12THMAN KILLER

BY TERRY GREENBERG

Rodney Blackshear didn’t think he would stay in Texas to play college football – but his mom’s chicken and Spike Dykes lead him to Lubbock.

The late Tech football coach made a recruiting visit to Blackshear’s Houston home.

“One of the biggest reasons I went to Tech was my mom fell in love with him – he was so down to earth,” said Blackshear.

“The first thing he told my mom is, ‘my wife Sharon has me on a diet so I can’t eat too much food. But you can just set a plate in front of me and I’m going to make sure we have a good conversation.’ As he was talking, he not only ate all of his food, he asked my mom if she was going to finish her food. She said no. So he ate that too,” said Blackshear.

By the time Dykes walked out the door, his folksy style had won over the family.

“Other coaches were more business-like,” Blackshear said.

He became a Red Raider.

Another selling point – he wanted to play for Robert Ford, one of Dykes’ assistant coaches. Dykes had been Ford’s high school coach. Ford later won Super Bowl rings as tight end coach for the Dallas Cowboys.

Blackshear’s Red Raider career landed him in the Texas Tech Athletics Hall of Fame after setting a record that cannot be broken and he’ll forever be remembered as the “12th Man Killer.”

After Tech, he played seven seasons in the Arena Football League followed by 13 years of coaching football. Now he’s “having the time of my life” teaching physical education at Lake Highlands Elementary School in Dallas.

Hall of Fame Career

Blackshear played for Dykes from 1987-91. His favorite game was the last – in his hometown – when the Red Raiders beat Houston 52-46.

He caught five passes for 251 yards and two touchdowns – setting a Southwest Conference record for receiving yards in a single game.

A few years later, the Southwest Conference ended, immortalizing the record. (The all-time Tech record is now 261 yards by Antoine Wesley in 2018 – ironically against Houston.)

It was even more special to Blackshear because his family was there. It was the first time his dad saw him play college football in person. His longest catch that day was a 95-yard touchdown pass. Robert Hall hit Blackshear around midfield and he raced the final 50 yards.

It remains the longest reception in Tech history. Blackshear was in Lubbock years later to see Jakeem Grant almost break his record. Blackshear was sitting with former teammate Tyrone “Pappa Smurf” Thurman when Grant caught a pass from Patrick Mahomes.

“Because I have the record, I’m always conscious of where they are on the field,” said Blackshear when the Red Raiders start drives a few yards from their end zone. “I just assume it’s going to happen, even though it hasn’t yet.”

Mahomes connected with Grant when Tech had the ball inside its 5-yard line.

“He was zigzagging down the field. I looked at Tyrone and said, ‘he managed to break my damn record,’” said Blackshear. But Grant was forced out of bounds short of the end zone –and short of breaking Blackshear’s mark.

The 12th Man Killer

The Red Raiders were playing Texas A&M in College Station in 1990 when Blackshear was about to go on the field to return a kickoff.

Dykes gave him a direct order.

“’Blackshear, I don’t care where they kick it, your --- better get the ball’ and I said, ‘OK coach,’” Blackshear said.

Blackshear and Scottie Allen were deep to receive the kickoff. Blackshear apologized to Allen in advance if he ended up catching a ball kicked toward Allen, who told him not to worry about it. Blackshear was on the right side, the Aggies kicked to the other side. Blackshear came over to Allen’s side, caught the ball and took off.

Ben Kirkpatrick threw a block around the 30yard line and Blackshear ran down the sideline.

“As I’m going down our sideline, Leric Eaton and Brian Dubiski are in front of me looking for someone to block. Leric was playing on a bum ankle, so I blew by him,” Blackshear said.

Dubiski was between Blackshear and Aggie Derrick Frazier.

“I used Brian as a body shield and pushed him into Frazier, they both went to the ground, I jumped over them and then jogged the final ten yards into the end zone untouched,” he said.

The 19th-ranked Aggies won the game, 28-24, but it was the end of A&M’s famous 12th Man squad.

In the 1980s, former Aggie coach Jackie Sherrill started the 12th Man Kick-Off Team composed of regular students through open tryouts and they performed well.

The idea was abandoned after Blackshear’s return.

Now the 12th Man means the students supporting the Aggies at games at Kyle Field.

Back in Lubbock, Dykes told Blackshear he had some mail from College Station – death threats.

“One said he was a state trooper,” said Blackshear, who added the man had details about where Blackshear and his other family members could be found.

“He wrote ‘don’t you ever get caught coming through College Station. If you do, your mommy will never see you again.’ Another one said I don’t know anything about tradition and ‘if we catch your --- in Central Texas.’ I got three or four of those,” Blackshear said.

A dozen years later, Blackshear was in College Station as a member of Mike Leach’s Tech staff for a then-Big 12 game against the Aggies. Leach asked Blackshear to go for a walk.

