LITTLE ROCK — Adventure is defined as participating in things that involve uncertainty and risk.
Blake James, Little Rock Central's determined senior linebacker, is still living his adventure. An equally determined Maggie remains by his side.
The path of uncertainty for James began almost four years ago when he left the calm of an affluent, predominately white private school near his west Little Rock home to emerge as a stranger at an inner city giant only 9 miles away.
In some ways James remains a stranger today, whether it's at Central, a predominately black public school of approximately 2,400students, whether it's among recruiting fanatics confounded, because of his last name, over his college decision, or whether he's simply deemed a disappearing act after missing the 2008 season with a major knee injury.
Being adventuresome, James said, has cost him friends, scholarship offers and recognition.
But not Maggie, still among the most important ladies in the linebacker's life.
A 7-year-old English bulldog, Maggie possesses a swirled brindle and white coat, a menacing underbite, a sugary sweet demeanor and a medical history that mirrors her owner's.
Years before James tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, Maggie, then a feisty puppy, blew out the ACL in her left hind leg romping through the family's front yard in the Pleasant Valley neighborhood of west Little Rock.
Months after James had surgery on his left shoulder last fall, Maggie underwent an operation to correct a life-threatening medical condition in her left ear.
Both are in comeback mode. Strongly.
James, 6-1, 220 pounds, hasn't played a game in more than 20 months, but he is a member of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette pre-season All-Arkansas team because of an eye-catching but somewhat abbreviated body of work.
James started at defensive end as a freshman on Central's 2006 conference championship team, then transferred the following season to Ocean Springs, Miss., a Gulf Coast town of about 19,000 tucked squarely in a region oozing with blue-chip recruiting talent.
James also started at Ocean Springs as a sophomore at middle linebacker.
It's unlikely any high school player in Arkansas this year has competed with, or against, the caliber of athlete James did in 2006 and 2007.
"He went to Central and started in the ninth grade and performed well, went to the Gulf Coast and played against Parade All-Americans, Division I prospects, and started," said his father, Bruce James, an All-America defensive end as a senior at Arkansas in 1970. "Not many people that get to play high school have accomplished what he has."
SURPRISE DECISION
Blake James authored what some might consider another risky chapter in his football career when he orally committed to Georgia State on Aug. 12.
Not Georgia. Not Georgia Tech. Not Georgia Southern.
He chose Georgia State, an NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (formerly NCAA Division I-AA) program being groomed for its inaugural season next fall by a high-profile coach, Bill Curry.
"It doesn't surprise me," Bruce James said of his son's college choice. "I heard Coach Curry talk to Blake for over an hour and a half and tell him how adventuresome it is to start a football program and 50 years later come back and say, 'I was on the first team here.' "
Blake James, who has a cumulative 3.77 grade-point average in honors courses at Central, said Georgia State's nationally prominent college of business factored heavily into his decision.
James also said he felt comfortable with defensive coordinator John Thompson, a Forrest City native who held the same position at Arkansas in 2000 and 2001, and Curry, a former NFL All-Pro center and coach of Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia Tech.
"I was looking for a father figure as a coach," said James, who began playing football in the sixth grade. "I personally don't think it gets any better than Coach Curry."
James' decision to attend Georgia State, which had an enrollment of more than 28,000 last fall, parallels many older members of his family, who have not followed the path of Bruce James and Barbie, his wife of 36 years, who met while they were attending Arkansas.
None of Blake James' two older siblings attended Arkansas. On Barbie's side, only older brother Ben Hawkins went to Arkansas.
"The whole essence of everything in our family is be yourself, be an individual," Bruce James said. "Truthfully, when I saw Blake was good enough to play SEC football, I never really down deep wanted him to go to Fayetteville. I just think constantly being compared to your dad is no fun."
Bruce James, who grew up 9 miles east of Ocean Springs in Moss Point, Miss., started in the "Big Shootout" in 1969, was an All-American the following year, and was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2008 and the Arkansas Hall of Honor last August.
Blake James dreamed of playing college football, but that dream, maybe somewhat surprisingly, didn't include Arkansas.
"Even when I tell people that, they think that I'm lying, holding out, or something," Blake James said.
Any mutual infatuation between the two parties ended June 10, 2008, when James tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during the Bobby Petrino Football Camp in Fayetteville.
OVERCOMING 'DARK SIDE'
Bruce James, a State Farm insurance agent for 35 years, was in his west Little Rock office when he learned about the injury. He rushed to Fayetteville to comfort the youngest of his three sons.
