The hair is in a ziploc bag, back in his apartment, waiting for god knows what. It has been suggested to Cedric Benson that he auction it off, one dred at a time, proceeds going to charity, but he seems unmoved by the concept. Now is not the time, his uninterested eyes imply, staring through the car window at the countryside south of Austin. Maybe someday, though. Maybe someday.
He cut the dreds himself, in his apartment the week before February's NFL combine. As the shorn locks fell across his face and down his back, Benson thought of all the sweat and blood and football that went with them. All the things they'd seen together, beginning with his junior year in high school, falling to the floor in a concession to adulthood, to maturity, to someone else's idea of conformity. Is he a sellout? The thought has occurred to him. So forgive him for stuffing his locks in a bag and keeping them on the shelf, where he can see them, where they can still be a part of him. It's just hair, but the truth is he needs it to remind him who he is.
At the combine, nearly all of Benson's interviews with NFL coaches and decisionmakers started with the same words. "Good to see you cut your hair," the leading men of his industry said, acting as though putting scissors to hair was an epic achievement. They know what the 5'10'', 222-pound tailback can do on the field-more than 1,000 yards every year for four years at Texas, including 1,834 yards and 19 touchdowns as a senior-but he left Indianapolis wondering if his status as a top-five pick in the April 23 draft might be more contingent on his appearance than on his production.
The superficiality of it bothered Benson, but also reinforced his decision. They acted so excited about his hair, it must be important. It even caused Greg Davis, the Texas offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, to look upon Benson's postcut mug and, in a fit of old-guy observation and innocent paternalism, drawl, "All these years, and I never knew what a handsome young man you were."
Benson says, "I know the system, and sometimes you have to play the game. I saw the guys at the combine looking at me. It isn't really something I believed in doing, but it represents where I am in life. I wish it didn't matter, but it does. Life is changing, and I had to change with it."
The hair on the shelf is a symbol, an outward manifestation of Benson's individuality, his quirkiness, his penchant for looking at the world from a slightly different angle. But the haircut is a symbol too, of the anxiety felt by every young man preparing for the annual unpredictability of the NFL draft. Teams have no formula to determine the player who will be the safest and best investment. Conversely, there is no formula for a player that maximizes his attractiveness to the decisionmakers. Teams analyze to the point of distraction, going far beyond known factors-production, physical attributes-to assess psychological aspects that could signal long-term value. Agility tests, Wonderlic tests, personality tests, all create an environment that's equal parts anticipation and abject fear. Players try to guess along, hoping to say the right things, fill in the right blanks, look the right way.
In other words, sometimes hair matters.
This mental hide-and-seek often causes a player's estimated worth to rise and fall based on elements tangential to his ability. Benson didn't participate in drills at the combine, choosing instead to perform at a Texas pro day in Austin on March 23. While he sat, Auburn's Ronnie Brown-whom Benson outrushed by more than 1,300 yards last season-became the running back flavor of the day by putting up a 4.43 40. When Benson finally did run in Austin, he ran a 4.51. "The amount of time and energy we put into turning over every stone is amazing," says Ravens head coach Brian Billick. "But I always say we have to be careful not to mitigate an entire body of work based on how fast a guy runs in a pair of shorts. Then of course, every year we go out and get all excited about how fast someone runs in shorts."
Benson's story has all the ingredients of an after-school message movie. Protagonist sheds (or shears) his childish ways, becomes a man, impresses prospective boss and goes on to great fame and fortune. The problem, though, is this protagonist's aversion to simplistic plots and easy answers. He's a deep thinker, or at the very least a long one. He rolls every question around in his head, viewing it from every direction, before offering a response that is rarely expected. In this industry, prospective employers prefer easy answers, the yes-sirs and no-sirs and you-betchas. But when Benson was asked on ESPN Radio last September whether he would rather beat Oklahoma or win the Heisman Trophy, he caused a fuss in Austin by choosing the Heisman, saying it had been a childhood dream. "Honest question, honest answer," Benson says. "It didn't mean I wanted to lose to Oklahoma."
Says Buccaneers running backs coach Art Valero, whose team needs a running back and owns the No. 5 pick, "That's one thing you learn about Cedric. So many kids give you pat, rehearsed answers, but not him. He's so candid I sometimes wonder, has he thought about how this sounds? And you can tell he always has. I find it refreshing."
IT'S A warm, bright March afternoon as Benson heads out of Austin to a place called Dripping Springs for a photo shoot. As the landscape turns rural, Benson stares at the sprawling ranches, occasionally offering an opinion on his favorites. When it is suggested that he is mere weeks away from having his choice of spreads, he says, "That's a wonderful thought." He is an old soul, and his melodious voice is a drive down a smooth road, quiet and undemanding. A little later, he says, "I can't imagine getting up every morning, driving to work and seeing only the road in front of me." When those men of the industry trained their eyes on him during audition weekend in Indianapolis, it's a safe bet Benson studied them just as closely.
He saw people who appreciated the value of a good haircut, especially when considering the alternative. Because Benson knew one thing beyond any doubt: when these men envisioned long dreadlocks leaking out of a helmet worn by a record-setting Texas running back with a history of minor league baseball and a knack for quirky statements, they saw Cedric Benson and Ricky Williams. The linkage is tricky for Benson, because Williams was his first football hero, the man who once carried the ball farther than any college back in history, and then, at 27, decided not to carry it again.
"Cedric and Ricky were both great running backs at Texas," says Bears wide receivers coach Darryl Drake, an assistant at Texas during Benson's first three seasons. "Cedric and Ricky both played minor league baseball. Cedric and Ricky both had dreds. There the similarities stop."
