ball was thrown high and behind him. He leaped up and got it. Our cornerback, who is probably going to be a middle-round draft pick, he’s still looking for that ball. He skipped into the end zone. It was just one of those plays were 52,000 went silent because it was that spectacular of a play. You sort of just stood there and said, ‘What just happened?’ ”
While OSU receivers coach Kasey Dunn loves those big plays, it’s the catches Blackmon makes over the middle that most impress him. To make such catches requires strong hands, rugged toughness and fierce competitiveness. His coaches say Blackmon is fueled more by hatred of drops than love of catches, more by the fear of losing than the joy of winning.
Every offseason, the Oklahoma State football team breaks into eight teams for a competition involving rolling giant tires, pushing sleds and playing of tug of war, among other non-football drills. Dunn says Blackmon wanted to win so badly last year that he was pushing guys out of the way so he could get back in line and get another turn.
“He doesn’t need to look in the mirror before he takes the field. There’s so many wideouts who put on 15 wristbands and the perfect eye black and da da da da da da and all that junk, different colored shoe laces and all that crap,” Dunn says. “They’re worried more about how they look then how they play. He’s exactly the opposite. He’s going to put on his shoes and put on his pads and run out the tunnel and here we go.”
'I thought you'd be bigger'
That style of play will make him as popular with whatever team drafts him as he is in Stillwater. And he’s huge there. Everywhere he goes, everybody knows him. He seems to handle this with ease, but he says he gets takeout a lot to avoid the attention.
At lunch at a popular student hangout called Eskimo Joe’s, two female students asked to have their picture taken with him and one of them said, “Our dads will be so jealous.” A group of senior citizens at the next table fawned over him ... then quizzed him on which team he thinks might draft him and how many millions of dollars that team will pay him. He smiled and said he doesn’t know on the former and hopes for all he can get on the latter.
After having his picture taken with Blackmon, one of the senior citizens told him, “I thought you’d be bigger.”
He hears that a lot and not just from random old men. Iowa State’s Rhoads was shocked at how big Blackmon wasn’t. “I literally said out loud when he came to our sideline the first time, ‘I thought you were bigger than that.’ It just came out of my mouth.”
It’s quite a compliment. He’s so dominant it seems like he has a size advantage. He doesn’t. He’s 6-1, 207. It sounds weird until you hear it over and over, then it sounds even weirder because people are wrong with consistent specificity. Every one thinks he’s 6-4 when he’s actually 6-1. Possible explanations offered by football sources include his long arms, his aggressive style of play and his leaping ability. Blackmon jokes that it’s not that he looks bigger but everybody else looks smaller.
If Blackmon plays big, he also lives big. He was his class president in high school, sang in the choir (but not solo!) and played drums at halftime during football games. Not to get too carried away, but playing bigger than he is could be a metaphor for his life.
Talk like this makes him squirm, but big wakes follow him. He was only 21 when Ardmore hosted “Justin Blackmon Day,” which was two hours in the town square of people singing his praises. In Stillwater, it is so widely known that he befriended a young cancer patient named Olivia Hamilton that the same guy who said, “I thought you’d be bigger,” asked him which one of his bracelets was dedicated to Hamilton. (He wears several rubber bracelets; a couple of them have particular meaning.) It’s one thing for fans to know he’s a standup guy. It’s another for them to know about his good works in such detail.
It's still about having fun
Eskimo Joe’s runs a promotion in which coupons are hidden in napkins. If you get a coupon, you get to shoot a basket. If you make it, your lunch is free. Fields got a coupon, and he let Blackmon take the shot to see if his cheese fries with bacon and salad would be on the house (Blackmon also ate a bowl of lemon wedges that never showed up on the receipt). Blackmon was an All-State high school point guard, and he had planned to try to walk onto Oklahoma State’s team last year but couldn’t because he injured his ankle.
Eureka!
Free lunch, coming up!
A waitress gave him a foam basketball and pointed him to a basket near the front door.
He resisted suggestions that he should dunk it.
He prepared to shoot.
“Finesse, not strength,” Fields said.
Blackmon shot ... air ball .. and laughed. Ah, well, there’s nothing better after golf then going out to eat and dissecting the game, and that’s true whether the meal is free or not. Blackmon says watching pros play golf is no fun because they always know where their shots are going. Fields jokes that the way he and Blackmon play is way more interesting because they never have any idea where the ball might end up. But like the old man said, Blackmon will soon sign a fat contract. He’ll be able to afford lessons.
) equates to normally at least a 4.56 on his best day and probably closer to 4.59.
