By John Erardi
The Cincinnati Enquirer

"Hey, Ol' Swivel Hips, what's goin' on?" UC quarterbacks coach Jeff Filkovski asked Richard Hall this week.

It was a good question.

And a great place to begin a story about the 1998 Ohio Class AAA Player of the Year.

After a three-year layoff from game action, the highly recruited Hall (as a Wyoming High senior, he turned down Nebraska and accepted a scholarship to Ohio State, where he never got qualified academically) is beginning to resemble his old self as a backup to UC back DeMarco McCleskey.

Hall is a 23-year-old sophomore who hasn't lost a swivel but has gained a whole lot of maturity.

"A few weeks ago, I was going through the `Food for Thought' jar in the office of my academic advisor, Julie McLaughlin," Hall says. "I reached in and pulled out a quote. It read, `Doubt when you will, but never yourself.' That reminded me, once again, of how fortunate I was to get this second chance. Ever since I read that, my focus is where it should be. My attitude is: `You've waited all this time, busted your tail in school, did everything you were told to do. Don't let this (the gradual comeback) take you down.' And it hasn't."

McCleskey, a senior, deservedly is getting most of the carries this year - he's averaging 93 yards a game (4.5 yards a carry) and has 11 touchdowns - but Hall (37 for 219 yards, 5.8 yards a carry, and 3 TDS) and Tedric Harwell (35 for 150 yards; 4 yards a carry) fill in nicely.

If recent games are any indication, Hall won't lack for attention tonight in a nationally televised game (ESPN) at Louisville. Against Tulane three games ago, Hall picked up 66 yards on seven carries (9.8 average); last game, against Memphis, he gained 54 yards on 11 carries.

"Richard's the real deal," UC coach Rick Minter says. "He's an elusive runner with power and speed. We look for him to continue to develop confidence and get more touches."

Hall could be the featured back next season on a team that doesn't figure to underachieve like this one. By no means is Hall writing off this year - not with a national audience tonight, and UC's bowl hopes still alive - but next season's team figures to have more of an exciting local feel.

"Gino (UC QB Gino Guidugli) calls me `Cincinnati's Finest,' and I call him `City Winner,'" says Hall, beaming. "I tell him, `Gino, you might be from Kentucky, but this is your city.' And, man, we got some young receivers who are like Christmas gifts - but we gotta wait 'til Christmas Day to open them up."

Hall didn't get a lot of carries earlier this year; he still turned heads: one carry for a TD in the leadoff victory over Texas Christian; one carry for 16 yards against OSU.

"Before the TCU game, my emotions were really mixed up," Hall says. "I'd lost that sense of excitement I'd always had before games. I didn't know how to feel. Once I got that first carry, I was like, `OK, now I'm ready.'"

What an odyssey it was.

The kid who had been wowing the locals since tackle football without pads on Sunday games (Pearton Court vs. Kiefer Court in College Hill - "I saw some wicked hits back in those days," Hall remembers, "and that's where I learned to make all those moves, trying to make everybody miss") went to Ohio State to "fulfill a dream."

"I think Richard would be the first to tell you he squandered some opportunities up there," Wyoming High head coach Bernie Barre says.

And, indeed, Hall does.

His attempted entry into Buckeye Nation coincided with OSU putting a squeeze on athletes' academics, and it meant Hall not being admitted into OSU until January of his freshman year. He never got eligible.

"I can't say it was their fault, though," Hall said. "I had study table and they had a tutor. It was more my fault than anybody's. It was my future. I had the biggest role in how it was going to play out. I didn't handle it like a mature adult. I didn't buckle down. It was fun to me. I'd hang out late, wake up late, miss my morning classes.

"My attitude was, `I'm here at Ohio State - it's just supposed to happen. Put me out on the field and I'm going to be able to do it.' I'd always gotten by on athletic ability."

Hall says the turning point for him came when he re-visited UC after seeing that Ohio State wasn't going to work out. He met with Minter and coach Filkovski.

"Coach Minter still felt I was a good player from my high school days and told me he'd give me a scholarship to come here, thank the Lord," Hall says. "I felt like it was a new beginning for me. I felt I could do some big things here, that UC was a program on the rise, that I'd come home and everything would be sweet. But I knew it was going to take hard work."

After that meeting, Hall said he literally looked in the mirror and said to himself, out loud: "You're the problem. If you don't stop being your own problem, you're not going to make it. You're not going to do what you always dreamed of doing. You keep it up, and one day it's going to be all over. And what are you going to have to show for it - high school highlights?"

That "conversation" and the pillar-like emotional support of his family - especially his mother, Marian - is what triggered the comeback, Hall says. She'd always been his guiding force, but when he went off to Columbus, she saw that she had to let him live his own life, learn for himself, grow into a man.

"I didn't want him to think I was pushing him in a direction that wasn't for him," Marian says. "He'd been put on such a pedestal. To see him tumble down, and know that he felt like he really was alone, was hard to watch. Sometimes you can get too much too quick in life and not have the capacity to handle it. I told him I'd always be there for him, but I encouraged him not to lean on me so much. He had to work his own way through it."

Hall transferred to UC in the fall of 2001 and sat out a year to meet NCAA transfer guidelines.

"I'm the one who had to realize I was down to my last opportunity," he says. "My mom didn't tell me, my sister didn't tell me, my family didn't tell me.I had to get it on my own. That's what it takes in life."

One thing Hall didn't expect, he says, was the unconditional, non-judgmental acceptance he received from the community.

"There were no negatives," he says. "Everybody told me to stay positive, stay encouraged, it's going to happen. I think that's helped a lot. Nobody ever gave up on me. I see that now. I see now that not even Ohio State would have given up on me. But it was like I had given up on myself."

The Louisville Cardinals best be on the lookout when No.20 enters the game tonight.