Mac's Dominique Whaley's road to No. 1 OU running back

Former Lawton MacArthur and Langston player Dominique Whaley is the toast of Norman after a four-touchdown debut against Tulsa. But the walk-on's journey to OU has been an unconventional one.

BY TRAVIS HANEY Staff Writer thaney@opubco.com 19
Published: September 10, 2011
The road to becoming the No. 1 running back for the No. 1 team in the country has been anything but conventional for Dominique Whaley.
 

Oklahoma's Dominique Whaley (8) scores a touchdown in the third quarter of the college football game between the University of Oklahoma Sooners (OU) and the Tulsa University Hurricanes (TU) at the Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 3, 2011, in Norman, Okla. Oklahoma won 47-14. Photo by Bryan Terry, The Oklahoman ORG XMIT: KOD

Perhaps there is something to that. Maybe Whaley's long, strange trip to Oklahoma's backfield is why he is there. When a person has literally been halfway around the world and back, determination and adaptability become part of the hardwiring.
Whaley's start point: Miami. To Georgia. To Texas. To Germany. To Lawton. To Langston. Back to Texas. Whaley's end point: OU.
Got all that? Put it in your GPS, and the computerized voice might start cursing at you. It's incalculable, that route. And it doesn't really even take into account Whaley's difficulty as a walk-on to climb the Sooners' depth chart, in time moving past scholarship athletes who were coveted and recruited for several years by the storied program.
Whaley has risen to the top, though. After a 131-yard, four-touchdown debut last week against Tulsa, he's the toast of the town.
“People come up to me talking about, ‘Oh, you're my favorite player now. Oh, you may be the best back in Oklahoma. Oh, what about the Heisman?'” Whaley said this week. “I'm like, ‘No, it was one game.'”
The buzz extended this week also to Lawton, where Whaley attended MacArthur High School his junior and senior years.
Many there heard last week Whaley might get a chance to play. Then there he was on their TV screens, running past and bowling over Tulsa defenders.
“We were just blown away,” said Yolanda Shorter, a guidance counselor at the high school. “I had goose bumps, really. I can remember talking to him about Division I schools. It was his dream.
“To watch him on TV and know this young man, he never gave up. He did what it took.”
* * *
It takes a military kid to know one. The MacArthur football team receives about one or two a year, with families being repositioned in Lawton because of Fort Sill.
Mike Moore, the school's athletic director, was an army brat. So he understood a kid like Whaley — the product of a master sergeant stepdad and a sergeant first class mom — when he showed up just as the 2006-07 school year was beginning.
“It's not easy,” said Moore, then a Highlanders assistant coach. “You're constantly having to prove yourself to a new group. You're coming in trying to take someone else's job.”
Whaley had been a standout running back on his previous team, on an army base in Germany. He was so good that families there offered to take care of him after his parents were transferred to Lawton.
But his mom, Damaris Hardy, did not want to put the Atlantic Ocean between the family. He landed at MacArthur, which already had a running back: Javon Harris, now one of OU's starting safeties. Whaley was integrated at slot receiver in Ernie Manning's spread-type offense.
Being in a military family, making all those stops, fitting in had become a strong suit.
Whaley picked up things quickly and, by the midpoint of the season, he was an asset primarily because of his speed. From the slot position, Whaley was often put in motion to take a handoff from the quarterback while running even with the line of scrimmage.
They call it the jet sweep. Whaley had the jets, all right.
“If he hit the corner,” Moore said, “he was gone.”
Whaley wound up being a big part of the Highlanders' run to the state title game that season. Two fumbles, including an early one near the goal line by Whaley, were crippling in the loss at Owen Field in the final to Carl Albert. But he was part of a successful season for the school.
And football helped greatly in Whaley's assimilation. He was named a captain before his senior season, even though he had moved to town only a year earlier. During the spring semester, he was one of 10 seniors nominated for the Mr. MHS variety show. The typically understated Whaley danced on stage in front of his classmates, demonstrating another side of his personality. It was home, as much as any place had ever been home.
“He was one of those guys you'd want your daughter to date,” said Brenda Pirtle, MacArthur's activities director. “He knew who he was. He didn't need to prove anything.”
* * *
The sentiment from three of Whaley's high school coaches is the same: Years later, they still cannot figure out why college programs were not all that interested in Whaley.
He was an honors student. He had that blazing speed. He was coachable.
“It was disappointing, no question,” Manning said. “I'm not real sure. We had video of him out there. We tried to get him looked at and talked about him. I don't know why anyone didn't latch on to that.”
Looking back, Whaley admits he did not help with his own self-promotion. He remembers being invited to a camp at Kansas State. He never even asked his parents about it, assuming they would not be up for driving him to Manhattan.
Camps as an example, the truth is college recruiters just had not seen enough of Whaley. He had only moved back to the country as a junior, after colleges had already acquired targets. And he played a position that did not accumulate a lot of stats.
The MacArthur principal even called in a favor to Navy, where his son played. Nothing.
