Who is Kevin Richardson? We'll Give You a Strong Husky Hint
Kevin James Richardson played University of Washington football for a pair of coaching legends, Jim Owens and Don James. He was one of those 1970s overlap Huskies, which alone made him unique.
He's very opinionated, as Facebook followers have learned and chastised him for it. He's been a cop, a construction worker and a writer. Get to know him, and you'll probably like him.
Richardson, a UW defensive tackle in 1972-76, also remains one of the strongest football players to come through Montlake, setting lifting records early in the James era. He bench-pressed 440 as a sophomore and upped it to 485 pounds as a senior, or nearly twice his playing weight.
Pete Kaligis, an offensive guard for the Huskies' 1991 national championship team, still holds the program bench-press record in the 535-pound range, while defensive tackle Scott Garnett from the early 1980s and tight end Ernie Conwell from the mid-'90s both lifted more than 500 pounds.
Richardson, as he details in the accompanying video, came before all of those other noted UW strongmen by using a serious knee injury to motivate himself to get the most out of his body for football.
"I wanted to be the strongest player out there," he said.
One of the first Huskies recruited out of Sacramento, California, Richardson was a starting offensive guard as a redshirt freshman during 1973 spring football practice when a walk-on player rammed into him on a play and tore up his knee.
UW track coach Ken Shannon gave him a program to get him started in his recovery from surgery. Shifting to the defensive line, Richardson convinced a teammate from his position group to join him in his nonstop workouts.
"I wanted to find a training partner that had the same intensity for training and the aggression that I possessed in my heart, and the passion for it," he said. "I looked around and there was one guy who stood out — and that was Dave Pear."
Pear, another defensive tackle from Portland, would go on to become the first All-Pro player for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a new NFL franchise with the Seattle Seahawks at the time.
As for Richardson?
Carrying a 6-foot-4, 260-pound game, he started on the defense line for most of his senior season in 1976, going back and forth with a young and promising Doug Martin, but a pro football career didn't materialize for him. That was a huge disappointment.
Richardson fell victim to anxiety and depression issues, to the point he became suicidal. It has taken him much of his adult life to come to grips with it all.
We'll tell his personal story in snippets throughout the week. He's an interesting guy. He lives in the South now and he's writing a book about his journey. He gets emotional talking about it all.
There's a fun side to him, too. He always identifies himself as Kevin James Richardson. He legally changed his middle name from Ralph to James simply because he didn't like Ralph.
He'll explain why he settled on James. There's more to it than you might think.
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