"When he picked me up, the first thing he said was, 'This was going to be OK, son. I'm sorry for you.' " Blake James said. "The very first thing I said to Dad was, 'I'm going to make it back. I'm going to fight this thing out, and I'm going to beat it.' "
He eventually did, but it came with a price.
James refers to fallout from the knee injury as the "dark side" of life in general and recruiting in particular.
The hot prospect was suddenly ice cold.
"A week before I went to the Razorback camp, all these people are calling me saying, 'We really have to hang out, do this, do that.' A week later, I tear it up and James is out for the year. I call some of these people and it's like, 'Who are you? I don't know you.' "
James said he believes he was also blacklisted by many college coaches during his lengthy rehabilitation.
"Once you start making it back and getting the publicity, they start to come back," James said. "I have absolutely no respect for any of them."
Blake James said phone calls from recruiting writers dried up following the injury.
Part of his profile on at least one nationally prominent Internet recruiting site, Rivals.com, doesn't appear to have been updated in more than a year. The site continues to show James has "medium" interest in Arkansas, Ole Miss, TCU, Tulane and Vanderbilt.
There's no mention of his oral commitment to Georgia State.
His name also was inexplicably missing from a list of the state's top 40 recruiting prospects released this summer by Rivals.com.
"It really hurt him," Bruce James said.
Bruce James said he tried to prepare his son for the icy reception, because he went through the same scenario at Arkansas when he had reconstructive surgery on his right ankle (severe ligament damage) following his sophomore season in 1968.
The surgeon, James said, told him he would be lucky to play football again.
"Once the word was out my career was over, it was amazing," the elder James said. "I didn't have near as many friends. That's how I was able to tell Blake what was going to happen.
"Don't blame them. It's just human nature. I use this analogy: It's like the guy who has all the money in the world and all of a sudden he's bankrupt. Lot of friends aren't around anymore. I had been through it and made it back."
The long road back for Blake James began when he turned to renowned orthopedic surgeon James Andrews, who performed surgery on Blake James' right knee June 24, 2008, in Birmingham, Ala.
In a procedure that took nearly three hours, Andrews made a vertical incision of about 3 1/2 inches in the knee cap and took the central third of the patella tendon - about the size of a little finger - and used it as a graft to replace the torn ACL.
Because it's a "free graft," Andrews said the tissue is dead when it is inserted into knee and needs a new blood supply to regenerate.
"It starts off as a tendon and has to remodel into a ligament," Andrews said.
Three days after the knee surgery, James began his rehabilitation at Orthopedic Rehabilitation and Specialty Center in Little Rock.
Bruce James said he vividly remembers the tears in his son's eyes as he initially began trying to straighten the surgically repaired leg. Blake James could only bend his leg a few degrees because of scar tissue following the surgery.
Normal recovery time for a high school athlete with a torn ACL is nine months, Andrews said, but Blake James was cleared to play in four months, following what he described as "very intense" rehabilitation sessions five days each week.
RISING FRESHMAN
Before the knee injury, James was expected to be Central's defensive leader, a much different role than when he first arrived as a virtual unknown in 2006.
James immediately became a starter at defensive end and never wore a gold jersey that signifies ninth-grade football players at Central.
Not only was James in a new school, he was segregated from players his own age because only one other freshman, offensive tackle De'Arius Hudson, practiced and played on Central's 2006 varsity team.
"There wasn't a whole lot of hope for me at first, in the sense that people at that time glamorized Central and put them on such a pedestal that it wasn't possible to go in there and even get playing time," Blake James said. "Once I got into it, I knew what I could accomplish."
James flourished for a rough-and-tumble defense that yielded just 50 points in 11 games.
Tigers Central Coach Bernie Cox said he wasn't surprised about how well James performed as a freshman, adding he was already more polished fundamentally, and possessed a higher football intellect, than much older players.
Cox said he was particularly struck by James' ability, at 15, to grasp the importance of leverage, footwork, proper pursuit angles, not losing outside containment and using his hands to shed blockers.
Cox's reputation for unleashing stout, occasionally suffocating defenses was the impetus for James' unlikely move to Central.
Elite players today normally build a glowing resume at a public school, then transfer to a private school. James - to the shock of his parents - took the opposite approach.
Blake James began attending Pulaski Academy in the third grade. He was an honor student and active in the school's leadership organizations.
James, however, badly wanted to take his game to the highest level.
"Here were go," Barbie James said. "All of these honors, straight A's, good kid and, quite honestly, we were very comfortable."