“Those college coaches do a great job recruiting, but they miss sometimes,” said Brett Manning, then the Highlanders' offensive coordinator and now their head coach. “He kind of fell through the cracks.”
Whaley was at an impasse. He wanted badly to play on the Division I level. He believed he had that sort of talent. But, being the oldest of six kids, Whaley's parents told him a scholarship was requisite if he wanted to continue playing.
The best option became Langston, which was offering both academic and athletic scholarship money. Playing NAIA ball was better than nothing, Whaley figured.
Things at Langston, though, were challenging in 2008. Whaley returned to running back, and his playing time varied from week to week. He would have a highlight game, only to disappear for several weeks.
Worse, he wound up losing his scholarship in the spring because he did not keep up with its requirements. Without enough credit hours in specific areas, his financial aid was taken away. Whaley was frustrated, too, because no one at Langston seemed interested in helping him get it back.
* * *
It was a crossroads not only in Whaley's football career, but his life. Without a lot of options, he moved to Texas, where his family had relocated after he graduated from high school. He was needed there, too, because his parents had just been deployed to Iraq. Whaley's grandmother needed help taking care of his brothers and sisters.
He shied from the idea when asked, but Whaley was the man of the house in his parents' absence. His mom and stepdad in service on the other side of the planet, Whaley gained perspective.
“He realized it's a lot harder to be a parent and take care of everything you need to take care of,” his mom said. “His brothers and sisters gave him a run for his money.”
This idea of playing football — and on the Division I level — was one he simply could not shake. Whaley got his paperwork in order to enroll at OU. Soon after, he approached the Sooners' longtime director of football operations, Merv Johnson, about walking on to the team.
Whaley's credentials, with Harris' vouching, were better than a lot of the ones Johnson sees. He ran a quick 40 time, had a great vertical jump. It was an easy call. Whaley was on the team, as much as a walk-on is on the team.
OU coach Bob Stoops said his first memories of Whaley were in the 2010 spring scrimmages. He talks about Whaley's efforts in those practices like they're pieces of folklore, with Whaley needing IV treatment after running circles around Sooners defenders.
“We all knew he was a freak,” OU guard Gabe Ikard said. “He was running wild in our spring scrimmages.”
But here is what makes those performances really special: After those practices were over, he walked across the street and made sandwiches at Subway until closing time. He would go from scrimmage artist to sandwich artist in a matter of minutes. Such is the glorious life of a walk-on.
His teammates were doing any number of things — playing video games, grabbing a bite, hanging out — while Whaley was working to pay for school and his right to continue playing football.
“He gets hit every play,” Sooners center Ben Habern said. “As a running back, they're getting hit. He's worn down. He's going to school. He's holding down a job. It's very impressive he's done that.
“He's an impressive guy.”
* * *
The first spring made Whaley believe he could hack it with the Sooners, even more than he already felt. He kept working, kept improving.
Whaley received valuable coaching. The others backs rubbed off on him. And then there was some pure physical development. Stoops said Whaley has gained 20 pounds since arriving on campus.
Humility was always in play, too. In the summers, he was back in Lawton, bundling and packaging PVC pipe in 12-hour shifts. The price of success was being paid on and off the field.
By this spring and summer, Whaley was gradually becoming a factor at the running back position vacated by DeMarco Murray. Roy Finch and Brennan Clay had some experience, but they were not running away with the job. A handful of other players, including Whaley, remained in the conversation.
That had not changed by the time the first depth chart of the season was revealed last week. Clay, a sophomore, was listed first. But the word “OR” was by his name, with Whaley's just under it. Whaley was a co-starter for the top-ranked Sooners entering the season.
Fans wondered whether Whaley was just a decoy, thrown out there to motivate the other scholarship players. Others thought perhaps Whaley was better in pass protection, key in the OU offense.
No, turns out there was no gamesmanship involved. Whaley really was the real deal.
He carried the ball 18 times for 131 yards and four scores against Tulsa, including the Sooners' first three touchdowns of the season.
“I was totally impressed,” Ernie Manning said. “He looked like an NFL back, to me.
“He has it all. He has the speed, the power. He has the mental toughness, intelligence. I was just thoroughly impressed with him.”
Stoops bristled afterward at the idea of Whaley being a surprise. But he has to be in some regard, or Stoops would have offered him a scholarship along with Harris. A walk-on at a skill position at a top-tier program? It's far from the norm.
“I don't remember a single time anything like that working out,” Brett Manning said. “He took a huge risk. He's a good enough athlete to make it work.”
This week at MacArthur, teachers were pointing to Whaley as an example in their classes.
“If you want something badly enough, you've got to work hard and go for it,” Pirtle said. “This is certainly a lesson for young people. With hard work, good things may come.”
Whaley's road is perhaps starting to straighten out a bit. Goodness knows, it twisted and turned enough on the way to OU.
“I'm not complete yet,” Whaley said, “but it's made me what I am now.”