Boulder – For defensive end Marquez Herrod, there are few more simple pleasures in the life of a college football player than knocking a quarterback senseless.
These days, the Colorado redshirt freshman gets the same thrill from the training table every day. All the food he wants. All free. Then he goes home. He goes to the same off-campus house every day. He knows where he’ll sleep. Every evening.
His teammates don’t pick fights with him. He’s reasonably assured none will try to murder each other in the middle of the night. Oh, how wonderful life is in Boulder.
You see, Herrod sees life a bit differently than the average blue-chip college prospect. Oh, sure. He was great in high school, too. PrepStar’s All-West team. One of ‘s top 20 weakside linebackers in the nation and all that.
But the other players he shares the locker room with never spent their first years in grade school living on the streets. While in junior high, they didn’t bounce in and out of an orphanage tougher than some gang-patrolled neighborhoods. He doubts they came home after their senior seasons ended to find they were evicted from their homes, one of more than 20 he had.
For an idea of the childhood Herrod led, getting evicted was a good thing. At least he eventually found something to eat.
“Clearly, that’s a guy who’s seen the other side,” Colorado coach Dan Hawkins said. “But that being said, he has got much more vision for what he wants to be.”
Herrod doesn’t look much like a hungry kid from the streets. He has movie-star good looks and a 6-foot-2, 255-pound frame that tells you he enjoys that free food part of the athletic scholarship.
But when he talks he gives himself away. He has a street-smart maturity, a worldliness you don’t find in freshmen. He’s 18 going on 38.
“The hardest part was not knowing from day to day where you’re going to be the next night,” he said, sitting at a table after a recent practice. “Waiting in line to see if we could get a room or if we were going to sleep on a cot or sleep outside.”
Surviving abuse
Herrod never knew his father, and his mother suffered from schizophrenia. That wasn’t her biggest problem. It was the next guy she married. He showed no respect to her and even less respect for Marquez, who was on the receiving end of a few fists.
Said Herrod: “My mom basically got tired of him, and one day after a particularly bad incident she said: ‘We’re leaving. I don’t care if we have to sleep in the streets. I’m not going to stay here with you.”‘
And that they did. Her illness kept her from working, but didn’t prevent Marquez from loving her despite her eerie contention that they were being watched. He believed her. She was Mom.
They bounced from park benches to shelters to San Diego trolley cars. They’d beg for food. A man who ran a burrito shop befriended them and occasionally slipped them a bean-and-cheese if their beggars’ wages came up short.
By the time he reached seventh grade, his mother’s condition had worsened to the point where the state took him away. They placed him in San Diego’s Polinsky Children’s Center, a fancy name for an orphanage aimed at abused, abandoned and neglected children.
“That was tough,” Herrod said. “I’d never left my mom. I definitely cried a lot.”
It became tougher when he saw his thug cottagemates. He had frequent fights. Polinsky regulars didn’t fear this man-child who was so big he skipped the eighth grade.
One night, a kid became angry with another and strangled him unconscious with a bedsheet.
“He tried to kill him, and the staff came in,” Herrod said.
When he wasn’t defending himself, Herrod sat in the corner and read. Harry Potter books and “Lord of the Rings” launched him into worlds where hunger and anger didn’t exist. During recreation time, he ran around the yard, did pushups and situps. The others didn’t accept him. It turns out he was a lousy follower.
“Because of the situation I came from, I was more of an independent person anyway,” he said. “There were a lot of times I was away from my mom like when she was out trying to get money or doing whatever she needed to do. I’d have to fend for myself.”
New deal, more struggles
By the time he was a freshman, he settled in Escondido with another in a long list of foster parents. Ken Smokoska appeared ideal. He had a good job with a tire company, a big house, two cars, plenty of food.
He took an interest in Herrod. He even convinced this fledgling quarter-miler to go out for this sport called football at San Pasqual High.
But, like seemingly everything else in Herrod’s life, it went south. He said Smokoska tried his hand at “get-rich-quick schemes” and only got poor quick. Herrod said money became short, and so did food.
“He said he really cared about us, and I genuinely believed him for a while, until I got to the point where it was like, ‘All right, we don’t have food in the house,”‘ Herrod said. “‘I can’t even ask you for money.”‘
As always, however, Herrod adapted.
“He always had a good attitude,” said Tony Corley, his position coach his sophomore and junior years. “He spent all his time at school. He didn’t want to go home. He had nothing to go home to.”
Teammates and coaches would take him home for dinner. Kids’ parents would help him with his homework. While his home life suffered, his football life blossomed. When UCLA sent him a letter, Herrod said: “‘Oh, my God! People are looking at me like I could actually do something!”‘
However, one day after Herrod’s sterling senior season, with his grades improving, position coach Mark Salazar drove him back to the foster home and found a little surprise. A U-Haul was parked in the driveway. They had been evicted.
Salazar told Herrod he was going to his place. One moment, Herrod told him. After five minutes, Salazar went looking for him in the house.
“He was in a cabinet taking Cup-a-Soups, 20-25, and putting them into a bag,”‘ Salazar said. “I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘These are mine!’ That’s his survival instinct. To him, he’d been here before. Now it will ultimately work out.”
And it did. Salazar eventually placed him with James and Mindi Arnold, friends from church, and they nurtured Herrod through the recruiting process in which he eventually decommitted from Oregon State when Hawkins left Boise State for Colorado.
Today, Herrod has gone from a homeless orphan to a guy Hawkins says is “a great motor, a tough guy” and a backup left defensive end behind junior Maurice Lucas.
Of course, coming to Boulder is a culture shock, too. CU students have their own problems. Well, sort of.
Herrod said: “People I’ve met tell me, ‘I’ve had a hard life. I lived in this really crappy house. And my parents were not nice to me and they didn’t give me a Jaguar to come to school.’ It’s hard because I’m on the other end of the spectrum.”
Not anymore. After more than 20 houses, he has finally found a home.
Honors out of tribulations
A few things to know about CU defensive end Marquez Herrod:
* Spent last season on scout team and received the defensive scout award from his teammates.
* As a senior at San Pasqual H.S. in California, had five sacks and blocked two kicks; as a junior, had four sacks and blocked one kick.
* Lettered four times in track; his 1,600 relay team had the fastest time in the country in 2005.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