James said he was awestruck watching Central's defensive prowess during a 41-6 victory over West Memphis in the 2004 Class AAAAA state championship game.
The following year, James attended Central's home game against conference rival Little Rock Catholic.
"By then I had already known I was going there," James said of Central.
ON THE MOVE
James started as an eighth-grader for Pulaski Academy's junior high team and led the Bruins in sacks at defensive tackle.
But moments after a narrow loss in the conference championship game to Little Rock Christian, led by future star running back Michael Dyer, Blake James informed Pulaski Academy's coaches that he would not return in 2006.
Barbie James, a former teacher in the Little Rock School District, was steadfastly against the move, in part because she said her son left behind a ton of friends at Pulaski Academy and literally knew nobody at Central.
"That's how far the worlds are different," Blake James said. "PA's its own bubble. When I went to PA, I didn't know people outside PA."
James said the bottom line is he believed he could survive, and thrive, in a much different atmosphere.
Central's enrollment in grades 9-12 is roughly eight times larger than Pulaski Academy's.
"It was a total culture shock, I'll be honest about that," James said. "I was not prepared for it, but I accepted it. I don't think you can prepare yourself, coming from the environment that I did to what I went to."
James, playing at 205 pounds, had five sacks and two interceptions as a rare freshman starter. He excelled, despite bench pressing only 180 pounds and running the 40-yard dash in 4.9 seconds.
"I had an intensity level, I think," James said. "I don't think anybody else had their motor running like me. I've got everything else going against me, so I can't take plays off, I can't go half-speed. I picked up a lot of things real easily, real fast, and used it to my advantage."
Yet after his parents' beach home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, James yearned for a new challenge.
He transferred to Ocean Springs, which plays in Mississippi's highest classification.
His teammates at Ocean Springs included Parade All-American DeAndre Brown, a 6-6 wide receiver who was one of the nation's top freshmen last fall at Southern Mississippi, and tight end/defensive end Travis Dickson, whose older brother, Richard, is a standout tight end at LSU.
Travis Dickson orally committed earlier this month to LSU.
James played against mammoth offensive tackle D.J. Fluker, a Parade All-American who may start as a true freshman this fall at Alabama; Parade All-America defensive back Alonzo Lawrence (now at Southern Mississippi after originally signing with Alabama); Parade All-America quarterback Tyler Russell (Mississippi State), and 220-pound tailback Billy Joe Johnson, a heralded recruit in the 2010 class before dying of an accidental gun shot late last year.
James started at middle linebacker for a team that was 10-2 and finished with 69 unassisted tackles (5 for loss), 3 caused fumbles and 1 recovered fumble.
But after the beach house was rebuilt, James returned to Central for his junior season.
"He really wanted to graduate from Central," Bruce James said. "He said that's who he was. I thought that just spoke volumes."
Blake James could have played in the final one or two games last fall, but he had already scheduled shoulder surgery with Andrews on Oct. 16.
Now physically fine, James is itching to resurrect his career.
"If he stays healthy, he should have a great year," Cox said.
And Maggie?
She underwent a total ear canal ablation in mid-July at Auburn's College of Veterinary Medicine. The procedure removed her inner ear canal, leaving her deaf in her left ear.
Maggie is perfectly normal today, save a lingering head tilt to the left following a seizure in late May.
"Maggie, she's got that Bulldog mentality," Bruce James said. "When Blake has to make a grade or he's got to get well to play football, he's got it, too."
The adventure continues.
Blake James glance POSITION Linebacker SCHOOL Little Rock Central HEIGHT 6-1 WEIGHT 220 pounds CLASS Senior 40-YARD DASH 4.7 seconds NOTEWORTHY Son of Bruce James, an All-America defensive end at Arkansas as a senior in 1970. ... Transferred from Pulaski Academy to Little Rock Central as a ninth-grader and started as a freshman at defensive end on the Tigers' 10-1 7A-Central championship team in 2006. ... Transferred to Ocean Springs, Miss., as a sophomore after his parents began rebuilding their summer home, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. ... Starter at middle linebacker on Ocean Springs' 10-2 team in 2007. ... Returned to Central as a junior, but missed the season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee June 10, 2008. ... Wears 85, the same number his father did at Arkansas. ... Bench presses 305 pounds. ... Has a 3.77 cumulative grade-point average. ...Had a 4.1 GPA for the second semester as a junior. ... Orally committed to Georgia State on Aug. 12.
Sports, Pages 23, 34 on 08/30/2009