White’s name was added to the Spartan Stadium Ring of Fame earlier this season and he will be honored at Saturday’s Homecoming game against Indiana.
(Source Michigan State):
Hometown hero, Lorenzo White of Fort Lauderdale and Dillard High School, will be inducted into the Michigan State University Ring of Honor for exploits on the gridiron for the Spartans. This honor is symbolic of the tenacious, fearless, and powerful running style characteristic of the high school and collegiate athlete who catapulted to professional stardom with the Houston Oilers. Having coached against him in high school, it was obvious that his talents were special leading to this honor. The Westside Gazette and publisher Bobby R. Henry along with the entire Dillard Community applaud your accomplishments and proudly acknowledge this timeless recognition.
I’ve known Lorenzo White for some time I’ve even coach with him and gleaned from his football knowledge. I knew about his athletic proudness but what I like about him the most is his humility. He told me a story once about one of his neighbors she was in elementary school and the teacher was questioning her about some of the things she(student)had done. The teacher wondered how could she do all that coming from the inner city? The young student would talk about pizza parties and going out on the boat and doing all sorts of things that the rich and famous would do. When the teacher asked her how she could do those sorts of things? the student mentioned their friend Lorenzo White. The teacher responded, you know Lorenzo White the great football player as she begin to recite some of his great accomplishments, who’s in the Hall of Fame and broke all kinds of football records? The student said no he’s not all that he is just Lorenzo my neighbor.—Bobby R. Henry, Sr., publisher Westside Gazette
Lorenzo White, one of the greatest running backs in the history of college football, is finally getting his due.
Elected into the College Football Hall of Fame in January, White’s name was added to Michigan State’s Ring of Fame on the east upper deck at Spartan Stadium earlier this season and he will be recognized during Saturday’s Homecoming game against – appropriately enough – Indiana. White’s signature Spartan performance, and his favorite game-memory as a player, came against the Hoosiers in a milestone victory that clinched the 1987 Big Ten championship and sent MSU to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 22 years.
About the only the only thing that could top his HOF induction, White said from his hometown of his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is to be retroactively awarded the Heisman Trophy that eluded him from 1985-87. Securing enough HOF votes proved to be almost as difficult for the two-time consensus All-American to garner as Heisman ballots.
“Well, it’s been a long time coming; I’ve been on the ballot nine times,” White said with a laugh. “But it’s an outstanding honor to be classified in such a way for the work that you did, and that we did together, with my teammates. I love the honor and I’m very thankful for me and my teammates.”
White’s final college decision came down between Michigan and MSU, which White visited with then-future University of Miami (Fla.) and Dallas Cowboys star receiver Michael Irvin, who prepped at Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas.
“What tipped the scales was just the family-type environment at Michigan State (under head coach George Perles),” White said. “I got Michael Irvin to come with me for his visit. After we saw a few different people, we were getting ready to leave and get back on the plane, I said, `Mike, we should do this.’ Mike looked at me and said, ‘This is not the place for me, but after the way everybody treated you, you’d have to be a fool not to go to Michigan State.’”
White burst onto the national scene as a shy, soft-spoken second-year player in 1985 by finishing the regular season with 1,908 yards, which at the time was the fourth-best single-season rushing total in college football history and the most rushing yards ever by a sophomore. Before leaving the game with a twisted ankle, White rushed for 226 yards in the heartbreaking loss at Iowa and he gained 286 yards against Indiana. He capped off that remarkable season with 158 yards on 33 carries against Georgia Tech in the All-American Bowl to finish with 2,066 yards and 17 touchdowns.
Due to statistical variances prevalent back then, postseason statistics weren’t necessarily considered part of the final record for ranking purposes – some conferences did, others, like the Big Ten and the NCAA (until 2002) didn’t. However, each of the four players that reached the 2,000-yard plateau in all games before White did – Tony Dorsett of Pittsburgh (2,150 in ‘76), Southern Cal’s Charles White (2,050 in ‘79) and Marcus Allen (2,427 in ‘81), and Mike Rozier of Nebraska (2,295 in ‘83) – won the Heisman.
With Heisman voting tallied weeks before the start of bowl season, senior Auburn running back Bo Jackson was named the winner with 1,786 yards in 11 regular season games (162.4 per game) and White, with 112 more yards and a 173.5 average, was fourth. Jackson rushed for 129 yards in the Cotton Bowl to finish the season with 1,915 in all games.
The prevailing school of thought was that Heisman voters back then were reluctant to vote for an underclassman not named Archie Griffin. Oddly enough, it was White, not Jackson, who was named college running back of the year by the Touchdown Club of Columbus and by the Washington, D.C. Touchdown Club.
White was back in the hunt as a senior in 1987 as Michigan State chased down its first Big Ten title since 1978 and first Rose Bowl trip since 1965. White rushed for 111 or more yards in seven games, including 292, on a school record 56 carries – one shy of the NCAA record – in the de facto Big Ten championship game against Indiana. He finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting again after finishing the regular season with a Big Ten-best 1,459 yards and 14 touchdowns, and leading MSU to a conference crown and the Rose Bowl.
“The honor of being in the College Football Hall Fame finally validates the success that I had in college football,” he said. “If you look at the things the guys going in with me did, like (former Texas quarterback) Vince Young and (ex-Notre Dame wide receiver) Rocket Ismail, what I did ranks at the top with the best.”
And having his name added to MSU’s Ring of Fame is the ultimate team award.
“That solidifies, and means Michigan State team goals were met and that’s big because that’s me and my teammates,” White said. “That’s who I give that to. I may not have won the Heisman Trophy, but being able to walk in there seeing what my name represents is an awesome honor because I feel like that’s my family at Michigan State.”
It’s no wonder, therefore, that White wishes he contributed something else on permanent display in the lobby of the Skandalaris Football Center lobby where other Spartans’ national hardware is kept.
“Yeah, that would be nice,” White said. “Next time I see Bo (Jackson), I’m going to ask if I can borrow our trophy. He needs to share that Heisman Trophy with me. But if I couldn’t win a national championship and the Heisman Trophy, going to the Rose Bowl was the next best thing.
“And now, the icing on the cake is the Hall of Fame.”
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