Baylor’s game-changer

WACO, Texas – Last spring, Robert Griffin III received an invitation to a birthday party for a kid he didn’t even know.

Other strangers have asked him to speak at high school graduations, award ceremonies and baccalaureates. Heck, just a few months ago, a girl contacted the Baylor quarterback on Facebook and begged him to meet her at a coffee shop.

Not for a date.

She wanted Griffin’s autograph.

“It was a present for her boyfriend,” Griffin says, chuckling, “so I drove up there and gave her the signature.”

Griffin pauses.

“Sometimes,” he says, “all of this seems a little weird.”

Especially in Waco, where the Bears haven’t reached the postseason since 1994. For the better part of the past decade football games at Floyd Casey Stadium have had all the excitement of a quilt convention. With each loss, Baylor’s fan support dwindled right along with its reputation.

These days, though, things are different.

Beautiful new football facilities have been constructed and administrators say season ticket sales are “up significantly.” Baylor flags fly in front of more than 500 area businesses while national media flood the school’s football offices with interview requests.

Sammy Citrano owns George’s Restaurant & Catering, which provides the food for Baylor’s booster events.

“Everywhere we go, the attendance has doubled,” Citrano says. “I can’t remember the last time there was this much excitement about Baylor football. A lot of it is because of Robert Griffin.”

Indeed, as he prepares for his second college season, Griffin has completely changed the perception of Baylor’s program. All of a sudden a school with a 13-91 all-time Big 12 record seems like a strong bet to earn a bowl berth for the first time in 15 years.

Along with being compared to former college standouts such as Vince Young and Tommie Frazier, Griffin has already been mentioned as a potential Heisman candidate in 2010.

“We don’t want people yawnin’ – we want ‘em screamin’,” Baylor coach Art Briles says. “People pay good money to come to our games, and it’s our job to show ‘em something. Robert is as exciting of a player as there is in America.”

Not only is Griffin, an Olympic hopeful in the hurdles, one of the fastest quarterbacks in the country, he’s also got one of the strongest arms. Griffin set an NCAA freshman record in 2008 when he opened his college career by throwing 209 passes without an interception.

“He’s unbelievable,” Oklahoma State linebacker Andre Sexton says.

Former offensive lineman Jason Smith was the No. 2 overall pick in this summer’s NFL draft and five Baylor players are on national award watch lists for 2009. Still, anyone in Waco will tell you Griffin is the face of the Bears’ surging program.

Briles was asked recently if one person can change the face of a football team.

“No,” Briles says, “but one person can lead the charge. He’s in the process of doing it.”

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In the fall of 2006, when he was a junior in high school, Robert Griffin drove 71 minutes from his home in Copperas Cove, Texas, for an unofficial visit to Baylor.

He still remembers what happened when former Baylor coach Guy Morriss entered the locker room following a 36-35, come-from-behind victory over Kansas.

” [Morriss] came up and shook hands with a few of the other recruits, but he walked right by me without saying a word,” Griffin says. “That left a bad taste in my mouth.”

Griffin eventually met Morriss on a subsequent visit.

“He told me I could walk on,” Griffin says. “I never even thought about Baylor after that.”

Instead, Griffin became more and more interested in the University of Houston, where Briles’ high-powered offense had changed the fortunes of the Cougars’ program. After attending one of Briles’ camps and listening to him explain his schemes, Griffin was hooked.

“He saw that our offense was quarterback-friendly,” Briles says. “I was just impressed with his maturity and self-confidence. He was so fast and intelligent and he had that competitive nature.

“I just kept thinking, ‘This guy is a can’t miss. We’ve got to figure out a way to keep him under the covers.’”

Griffin could’ve gone to a bigger school with more elaborate facilities and a better television contract. He says Texas offered him a scholarship, and he visited Stanford and Tennessee. But he was worried that those schools would try to turn him into a defensive back or receiver.

“I wanted to play quarterback,” Griffin says. “Plus, with me it was never about going to the school that has five million national championships. It was always about finding the school that was the best fit for me, the school where I could shine. I didn’t want to sit for two years and then play.”

So Griffin committed to Houston. A few months later rumors began to swirl that Briles would replace Morriss, who had been fired at Baylor.

“I called [Briles] up and he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Griff. It’s just a rumor, ‘” Griffin says. “But a few days later I saw him doing the ‘Sic ‘em, Bears’ sign on TV.”

Griffin laughs.

“I wasn’t mad at him,” he says. “I took a few days to look at a few other schools, but I knew I wanted to play for him.”

Griffin committed to the Bears in December of 2007. One month later he enrolled in college after graduating from high school a semester early. As a 17-year-old on Baylor’s track team that spring, Griffin won the Big 12 championship and placed third nationally in the 400-meter hurdles.

