The Cal 100 -- No. 60: Russell White
We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.
No. 60: Russell White
Cal Sports Connection: White rushed for at least 1,000 yards in all three seasons at Cal and remains the program's career leader in rushing yards and rushing touchdowns.
Claim to Fame: Considered an academic risk when he arrived on campus, White stayed true to his promise that he would earn a diploma.
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When Russell White — the nation’s most heralded high school running back — signed to play for Cal in the late 1980s, he jokingly told reporters his goals included winning a couple Heisman Trophy awards.
But there was a deeper ambition inside White, who was so talented it was initially hard to imagine coach Bruce Snyder’s Bears even had the gall to recruit a player who set state records of 5,998 rushing yards and 94 touchdowns during his career at Crespi Carmelite High School in the southern California town of Encino.
White had his pick of scholarship offers from across the country, ultimately choosing Cal over Notre Dame, Washington and USC, where his uncle, Charlie White, won the 1979 Heisman Trophy.
When White was ruled ineligible to play his freshman season of 1989 because his SAT scores didn’t meet the standards of the NCAA’s Prop. 48, his dream of earning a degree at the nation's No. 1 public university seemed perhaps even more far-fetched.
Cal discovered during White’s freshman year that he suffered from dyslexia and that given proper support he could overcome his learning disability. In the meantime, fans waited eagerly for his arrival on the field.
He did not disappoint. On Sept. 15, 1990, in his home debut against defending national champion Miami, on the first time he’d touched the football in a game at Memorial Stadium, White returned the game’s opening kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown.
White went on to rush for at least 1,000 yards in three straight seasons — something no other Cal player has done — and finished his career as the program’s career leader with 3,367 rushing yards and 35 rushing touchdowns.
There were countless highlights along the way, including a 229-yard rushing performance in the Bears' 52-30 rout of USC in 1991 — the most points the Trojans had ever allowed to that point, and the most rushing yards an opposing back had put on them.
He had 15 games of at least 100 yards, one of the in the Bears’ 37-13 waltz past favored Clemson in the Florida Citrus Bowl capping the '91 season — Cal’s first New Year’s Day bowl victory in 54 years.
White was everything Cal hoped for. And he was more.
After that ’91 season, his junior year, White’s NFL draft value was at its peak. He had rushed for 1,177 yards and 14 TDs on a 10-2 team, earned All-America honors and was considered a first-round pick.
But on the day after Christmas — a week before the bowl game — White cleared things up for everyone by announcing what he’d always said: He was staying.
“It’s something I have to prove to myself. Once I start something, I have to finish it, no matter (what) the other side of the table is offering me,” he said at the time. “I just felt like it was important that I get my degree. I came here and said I was going to get my degree and some people may not have believed me.”
White saw it through, earning his social welfare degree in the spring of 1993.
From strictly a football point of view, White should have left school for the NFL. He would have made more money than he did a year later, when pro scouts cooled on him a bit and he became a third-round pick of the Los Angeles Rams.
White’s NFL career lasted one season in which he played in five games and carried the ball just twice for 10 yards.
But he felt like he owed it to his mother, to Cal and to himself and prove his academic worthiness. To the surprise of so many people who didn’t know him, he was a man of his word.
White went on to coach football at Oakland’s Castlemont High and serve as commissioner of the Oakland Athletic League. He was inducted into the Cal Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003.
Cover photo of Russell White courtesy of Cal Athletics
Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo
