Originally published in The Northwest Herald on July 23, 2006
By Kevin Kaduk

DeKALB - Garrett Wolfe's career at Northern Illinois started slowly, just like how he sometimes dances on the flank before deciding which route he wants to take.

Actually, it almost never began at all. This was in 2002 and the Wolfe family had just pulled into town to drop Garrett off at school for the first time.

Though Wolfe had selected NIU almost all on his own, a number of second thoughts surged as he opened the door and stepped to the curb.

You read right. The career of one of the program's most prolific running backs almost didn't make it past the registration table.

"He wanted to come right back home," said his mother, Patricia. "We had to leave him standing on the road, right there in front of the dorm."

Patricia Wolfe laughs when remembering the day.

"Garrett had a couple of friends who also got homesick right away. Their parents went back and got them. We just let Garrett look sad, pitiful and upset.

"Then we drove away."

What a sweet move by Mom, right?

Without her tough love, we might not be sitting here talking about Wolfe as he enters his senior season in DeKalb.

It's been a long few years for Wolfe, filled with a few bumps in the road and prefaced with two years of not seeing the field at all.

But it should be capped by a heckuva encore. The 5-foot-7, 177-pound running back returns after having run for 1,630 yards and 16 touchdowns in his junior season.

That was enough to qualify him as the nation's top returning rusher, despite missing three games with a shoulder injury.

Wolfe already has been named a first-team All-American by Playboy, the first Huskie in history to receive the honor.

He was named a co-captain by his teammates, earning more votes than his fellow three leaders.

And in perhaps the biggest sign of cultural crossover, Wolfe already has a fan video posted on the Internet video site youtube.com.

Just search "Garrett Wolfe" and find a 3-minute clip of Wolfe motoring his 5-foot-7, 177-body through defensive backfields as Lenny Kravitz sings "Dig In" in the background.

Sample lyrics: "There is nowhere to run/There is no way to hide/Don't let it beat you/Say nice to meet you/And bye."

"I've coached a lot of guys in 38 years and Garrett is one of the few guys who can do it all," said NIU head coach Joe Novak, who also coached standouts LeShon Johnson and Michael Turner. "Garrett can gear down, he can follow the blocking, and he can change pace and then look for more holes. And then he makes it all look so easy.

"I don't know if you saw his touchdown run against Michigan last year, but if you did, you know exactly what I'm talking about."

Lessons in schooling

Time to throw you for a little misdirection, just like Wolfe when he crouches behind an offensive lineman and waits for a linebacker to commit one way before he goes the other.

This is a point where we can talk about all the on-field achievements Wolfe has earned over the past two years.

Like that 76-yard run against Michigan, a sideline romp he quickly turned into a high-velocity sprint over the hashmarks and into the end zone of the Big House.

Or the game in which he earned both his reputation and starting job, a 202-yard second-half performance against Bowling Green on national TV in 2004.

But to vicariously enjoy the wild ride on which Wolfe currently finds himself, you have to visit the meat of the story, a pair of off-field tales.

One self-inflicted.

The other out of his control.

But both part of the reason he can say things like "I'm always confident that whoever I'm competing with will quit before I do" and not sound like every other clichéd competitor out there.

See, Wolfe never took school that seriously. By his own admission, he quickly bought into society's notion that athletes need only take care of their business on the field.

So when the Chicago native enrolled at Fenwick for his freshman year of high school, he paid little attention to the books.

Unable to adhere to the school's strict college prep standards, Wolfe was a goner by the end of the year. He transferred to Holy Cross in River Grove, the first school that accepted him.

Gone was his ride to school. In was an hour-and-half ride on a city bus. He excelled on the football field, dominated the Catholic League, but his grades didn't improve much.

Impressed by his running ability the Big Ten and other powerhouses came calling.

"But they saw the transcripts," Wolfe said. "and they took off running."

That left Northern Illinois as one of his few options. Novak believed Wolfe was a risk - both size- and book-wise - but believed both would work out.

Wolfe, meanwhile, wasn't so sure. In DeKalb, he was out of his safety zone, away from his brothers and cousins and in a place that definitely didn't look like the city neighborhood in which he had grown up.

"At times, I doubted myself," he said. "I didn't really want to be here. I was homesick and wanted to go back to my family.

"At times I would tell myself, maybe I am too small, and maybe I can't get it done."

It didn't help that he sustained an ankle injury, though he was on track to earn a redshirt anyway. He paid a little more attention to studying, following the plans of his tutors and looking forward to playing football the following fall.

On the final day of spring finals, Wolfe visited his academic counselor to make sure everything was kosher.

Instead he found out he had only completed 17 credits. He needed 18 to be eligible for the following year. According to Novak, the mistake was one the school bore the responsibility for.

But Wolfe missed a year of eligibility all the same.

"It was devastating," Wolfe said. "It almost caused me to flunk out the following fall because I was just so miserable and so upset about doing everything I was asked to do and doing everything possible and still being ineligible.

"I feel like people let me down."

Wolfe had surgery on his ankle and then resumed practicing with his teammates.

That only made things worse.

"I was so upset for so long," Wolfe said. "I just kept thinking in my mind that it would be another year before I could play another football game.

"I was around the team and working, but I couldn't go get the reward on Saturday like everyone else."

Bouncing back

So this is where we turn on the afterburners, just like when Wolfe sees that sliver of space and makes his move toward daylight.

After the credit mixup, Novak became concerned with the way Wolfe would handle it.

"I was really concerned we might lose him," Novak said. "Here was a kid who was a marginal student, got hurt his freshman year and he does all these things to come back and then we start two-a-days and we tell him he's not eligible? That was hard."

Wolfe isn't exactly sure when things began to turn around, but he decided that he wasn't going to let anyone chase him from the school. That's funny, considering he wanted to leave on the first day.

"I understood I could be the first person in my family to graduate from college," Wolfe said. "It was pointless for me to come this far and not graduate. I've never quit anything in my life and I didn't want to become known as a quitter."

Wolfe said he still isn't the best student, but he's 18 credits away from graduating with a degree in communications and media studies.

Oh yeah, there's the football thing. In 2004, he claimed the starting job from A.J. Harris and never looked back. He rushed for 1,656 yards and 18 touchdowns in his sophomore season, including a 43-carry, 325-yard output against Eastern Michigan.

Last year was much of the same as Wolfe began the season with 148 yards against Michigan and 245 against Northwestern. He played much of the season with a hurt shoulder, watching it pop out of place six times during the season.

This year Novak held him out of spring practice and hopes to give him fewer carries. There's his overall health to think about as well as an opportunity to work on pass protection. The NFL scouts will want to see that.

But "if they want to give me the ball 60 times, I'll run it 60 times," Wolfe said. "Whatever helps the team win."

Indeed, Wolfe could be part of the first NIU team to win the Mid-American Conference championship. Last year's 7-5 squad reached the title game but lost in the final minute to Akron. Wolfe rushed for 270 yards in the game but left feeling unsatisfied.

"We ended on a sour note," Wolfe said. "I want to end my career with two postseason games - a MAC championship and a bowl game."

Postseason predictions?

Not a bad way to end a run.