Earl was the best high school football player I ever saw. He played for a really good team his senior year, but mostly, they were great because Earl Campbell was their tailback. Truly a man playing against boys.
At UT, Earl wasn't as good as he should have been. Playing wishbone fullback for three years, when you run only between the tackles, limited his greatness. Then his senior year, DKR retired and Akers came in and said they were switching to the veer with some I mixed in. And having seen him play I tailback at John Tyler, I kind of thought, Uh oh.
In '77, OU had a great defense and Texas lost their top two quarterbacks in the first half, and played a guy who'd barely gotten reps in practice for the game, and beat us, because Earl was unbelievable. Their first RRR win in seven years.
In the NFL, he was nearly as good as Jim Brown, who was the best ever. But Earl didn't play on great Houston teams. They were really good, because they had him, but couldn't ever get over the unfortunate post merger paradigm of being in the same division as the became great Steelers. I believe Earl might actually be able to walk now, if he'd have been in any other division, or on a great team.
Samaje is really really good. But I don't think he's proven yet to be Earl good. If db's get the right angle on S.P. they can hit him low and tackle him. If they did that to Earl, they just kind of fell off. Samaje is remarkable, but Earl was just pure great. And Earl's thighs were just about as big as my waist.
