Legend of Walterscheid still vivid decades later

Thankfully, I don’t think of him often. I am thinking of him this week, because UNLV is playing Southern Utah of the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision, or as one better knows it, Division I-AA. You know, the division for little schools with little stadiums. The division that has a playoff.

Leonard Raymond Walterscheid played for Southern Utah when it was a state college instead of a university, which it has been only since 1990. When it was a state college, Southern Utah played in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. As did my school, Western New Mexico.

My introduction to this guy Walterscheid came via Joe from down the hall of our dormitory. Joe — I don’t remember his last name — had spent time on a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert (thanks, Mr. Springsteen). He knew I had a job in the sports information office, and that I would be making the trip to Cedar City, and that I would get to see Leonard Walterscheid play football for the Southern Utah State College Thunderbirds.

Joe described Walterscheid in the way that Will Ferrell and the cast of “Saturday Night Live” paid homage to larger-than-life Bill Brasky in those sketches on late-night TV. He was the best damn pass receiver and the best damn defensive back and the best damn kickoff returner and the best damn punt returner, and if they let him play quarterback, he would have been the best damn one of those, too.

He was the best damn everything, Joe from Utah said. And did you know that he lost a couple of fingers in an industrial accident? If not for that, Joe said, Leonard Walterscheid would be the first guy from Southern Utah to play in the NFL.

I sort of believed Joe, partly because I was naive, and partly because there weren’t accurate scouting reports in the RMAC, just a bunch of little schools with directions or hyphens or “Highlands” as part of their name.

Our coach at Western New Mexico was a guy named Jim Walker, a tough Texan who had blocked for Donny Anderson at Texas Tech. And when Southern Utah won the toss and elected to receive — this would have been 1976, when teams that won the toss took the ball — the Mustangs elected to kick directly to Leonard Walterscheid (No. 27 in the baby-blue uniform) probably, as I said, because small schools didn’t have accurate scouting reports in those days. And probably because Jim Walker was a tough Texan who wasn’t afraid of kicking the dadgum ball to a guy whose name conjures images of a tax accountant.

And damn if ol’ Lenny, who was young Lenny then, didn’t run back the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown.

And when it was over, Southern Utah beat us, because Southern Utah always beat us, though the media guide says they only beat us 16 times in 22 games.

And when it was over, Leonard Walterscheid did become the first player from Southern Utah to play in the NFL. An undrafted free agent, he spent eight seasons in the NFL, mostly with the Bears, and led Chicago in interceptions in 1980. And while with the Bears, he and his wife, Korine, had a son, Justin, who played football at Utah and then at Southern Utah, and is ranked fourth in single-season punt return yardage at SUU, one spot behind his old man. 

Leonard Walterscheid, 57, now owns a liquor store in Grand Junction, Colo. — after all, he played for the Bears. The girl who answered the phone Monday said he was hunting. Justin Walterscheid is the running backs and special teams coach at Southern Utah, which plays the Rebels at 6 p.m. Saturday at Sam Boyd Stadium.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from this, it’s that whereas UNLV fans are expecting an easy game, Rebels coach Bobby Hauck probably isn’t, because he comes from a Division I-AA background, where they have a playoff and a lot of little guys like Leonard Raymond Walterscheid — little guys who are pretty good football players, even if nobody has heard of them.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.