After making it to the semifinals of the Olympic trials, Griffin channeled his energy toward football. Even though Baylor lost its season opener 41-13 to Wake Forest, Griffin made an impression by passing for 125 yards off the bench.

Griffin started every game for the rest of the season. The Bears finished 4-8, but three of their losses were by seven points or less, and they led in the second half against No. 7 Texas Tech, No. 14 Missouri and Nebraska.

Toward the end of the season – and during the offseason, as well – people began comparing Griffin to former Texas star Vince Young, with some saying Griffin could be even better because he’s faster and has a stronger arm.

He says he also heard people say that he was “too good” for Baylor and that he should look to transfer.

“I didn’t win Big 12 Freshman of the Year all by myself,” Griffin says. “I did it with the help of all my teammates. We’re a family. We’re building something here. No one realizes how good of a team we have.”

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A year ago, Robert Griffin said he had 800 friends on his Facebook page. As of Wednesday night he had 4,062.

“I pretty much approve everybody,” Griffin says. “I don’t want anyone to go around saying ‘Robert Griffin is a jerk’ because I wouldn’t be their Facebook friend.”

That seems unlikely.

Along with speaking to church groups and high school athletes, Griffin has shown he’s serious about his studies. He graduated No. 7 in his class at Copperas Cove and is interested in becoming a lawyer.

The soft-spoken Griffin usually tries to keep a low profile around Baylor’s campus, spending most of his free time listening to music or hanging out with his girlfriend.

Griffin says his disciplined lifestyle comes from being raised in an Army household. He was born in Japan before his family eventually settled in Copperas Cove.

“I’m a loner at times,” he says. “I don’t have to be in a group to survive. I can make it on my own.”

More and more, though, Griffin is attempting to change.

Even though he’s among the youngest of Baylor’s 17 returning starters, he knows leadership at the quarterback position is vital if the Bears hope to persevere through a brutal schedule and attain the postseason berth that’s eluded them since the 1994 Alamo Bowl.

“If you’re a quarterback, you need to run around with your teammates, the guys you’re playing with,” Griffin says. “Ever since I became the starter I’ve tried to do that more and more.

“I’m not the type to put someone in his place, but I have to get everyone to look at me like I’m a leader. It’s to the point now where if I say something, they know I’m not playing around.”

Griffin’s teammates and coaches say his best form of leadership is by example.

“He’s just so calm, cool and collected,” center J.D. Walton says. “In the huddle, as soon as he comes up, all eyes are on him. He’s never rattled or pissed. His poise rubs off on everyone out there.”

The 6-foot-3 Griffin is also a warrior in the weight room. Some days Griffin follows his workout with Baylor strength coach Kaz Kazadi with another secret lifting session of his own at the university’s student recreation center.

“It’s not like it’s a burden for him to be in the weight room,” Kazadi says. “It’s actually a burden for him not to be there. If you tell him we’re taking a week off, he’s like, ‘A whole week?’

“It’s not just good enough for him to do well at something. He wants to be the best. So whenever we’re training, it’s a double-edged sword, because you want to coach the guy the right way, but you also have to get him to hold back.”

Griffin has gained about 10 pounds of muscle and will likely weigh around 210 when Baylor opens its season at Wake Forest on Sept. 5.

“I can still hit turbo,” he says.

Briles says he’d like for Griffin – who runs between a 4.3 and a 4.4 in the 40-yard dash – to eventually get up to 220 pounds, but he realizes that might not happen until next season, which is the last thing on Griffin’s mind as the 2009 campaign approaches.

Instead he’s thinking about the conversations he had with his teammates throughout the summer about where Baylor’s program was – and where it can go.

“When I was in high school people said Baylor didn’t even belong in the Big 12,” Griffin says. “But when I got here we had talent all over the field. It’s all about what you do with it.

“We can go 12-0 and end up in the national championship, or we could win fewer games than that. It’s up to us. Do we want to be on top? Or is it going to be the same old, some old? I don’t want that to happen. Seeing how many games we played well in last year and how close we were to winning, it’s just a matter of getting over the hump, and I think we’ll do that.”

It won’t be easy. Along with a pair of respectable non-conference foes in Connecticut and Wake Forest – Baylor lost to both teams last year – the Bears play in one of the toughest divisions in college football, the Big 12 South.

“It’s all about changing the mindset,” Griffin says. “When you get down for a long time it’s hard to get out of that hole. Last year we accomplished a lot of what we wanted to accomplish. Now it’s about getting to that bowl game.”

Griffin has done everything he can to make that happen – even quitting the Baylor track team last spring to focus on football. Griffin still hasn’t given up on his dream of participating in the Olympics, though. He plans to run the hurdles in the 2012 games.

Told of Griffin’s statement, Briles couldn’t help but smile.

“He may have a few other things on his plate by then,” says Briles, referring to the NFL. “There’s a good chance things are about to change.”

For Robert Griffin.

And Baylor, too.