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Childhood drill helps toughen Tigers RB Hester
By SCOTT RABALAIS
Advocate sportswriter
Published: Dec 30, 2007 - Page: 1C
They called it "running the hill."
On the earthen embankment of a freeway overpass near their home in Shreveport, Jacob Hester and his brothers would run up the grassy slope under the watchful eye of their father, Joey.
Tied to their waists was a rope attached to an old tire at the other end.
"If I quit, I knew the consequences," Hester said.
His mother, Nancy Hester, thought the exercise cruel at times.
Jacob never did.
"Dad was a Marine, then a cop, kind of a tough guy," Hester said. "When I was little there was no crying, no breaks."
In the end, it toughened Hester. Perhaps it was the break he needed for the future.
"Jacob said it made him fast and strong," Nancy Hester said. "He thanked his dad many times."
Hester likes to joke that because LSU signed him in 2004, a two-star rated player out of Evangel, it cost LSU the ranking as that year's No. 1 recruiting class.
Now he has a chance to help make LSU a much more important No. 1.
In a sense, that young boy pulling that tire up a hill has become a man who has helped pull the LSU football team to the summit. Pulled it to the point where Hester and the Tigers will play Ohio State on Jan. 7 in the Superdome for the BCS national championship.
"There's been so many ups and downs this year," Hester said. "So many highs and lows. Luckily, everything fell into place."
When considering Jacob Hester as a football player and what he means to his football team, it becomes apparent that luck has little if anything to do with it.
"He's a special guy," said LSU coach Les Miles, who has gushed about Hester's playing ability since. "If it's possible for him to make a play, he'll make it. He'll find a way."
'Stop No. 13'
Today, Hester's number is 18  on his jersey, on his personalized license plate.
As a young boy playing Pop Warner football he was No. 13. And the other team was always aware of where No. 13 was.
"I remember the other team drawing plays in the dirt and saying, 'If you can stop 13, that's all you can do,' " Nancy Hester recalled.
Even as a fifth- and sixth-grader at Evangel, Hester made an impression with his strength, keeping up pound-for-pound with the school's older athletes in the weight room.
"There's an innate toughness about him and you just don't coach that," said former Evangel coach Dennis Dunn, now head coach at Louisiana College. "He had something inside him that even as a little boy you could see. He's a tough, tough kid. He had tremendous hip strength and explosion."
Hester played nose guard his first two years in high school. His future father-in-law, then Evangel offensive coordinator Chris Tilley, tried to convince Dunn that his talents would be better used elsewhere.
"He told coach Dunn, 'Our best offensive player is playing nose guard.' " Hester said.
His junior year, injuries thinned Evangel's depth at running back.
"So he gave me a shot," Hester said. "I think I rushed for 200 yards that game."
Dunn recalled: "We looked at him at running back in practice one day and said, 'He's right.' He took over at that point and was the state player of the year at running back as a junior."
Recruited to LSU as a fullback, Hester toiled there, seeing spot duty for two years before blossoming again as a junior.
Starting at fullback and at tailback, Hester led the Tigers with 440 yards rushing and six touchdowns. He added to his reputation as a versatile athlete by making 35 catches for 269 yards and three touchdowns. And, oh yes, seven special teams tackles.
Through it all, Hester played tough, even when injured.
"You never think any injury can keep you out of the game," he said. "I always grew up with that kind of mentality."
A stellar senior season
Before the 2007 season began and even as the games passed, speculation mounted as to when seemingly more talented tailbacks like Keiland Williams, Charles Scott and Richard Murphy would push Hester back to the fullback spot.
Aside from spelling him here or there, it never happened. Hester not only held onto the job as LSU's top tailback, he produced one of the best seasons for a running back in school history.
His 1,017 yards rushing (with 11 touchdowns) on 204 carries is already the ninth-best single-season rushing total for any LSU back. Only six other running backs in the Southeastern Conference have more yards on the ground than Hester this season.
"We have great respect for him," Scott said. "It's tough in the SEC to rush for 1,000 yards. That's enough said right there."
It is more than Hester's ability to make the tough yards  like on fourth down after fourth down against Florida on Oct. 6. Or the fact in 343 career rushing attempts, the ball has slipped only once from his thick, oversized hands to an opposing defender, and that was as a freshman (Hester fumbled against Arkansas this year, but LSU center Brett Helms covered it).
It's the little things that LSU's other running backs know are the reason their place on the depth chart is in line behind Hester.
"He's a joy to watch," said Williams, who with Scott have become close friends with Hester. The two often accompany him on visits back home to Shreveport. "A lot of people don't realize what he does.
"Go back and look at the Auburn film of the (winning touchdown) pass to (Demetrius) Byrd. On that pass he and (fullback) Shawn Jordan pick up two great blocks. That's what people don't see. He's probably our best pass blocker. That's why he's in most situations like that. That comes from his attitude, being tough."
That's amore
People consider Hester a throwback player, something that again goes back to his roots.
Hester has an affinity for John Wayne movies  his parents named him for a character Wayne played in the 1971 film "Big Jake," Jacob McCandles. He has a soft spot for Dean Martin ballads and never completes his pregame routine without mellowing out to a little Elvis Presley in the locker room.
Occasionally the modern man comes out, like in the SEC Championship Game when he delivered a crushing blow on a carry to Tennessee safety Jonathan Hefney.
"He doesn't trash talk," Williams said, "but occasionally he will. In the Tennessee game when he ran over that guy he said, 'You'd better look out, there's a man coming through here.'
"That's very funny. I mess with him about that."
So does Hester's wife, Katie, a high school sweetheart who he proposed to just after last year's Arkansas game in Little Rock.
"I'm definitely mild mannered until it comes to the football field," Hester said. "Then I have a switch that turns on. My wife always kids me that at home I'm just another guy, but on the football field she likes to see me talk trash because that's so unlike me."
If there's a reason Hester plays like a man from a different era, it's because he emulates one.
Not long ago, Hester started getting calls from LSU legend Jimmy Taylor, a Pro Football Hall of Fame running back with the Green Bay Packers and the New Orleans Saints.
Though their senior LSU seasons are separated by half a century, Taylor said the principles are still the same.
"I'm no different than he is or any of thousands of other running backs," Taylor said. "No different. It's in the head and the heart how much you want to work, how bad you want it, the intensity and not being denied. When you put that ball under your arm, it's you and those (defensive) people over there."
Taylor said he has tried to advise players before, but his words fell on deaf ears.
That wasn't the case with Hester.
"I think he's a good team person," Taylor said. "I really admire that. He has good hands and doesn't fumble. He works very hard and has got a good head."
Hester said he has watched film of Taylor and was flattered when the football great approached him.
"I knew about Jimmy Taylor before I came to LSU," Hester said. "He tells me things I should be doing. He's given me some stiff-arm tips and tells me never to go out of bounds."
"When they've got you pinned to the sideline," Taylor said. "try to drop your shoulder and initiate the contact instead of receiving it."
Somebody should have told Jonathan Hefney about that.
Then again, Hefney should have seen Hester coming.
He's been coming on for years, running up the hill.