Still, that collection of coincidence led the scouts and coaches and personnel men to draw their own conclusions. They questioned Benson about his relationship with Williams, which led seamlessly to questions about Benson's character and commitment to football. Some came right out and asked him if he thought he might lose interest and quit. Benson answered the questions, but he says, "It was a little bit ridiculous. I looked up to Ricky as a player, and that's not a bad thing. But I met the man twice. It's not like we talk all the time."
The character issue stems from two run-ins Benson had with the law. One was a marijuana possession charge from April 2002, which was later dropped. The other was a misdemeanor criminal trespassing arrest that came during his junior year at Texas, when Benson kicked down the door of an Austin apartment while searching for his stolen plasma television. He spent two days in jail as a result of that arrest and was suspended for one game.
Benson was ready for those questions, but the commitment questions were another matter. In fact, it would be difficult to find a college player with a more footballcentric pedigree than Benson. He won three consecutive Texas state championships at Midland Lee-a school in the same league as Odessa Permian of Friday Night Lights-and in each title game, Benson scored five touchdowns.
He was also a good enough outfielder in high school to be a 12th-round pick of the Dodgers in 2001 and earn a $250,000 signing bonus. He played two summers of minor league ball, then gave it up before his junior season at Texas, a sacrifice he believes sent another message about his commitment to football. Says Drake, "He gave up a source of income, and something he loved, to be the best football player he could be. It's the same with the hair. The hair was him. It was his identity. He gave up both."
Asked if he would have been forced to defend his commitment to the game if Ricky Williams hadn't quit, Benson quickly says, "No."
The next question is tougher.
"Do you believe you would still have the dreadlocks if Ricky hadn't quit?"
Benson doesn't reply. An eternity passes. It seems he might have forgotten the question, or failed to hear it, or is simply refusing to answer it.
Finally, quietly, he says, "That's true. I believe that."
There is nothing in Benson's manner that suggests the kind of speed, explosiveness and relentlessness that allowed him to punish topflight college defenses week after week for four solid quarters. There is no sign of the young man who routinely told his position coach to call the offensive coordinator in the press box and declare, "Cedric says he's ready to take this game over." No inkling of the young man who took every practice handoff and ran it all the way to the end zone. No hint of the driven athlete who was the only Longhorn in the weight room after nearly every practice, alone with his protein shake and his barbells, finishing his day with a few shoulder presses or an abdominal workout while everyone else showered and trudged home.
"He's not the kind of player where you watch three plays and say, 'Okay, turn off the projector,' " says Davis. "You've got to see the way he punishes people over an entire game. They can get height, speed and vertical, but when they get down to where the game is played—with uniforms and blocking and breaking tackles and making first downs—his stock soars."
Benson calls it "a gift for taking it to the edge and leaving it all on the field. Whatever team takes me is going to get what everybody saw on Saturdays." Still, there's something about Benson that creates doubt. They can't quite place it, so they classify it as the Ricky Williams factor, or the character factor. "He's just so candid," says Valero. "I see it as a guy who has nothing to hide, but when you're on the top like him, people try to find ways to knock you down."
Maybe it gets down to this: Cedric Benson is different. He has nothing resembling a posse, and he prefers to spend time with his two rottweilers rather than with most humans. He has few close friends, a fact he attributes to his upbringing. He grew up without a father, and his mother, Jackqueline, didn't dote on him or his two younger brothers. When college coaches came to Benson's home for scheduled recruiting visits, they often found him alone.
After the Longhorns beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl on a last-play field goal, Benson sat on the bench for the longest time, simply watching his teammates celebrate. His gaze settled on the walk-ons and scoutteamers, who were so thrilled they were nearly coming out of their skin. He sat there, a smile on his face, letting it soak in. It's a dramatic moment, the kind that crystallizes the man's humanity. It's the straight currency of the magazine profile: The first-team All-America, the Doak Walker Award-winner, still having time to appreciate the efforts of those who work hard every day and never taste the glory.
So he is asked the question: was he content to sit back and let them have the moment, knowing how hard they work and how little attention they get? "No," he says. "That wasn't it. They just made me laugh." He laughs now, just thinking about it. "They were jumping around like crazy. I guess it was just funny to me. It amused me to see them get so excited like that, because they really don't do anything, and they were still that excited."
No easy answers, only honest ones. Maybe that's the problem. We can handle arrogance and cockiness and flamboyance. Give us posers and preeners and inveterate me-firsters. We can deal with them. Hell, give us a whole room of mouthbreathing defensive tackles and unhinged linebackers, guys who act like hopped-up kindergartners in 300-pound bodies. We can handle that, too.
What we can't handle is different. That's scary, and a little intimidating, and harder to wrap our arms around.
Ego can be tamed with a few pointed hazing rituals and a few training-camp run-ins with a veteran linebacker. The mouth-breathers can be slapped on the back and told to go get 'em. But different? Different takes more work. "I know the way I am sometimes makes people wonder," Benson says. "This is my world and my life, and I've only got one. Why live it the way someone else thinks you should, or says you should?"
Back in downtown Austin, after the photo shoot, Benson is taking note of all the martini bars and trendy restaurants that have replaced the eccentric shops around this college town. "They're taking the hippy out of Austin," he says. "It's a shame." The voice is its usual smooth singsong, water over glass. He's stopped at a light, and Benson is studying a nightclub called Element, where a guy in a suit is standing outside talking on his phone. "I guess that's what they consider progress."
He'll be back to his apartment soon, back to where his old self sits on a shelf in a Ziploc. For some, that's a symbol of progress too. You can imagine Benson laughing a little every time he sees those dreds in that bag.
It seems like the type of thing that might amuse him, seeing something the rest of the world thinks no longer exists.