Sport: How 'Bout Them Dawgs?

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During the spring before Walker's arrival on campus, five players were disciplined when a traditional team party turned rowdy, and a sixth, star Split End Lindsay Scott, lost his grant-in-aid after a shoving match with an academic adviser. The seniors served their penance by doing maintenance work at the school during the summer, and Scott, a junior, decided to pay his own way to play this fall. Sobered by their close call with oblivion, the seniors gathered two dozen players around them and, in the heat of a summer-long drought, ran laps and worked out with weights to enter the season in peak condition. Says Right Tackle Nat Hudson: "We decided we didn't want to end our careers with a season like last year. The coaches told us we had to go out and provide the leadership for a group of green guys. Before the summer was over, we were ready."

The upperclassmen were ready to help Walker, of course, but there were doubts about whether he was ready to help them. Walker had played in the smallest high school division in the state, and the transition to major college play has proved difficult for most players. Says Right Guard Tim Morrison: "I thought it would be a big change for him, going from knocking over 130-lb. high school line backers to running into 270-lb. defensive ends in college. But for Herschel, there wasn't any difference. He's just a bull."

Walker was listed as a third-string tailback in the first game against Tennessee. However, he was put into the game in the second quarter and scored his first touchdown, sparking a Georgia rally from a 1 5-2 deficit. That run was a portent of things to come: seemingly trapped behind the line, he darted between two tacklers, then knocked a third onto his back, and went into the end zone standing up.

He has been the Bulldogs' starting tail back ever since. Says Hudson: "Herschel is what an offensive lineman works for, why you run those laps, push those blocking sleds up and down the field, sweat and grunt in the trenches — to see somebody run all the way." Walker sees things differently: "I have a lot of help. There's a great line opening the holes, and all the upperclassmen running backs on the team have helped me with hints on how to use those holes, showed me techniques in waiting for blockers. I'm good because the team is so good."

There is truth in that. Georgia, home of traditionally stingy defenses, now has an offense to match. It is led by junior Quarterback Buck Belue, an all-round athlete who was drafted by baseball's Chicago White Sox. The Bulldogs have lost just one of the 16 games he has started.

Walker is the key to Georgia's attack. Going into the regular-season finale against Georgia Tech this Saturday, he has rushed for 1,411 yds., a new school record and only 175 yds. short of the N.C.A.A. mark for first-year players set by Tony Dorsett at Pittsburgh in 1973. Says Gil Brandt, director of player personnel for the Dallas Cowboys: "Walker and Earl Campbell are the only two players I've ever seen who could have gone straight from high school to the pros."

Walker is in no hurry to get there. A criminology major who wants to become an FBI man, he is determined to stay for his degree. So far, he has not missed a class or been late with an assignment.