Sept. 13, 2007

By Bill Hass
theACC.com

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Remember the name Darryl Richard.

Years from now, you might find him playing professional football. Or running an NFL team or a college athletics program. Perhaps he'll be an entrepreneur in charge of his own company or his own Fortune 500 company.

Those who know him well suggest, only partly in jest, that he could become governor of Louisiana, his home state, or president of the United States.

The point is, the future is wide open for Georgia Tech's 290-pound defensive tackle, and wherever his path takes him, everyone expects him to be highly successful.

"It would be an understatement to say he is extremely smart," said Yellow Jackets head coach Chan Gailey. "You sit down and have a conversation with him and he is mature way beyond his years. I've said before, I'm not so sure he couldn't be president one day."

Richard, whose team will face Boston College Saturday (8 p.m., ESPN2), is the rare college player who graduated in three years. He did it by taking courses in summer school and, when he missed the 2005 season with a severe knee injury, he didn't just sit around and rehab.

"I put that year to good use," he said. "I took 21 hours in the fall and 19 in the spring."

As a result of his hard work, Richard earned a degree in Management and took his graduation walk in May of this year. Now he's pursuing his MBA, a two-year program that fits perfectly with his two years of remaining football eligibility.

"You learn a lot more from other students because there's good communication in the classroom," Richard said of his graduate school experience so far.

The way Richard applies himself does not go unnoticed.

"It shows what kind of character and focus he has," said defensive line coach Giff Smith. "He's what a student-athlete should be; he's not someone who gives it lip service. He has a great personality, too. I tell him he's going to be governor of Louisiana one day."

Born and raised in Destrehan, La., about 15 miles from New Orleans, Richard said his interest in business started in middle school when he sold candy for spending money. He became student body president as a high school senior and his football coach would sometimes excuse him from practice so he could attend student council and student government meetings.

"You try to get people to work together for a common goal," he said of the lessons drawn from that experience.

He was a highly recruited football player, one of the top defensive tackles in the country. He chose Georgia Tech over Notre Dame and home-state LSU, among others.

"It's just like a family here, and it's real," Richard said. "I knew I'd get a great education. When I go home, people ask me why I didn't go to LSU and I just tell them `this is my new home.'"

Richard played as true freshman in 2004, recording four sacks among seven tackles for loss. Then he suffered the injury, in which he tore almost everything in his knee.

"I left the PCL," he said with a laugh, referring to the posterior cruciate ligament.

After his extra class load and rehab work during his time away from football, Richard returned to the field for the 2006 season. Frankly, the results disappointed him, with only three-and-a-half tackles for loss and no sacks.

"I was back physically from the knee injury in six or seven months," he said, "but I wasn't back mentally until a few weeks ago. My play last year was average, by my standards. Now I get better leverage and my speed is better."

Gailey said Richard has gotten stronger and his conditioning is better, which has led to increased quickness. He has already recorded a sack.

"And he's got another year of experience," Gailey said. "That always helps. So there's a lot of little things that make him a lot better football player this year. He's done an excellent job inside for us, and those guys don't get noticed a lot."

Richard said the relative anonymity comes with the territory, but he has his moments. In most defensive schemes, defensive tackles are space-eaters who hold their ground, jam up the running game and rarely record gaudy statistics. But things are a little different with the Yellow Jackets.

"Playing defensive tackle at Georgia Tech is more fun than at some places," Smith said. "We blitz so much that we get a lot of one-on-one blocks, and that gives him a chance for glory. He's very powerful and hard to move.

"I've known players who were book-smart but not that smart on the field. Darryl is both. He's cerebral, he knows how people attack, he's like a coach on the field."

Georgia Tech has rolled to wins over Notre Dame and Samford but will receive its biggest test to date at home against Boston College. It's the first ACC game of the year for the Yellow Jackets, who play in the Coastal Division.

The Eagles come in 2-0, with both victories in the ACC, and are looking to put themselves in an enviable position in the Atlantic Division.

"A third win in the ACC would be to our advantage," said Eagles coach Jeff Jagodzinski. "It would be a very big win, especially winning on the road at a place like Georgia Tech."

As always, Richard's first responsibility will be to stop the BC running game, which controlled the fourth quarter of its win over NC State last week. But the biggest concern is containing Eagle quarterback Matt Ryan, who has thrown for six touchdowns in two games.

"We need to stop the passing game so he doesn't hurt us like he hurt Wake Forest (with five TDs)," Richard said. "We have to force the issue, don't just let him set up and throw.

"If I get a sack, then I've had a decent game, but there are other things I can do. If I bat down a pass, that's an incompletion. If I can make a negative play in their running game, that can kill a drive."

Smith believes Richard has the ability to play in the NFL. That's a shot Richard plans to take, but he intends to use his final year of eligibility at Georgia Tech in 2008. One thing that keeps him going is the taste of losing to Wake Forest in the ACC championship game last season.

"It was sickening not to win, that's the only way to describe it," he said. "To see that trophy snatched away; now we know what it takes to bring it to Atlanta."

Whatever happens in this game and the rest of the season, Darryl Richard will never stop striving to get better. That also applies to the rest of his life.

"He's not someone who's going to settle for average," Smith said.

---

Bill Hass is a long-time observer of ACC sports. His career at the Greensboro News & Record spanned 36 years, from 1969 until his retirement in March, 2006. He is now writing "Bill Hass on the ACC" for theACC.com. His weekly columns will keep fans plugged in to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

E-mail Bill Hass

This article can not be copied or reproduced without the express written consent of the Atlantic Coast Conference.