‘Run, Forrest, run!’: How good a football player was Forrest

  • Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior WriterNov 22, 2024, 07:00 AM ET

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    • Senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com
    • 2-time Sports Emmy winner
    • 2010, 2014 NMPA Writer of the Year

“He must be the stupidest son of a b—- alive! But he sure is fast!”

— “Bear Bryant” speaking of Forrest Gump in “Forrest Gump”

It was 30 years ago this fall that “Forrest Gump,” the story of a gentle soul who ended up traveling the globe, meeting presidents and filling the world with wisdom such as “Life is like a box of chocolates,” and “Stupid is as stupid does,” was running through the box office and toward six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Tom Hanks and Best Director for Robert Zemeckis.

If you are a true Gump believer — and judging by the film’s $678 million gross, the 2.5 million copies sold of Winston Groom’s book that inspired the film, the brisk sales of its recent 30th anniversary Blu-Ray re-release, not to mention the line of people I recently saw waiting to eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. in Times Square, there are many — then you also know that this fall also marks 60 years since the kid from fictional Greenbow, Alabama, became an All-America kick returner for Bear Bryant’s Alabama Crimson Tide.

Forrest Gump, wearing No. 44, scored the very first time he touched the football, a 99½-yard kickoff return against a team that appears to be the Vanderbilt Commodores. He went end zone to end zone, including a crossfield detour midreturn as he ran toward Bryant on the Bama sideline. Then he added at least another 50 yards because he didn’t stop after crossing the goal line and kept churning through the Legion Field tunnel and presumably into downtown Birmingham.

Now, amid these two very important anniversaries, and as his alma mater runs into Week 13 with an eye on running into the College Football Playoff, we ask a crucial, crimson-tinted question: Just how good at football was Forrest Gump, really?

“It’s been a while since I really broke down his film, but what I did see back in the day made an impact on me,” current Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer confessed during a chat about how, after taking the job as Top Tider, he immersed himself in the program’s unparalleled history. “He was raw, but fast and coachable. No coach is ever going to turn down a kid with that combination.”

Not even the Bear.

“And that’s what I did. I ran clear across Alabama.”

There are no official statistics for Forrest Gump’s time at Alabama. Trust us, we asked the sports information office as well as the Bear Bryant Museum, located on the Tuscaloosa campus. They had nothing, forcing us to show some, ahem, gumption, and piece together what we could, based on what we do know.

We know that Gump was a student at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963, because he was an eyewitness to George Wallace’s Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, when the governor of Alabama made a symbolic attempt to prevent two Black students from enrolling for class, in opposition to school integration.

We also know that Gump had already played at least one season of football before that, because we see Bryant and his staff flabbergasted as they watch the TV news and see their return specialist returning a notebook to one of those students, Vivian Malone, after she drops it in front of Wallace, protesters and the National Guard.

We also know that his first All-America season had to be 1962, because he met John F. Kennedy at the White House (and drank all his Dr Peppers). JFK died on Nov. 22, 1963, before the All-America roster for that year would have been chosen.

Forrest Gump meets president John F. Kennedy after an All-America season as a Tide kick returner. Everett Collection

We also know that when Gump graduates from Alabama, he says, “Can you believe it? After only five years of playing football, I got a college degree.”

So it would appear that Gump’s time with the Tide likely ran from 1959 to 1963, and that makes sense. If you don’t recall, Gump caught Bryant’s attention when, while running from a truckload of bullies, he unknowingly sprinted the length of the Greenbow High Braves’ stadium in front of the Bear. That would have been the fall of ’58, Bryant’s first fall in Tuscaloosa and in the middle of a rebuilding 5-4-1 campaign. The kind of season that would make a college football coach desperate enough to sign a kid who was described to him as “just the local idiot” with an IQ that we know to be 75.

Back then, freshmen didn’t play. Neither did Gump in ’59. The following year, the Tide’s third game of the season was also their first at Legion Field against … Vanderbilt. That’s the first TD return we see in the movie. The next one comes at the same stadium, and clearly in a later season, because the home crowd has figured out to unfurl “Stop Forrest!” signs to prevent him from making any more tunnel sprints. This is also at Legion Field, and the opponent appears to be wearing the distinctive colors of the Tulane Green Wave. And the real life Tide did indeed play and defeat Tulane in 1961.

See? We’re figuring this out!

If this was indeed the Forrest Gump Era of Alabama football, there was nothing stupid about it. During his presumed four years on the roster, the Tide posted a record of 38-4-1 and an SEC mark of 24-4-1, went 3-0-1 in bowl games and also won the first of Bryant’s six national titles in 1961.

