Moss. That's what his buddies back in South Florida have called him ever since he was 14, when it seemed like the perfect nickname for the bone-armed, quick-as-a-whip kid catching acrobatic touchdowns on the sandlot and locking up future NBA stars on the blacktop. Today, though, there couldn't be a more inappropriate nickname for the kid: Moss -- as in The Guy Who Takes Plays Off.
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| Come game time, Gamble will be busy for the next 60 minutes. |
Ohio State's
Chris Gamble doesn't take plays off. Heck, the Buckeye coaches don't even let the 6'2", 180-pound sophomore leave the field. Coach
Jim Tressel has made Gamble major-college football's truest two-way player in nearly 40 years. Not since the days before most American homes had television, before the Miami Hurricanes had black players, before
JoePa had won a game, has anyone logged as many minutes as Ohio State's interception-
grabbing wideout -- or is it pass-catching corner?
Of course, other guys have pulled occasional double duty.
Deion Sanders and
Charles Woodson dabbled as two-way players, spicing up the offense every few series.
Champ Bailey was a full-time corner and caught 47 passes as a senior at Georgia, but even he wasn't asked to endure the gut-busting workload that Gamble has shouldered for Ohio State this year.
Just look at what Gamble did in the Buckeyes' overtime win at Illinois. Even though the box score tells us he had just one catch for 14 yards, three tackles and three punt returns for 31 yards, the game film tells a different story. Over the course of a three-hour 23-minute nail-biter, Gamble was on the field for 130 of the game's 146 plays. Gamble the cornerback took away two-thirds of the field from the Illini offense; Gamble the wideout continually extended the Illini defense. His two-way totals detail a workout of Olympic proportions: 35 10-yard sprints, 38 15-yard sprints, 25 20-yard sprints, 11 25-yard sprints, 6 40-yard sprints. Gamble's day amounts to almost a mile-and-a-quarter of sprinting. The World's Fastest Man,
Tim Montgomery, says his most grueling workout is a regimen of nine 90-meter dashes, which covers only a half-mile. To put Gamble's day into sharper context, he covered nearly the same distance that the field runs during the Kentucky Derby -- and he was running backward half the time.
The Illini were smart and steered clear of Gamble, choosing to pick on the other corner,
Dustin Fox. They knew all about Gamble swiping games. Like against Cincinnati, when Gamble picked off a Bearcat pass in the end zone on
the first defensive play of his career, snuffing out a drive with OSU already down 19-17. Or Wisconsin, when Tressel and his staff put Gamble on an island with the Badgers' best receiver, 6'3"
Jonathan Orr, on third-and-long. The Buckeye safeties blitzed, but Gamble made that pick at the goal line anyway. Against Penn State, he took back another pick 40 yards for the Buckeyes' only TD in a 13-7 win. Against Purdue, Gamble not only returned a punt 22 yards to set up the game-winning drive, he made the game-saving pick at the OSU 11 by bailing off his man and dashing across the width of the field. Minnesota wideout
Antoine Burns says Gamble lives up to his name. "He takes so many chances," Burns says, "but he is such a great athlete and has such speed and ball skills, he can get away with it."
With the game on the line, Gamble can take risks because he rarely tires or wears down. With the game in the books, it's a different story. His mom, Latricia, says he's usually good for 14 hours of snoozing on weekend nights. (The night after the Penn State win, he crashed for 17 hours.) "I get a little tired once in a while," Gamble admitted after the Buckeyes' Fiesta-clinching win over Michigan. "But I drink a lot water and I'm in shape, and I've gotten used to it."
If all it took were tolerance and an attentive waterboy, ironman players wouldn't have faded into football lore like letterman sweaters and the dropkick. Chuck Bednarik, a.k.a. Concrete Charlie, was the NFL's last dinosaur, going 58 1/2 minutes for the Eagles in the 1960 championship game. Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver Paul Warfield was the last Buckeyes two-way star, doubling as a defensive back in 1963. Today's vertical offenses -- with up to 10 times as many formations and personnel groupings -- are more mentally and physically demanding on wide receivers and defensive backs. And more passing means more sprinting. "The monumental difference," says Bill Curry, a center/linebacker for Georgia Tech in the '60s who later coached Tech, Alabama and Kentucky, "is that the kids we played against were also playing all the time. Gamble goes up against guys who are resting while he's out there busting it."
"What Chris Gamble is doing is almost impossible," marvels Oklahoma cornerback Andre Woolfolk, considered by NFL scouts to be a first-round lock. Woolfolk is as qualified to speak on Gamble as anyone; last season he started at both wideout and cornerback before focusing on defense after four games. Woolfolk says even playing man coverage, as Gamble usually does, can be a mental marathon. "We have eight different ways of just playing man," says Woolfolk, "and everything gets more complex as the season goes on."
Gamble is the Buckeyes' second-leading receiver, fifth-leading rusher and top punt returner (he's called just one fair catch) and ranks second in all-purpose yardage. But it's been his ability to play wide-side corner that has saved the Buckeyes' season.
Gamble's transformation is a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup discovery, an accident-turned-experiment-turned-sensation. After seeing some playing time at receiver as a freshman, he was goofing around in spring practice and wanted to see if he could shut down Buckeye All-America safety Mike Doss, who was running pass routes. Gamble blanketed Doss, and the wheels began turning in DB coach Mel Tucker's head. "It didn't take me very long to see that he could play anywhere," Tucker says.
Like a schoolyard cornerback, Gamble, who played only red-zone D at Fort Lauderdale's powerful Dillard High, plays defense instinctively. He spends only 15 minutes each practice with the defense. During games, he gets hand signals from Doss and free safety Donnie Nickey to help him with coverages. As Gamble explains: "When I play wide receiver, it's serious. When I play defensive back, it's fun."
"We knew all along that he'd probably help us on the defensive side," Tressel said. "When we lost [cornerback] Richard McNutt, we felt we needed to bring more maturity over there."
Gamble may have matured in football-crazy South Florida, but his quick hands and sick hops first became legend while he was playing hoops. Buddies say Gamble, a defensive menace, was every bit as good as AAU teammate and current LA Clippers guard Keyon Dooling. When he was 16, Gamble locked up Dajuan Wagner, holding the future Cleveland Cavaliers guard to 12 points -- 31 below his average. "He was so quick and active and had those long arms, he could shut down anybody," says AAU teammate Rickey Phillips.
Gamble led Dillard to the state basketball title as a junior, but Latricia, a computer technician for the school district, wouldn't let him go for the repeat. She wanted to make sure he got his grades up. "I told him, 'I don't have the money to send you to college,'" she says, knowing then that he needed to concentrate on one sport and in the classroom to get a shot at a scholarship. Although Latricia made the decision between football and basketball, his father, Fred, helped him pick a college. "I broke it all down to Chris -- and I am a Hurricane fan too," says his dad. "He visited Ohio State, and he was okay with it, but I told him, 'You can make a bigger impact in the Big Ten, they don't have as many receivers.' And it's worked out great for him."
So instead of lining up for his hometown Hurricanes, he'll be asked to shut them down -- and light them up.
And if it all comes down to one play, you can bet that OSU will Gamble.
This article appears in the January 6 issue of ESPN The Magazine.