“We’re walking around the outside of the stadium,” said Blackshear, who had those threatening letters on his mind. Outside the stadium is a statue of Reveille, A&M’s Collie mascot. Leach looked at Blackshear and said:

“You know what we should do? We should get a statue of you with the dog Reveille on his back in a submissive position and you with your Guns Up shooting at the dog,” Blackshear recalled, laughing.

“If you get that going, I would pose for any picture you want me to take,” Blackshear said he told Leach.

Arena Football Career

His favorite arena game was the 4th of July in 1996 when he caught seven passes for 168 yards and five touchdowns for the Texas Terror, which became the Houston ThunderBears.

“It was the most touchdowns in one game I ever had in my career,” he said. The game was also memorable for Blackshear because his brother was battling a fatal disease and watched him in person that day.

“My brother was so excited to be able to get out of the house and see me play. For me, it’s all about family,” Blackshear said, who grew up with seven brothers and two sisters.

Blackshear spent most of his AFL career with the Houston team, catching 204 passes for 2,482 yards and 45 receiving touchdowns. He was also the team career leader in tackles with 129 because they played both offense and defense.

He finished his arena football career with one season in 2001, playing for the Grand Rapids Rampage in Michigan – the year the team won the league title. Around the time he entered the Tech Hall of Fame he was also inducted into the Grand Rapids Sports Hall of Fame for his year with the champion Rampage.

Next Up, Coaching

Blackshear came back to Tech to finish his telecommunications degree when he spent the 2002 season on Leach’s staff, which helped him transition to coaching.

Blackshear always knew he’d be a coach. His mom saw it when he got his first playbook in middle school, where he was going to play quarterback.

“When I got home, I grabbed cousins and neighborhood kids and made them run routes to learn the reads,” he said.

When he played arena football, coaches leaned on Blackshear to explain to new players what they needed to know.

He talked former teammate Lemuel Stinson into returning to school to get their degrees.

“We both moved back in the summer of 2002,” he said, getting his degree a year and a half later.

It was also a chance to reconnect with Bill Dean – who he first met during his recruiting visit after Dykes ate his mom’s chicken.

“He’s the face of Tech. We used to call him Tom Landry (legendary Dallas Cowboys coach), because he looked like him,” said Blackshear of the popular professor and former leader of the Texas Tech Alumni Association.

His favorite Tech game since playing was when he was on the sidelines for the 42-38 win over Texas in Lubbock in 2002.

The Red Raiders were trying to run out the clock when quarterback Kliff Kingsbury tossed a lateral to Mickey Peters, who hit Wes

Welker for a 35-yard play putting the game away and ruining the third-ranked Longhorns chances for a Big 12 and national titles.

“There was a photo in Sports Illustrated of Wes running down the sidelines and you can see me in my white sleeves and red shirt in the background,” said Blackshear.

Along his coaching journey, he led the Arena Football 2 League’s Lubbock Renegades for two years and Lubbock’s Trinity Christian High School for one year in 2015.

Loves Lubbock, Loves Tech

“I became a man there,” said Blackshear of arriving in Lubbock a few weeks from his 18th birthday.

He loves getting his teammates together for a game at Jones AT&T Stadium.

“It’s like we never left campus when a bunch of the guys get together. It’s like we’re all 19-year-old kids again,” Blackshear said, mentioning James Gray, Shawn Jackson, Lloyd Hill, Thurman and Hall, the quarterback who connected with him on the record-setting play.

“I’m the one who pushes everybody to come back and visit,” said Blackshear. He also likes to play in the Double T Varsity golf tournament.

Teaching Kids

Blackshear got his teaching certification as a backup plan and ended up sticking with it. He enjoys teaching kids how sports can help them in life.

He’s also started a non-profit, Education Through Sports, which educates students and their parents about scholarship money available for students with good grades. Kids can still go to college and play sports even if they don’t get an athletic scholarship.

“A lot of parents in this city don’t know all the options out there,” he said

Blackshear tries to be realistic with parents, stressing getting a college degree is vital because not every student athlete is going to sign a multi-million-dollar contract to play pro sports.

The Right Way

Blackshear is impressed with Joey McGuire’s leadership of the Tech football program after an 8-5 record his first season.

“He’s recruiting the way I always felt we should recruit,” said Blackshear. “We didn’t always go for the top recruits – the assumption was we couldn’t get those kids to come to Lubbock. Robert Hall and I have had the conversation that Lubbock is a great place to play football and get an education.”

McGuire will go after any player, Blackshear said.

“He’s not afraid to go into any home and talk to those kids about being a Red Raider. That’s what’s going to put us over the top. He’s building the program the right way,” he said.

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BY TERRY GREENBERG