D-III runner making 'run' at rushing record

Bowers doesn't set rushing and scoring records, he annihilates them. Just like Sanders did when he played at Oklahoma State, Bowers finds a 100-yard game a huge disappointment.

With a normal game Saturday against Muhlenberg - he averages 192.9 yards - Bowers could move into 12th place on the NCAA's all-time rushing list, past Charles White (5,598) of Southern Cal.

Bowers then would need about 1,300 yards next year to break the all-class record of 6,958.

"What he is doing is simply unbelievable," said Chris Smith, Bowers' coach at Grove City College, a small school 60 miles north of Pittsburgh. "I've never seen anything like this."

By next year, it could be that nobody in college football will have seen anything like this 6-foot-1, 245-pound fullback, who runs through would-be tacklers as if they were those tiny plastic figures on an electric football board.

Bowers is 1,507 yards behind Shay, who last year surpassed former Texas A&M-Kingsville star Johnny Bailey's record of 6,320 yards.

"If I don't get injured, I know I can do it," said Bowers, who has rushed for at least 100 yards in a record 26 straight games. "I'd love to set the record, but what I really want to do is play in the NFL."

Last year, Bowers led the nation with 2,283 yards and set Division III records with 34 rushing touchdowns and 206 points, despite fracturing his left ankle at the end of the season.

Bowers spent most of the offseason recuperating from surgery, and was limited - by his standards - to 121 and 124 yards in a pair of early-season games. But he has four games of 253 yards or more in his last seven games.

What's remarkable is that Bowers, who will turn 26 in February, spent five years away from football as an outfielder in the Houston Astros' farm system.

Bowers was recruited to play football out of West Middlesex (Pa.) High School by Division I-A Akron, but switched to baseball after being drafted on the 11th round by Houston in 1992.

After quitting baseball, he wound up at Grove City mostly because he was looking for a good academic school.

Bowers broke into the starting lineup as a 23-year-old freshman and has excelled in Grove City's wing-T offense, which features the fullback as the first running option. With a combination of size and strength seldom seen in Division III, Bowers has dominated.

"I know some people say, `You're 25, you're a man running against boys,' " Bowers said. "But it's not like I'm 20 and everybody else is 15. Most of the players are only a couple of years younger than me and are physically mature."

A year ago, Bowers went to bolt to the NFL and didn't anticipate staying for his senior year. But after being timed at 4.71 seconds in the 40-yard dash - too slow for an NFL back - he realized he had no chance of being drafted.

Bowers says he can now run between 4.55 and 4.61 in the 40-yard dash.

"Do I want to play in the NFL?" Bower said. "Yeah, and if I break the record, I'm sure I'll get invited to some all-star games, and then I can show the scouts what I can do.

"I'm not a typical Division III athlete, because I was a pro athlete before I came here. If I were to come out now, they'd say, 'That's R.J. Bowers, Division III record breaker.' But if I come back, they could say, 'That's R.J. Bowers, he broke all the records and did well in the Senior Bowl.'"

11-05-99