“Of course, it didn’t hurt that his quarterback was Joe Namath,” noted Dr. Carl Miller, professor and chair of the English department at Palm Beach Atlantic University. “Anyone who ever talked to Winston Groom about Alabama football knows how he felt about Joe Namath.”

“Always be able to look back and say, at least I didn’t lead no humdrum life.”

When Groom wrote the book “Forrest Gump” in 1986, the story of a boy with a low IQ who spends a lifetime unlocking pockets of true brilliance, it was inspired by two of his own life experiences. The first was a tale his father told him often, about a kid in his neighborhood who was relentlessly teased and bullied by local kids because of his apparent lack of intelligence. But when his parents bought a piano, that same kid suddenly began filling the neighborhood with the most amazing music, having taken nary a lesson. The second spark came from Groom’s time as a football-crazed student at the University of Alabama.

“Forrest Gump” won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1994 and grossed $678 million. Universal History Archive/Getty images

“When I was on the English faculty at Alabama, I proposed a course on the history of college football in literature, and we convinced Winston to participate,” said Miller, who grew up a dedicated Ohio State fan but came to love the Crimson Tide after four years of teaching in Tuscaloosa. His class covered topics ranging from college football in literature (see: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) to the game’s secret history of steering academics (why do you think the Ivy League was formed?). “Winston Groom’s freshman year was 1961, Bryant’s first national title, and his final year was ’64, Bryant’s second national title. And he would always say, ‘You should have seen Namath before he blew out his knee,'”

Groom, who died Sept. 17, 2020, just as his beloved Tide were beginning their roll toward Nick Saban’s sixth and final national title in T-Town, often said that being a student during the Bryant era taught him “the importance of winning.” He liked to compare being the author of a book to being a head coach. “As a writer, you are the commanding general,” he explained to Miller’s class in 2012. “It is your job to make sure that everything you do is as perfect as you can get it.”

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Groom’s written version of Gump was far less perfect than the character in the film. The film version was also a hell of a lot smaller. In the movie, Gump’s frame is an even 6 feet tall, weighing in at 175 pounds, which is what Tom Hanks describes as his frame at the time. In the novel, Gump is massive, standing 6-6 and making the scales creak at a hefty 240. On the written page, he doesn’t return kicks. Groom’s Bryant envisions Gump as a wide receiver and has him constantly drilling pass routes in practice. But when Gump struggles to mentally digest the playbook, Bear decides to pivot to a strategy of “We is gonna turn your big ass loose,” and Forrest Gump becomes a halfback.

In his first game, the season opener against Georgia, Gump scores four touchdowns in a 35-3 rout of the Dawgs. The Tide won the national title during a time when titles were awarded before bowl games were played. Good thing. The semifictional Bama team lost to Nebraska in the Orange Bowl after Kenny Stabler, who was supposed to throw the ball to No. 44 for what would have been Gump’s third TD of the game, instead threw it out of bounds when he mistakenly thought it was third down, not fourth.

“As with most of what Winston wrote about Gump and college football, that was based in truth,” Miller said. “The ’64 team went undefeated in the regular season and won the national championship but lost to Texas in the Orange Bowl. And Kenny Stabler did make that infamous mistake, but it was in the Tennessee game the following year.”

“Now you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but I could run like the wind blows.”

Almost exactly six decades after Stabler’s mistake that led to a tie, the Vols and Tide were once again on the field for the Third Saturday in October. It was Oct. 19, 2024, and 101,910 of the 101,915 people in attendance were watching No. 7 Alabama battle No. 11 Tennessee in Knoxville. The five who were not were hunkered down in a corner of the Neyland Stadium media box. A sportswriter was showing four NFL scouts footage of a fictional college football player and asking for a talent assessment.

Said one: “He’s too one-dimensional. It’s all straight-line, like a track guy trying to become a football player.”

Replied another: “Who gives a damn about that? Look how fast he is. Has anyone clocked him?”

They were told that in the novel, Bryant says Gump runs the “hunrit yards” in 9.5 seconds. But before it could be explained what that translates to in NFL draft combine 40-yard dash speed, one of the scouts already had a watch on Gump’s TD return against Tulane.

Asked his opinion of Gump as a pro prospect, one NFL scout said, “Sign his ass up.” Everett Collection

“I’ve got him at 4.5 in the 40. Sign his ass up,” he declared. “I’m not using a high-round draft pick on him. My bosses wouldn’t do that anyway because you know he’s going to bomb the s— out of the interviews. But if we can take guys who have never played football and turn them into All-Pros just based on how strong or fast they are” — see: Ziggy Ansah and current Bills OT Travis Clayton — “then I think I’d take a chance on a dude this fast.”

Some 500 miles south of Knoxville, in Mobile, Alabama, another group of evaluators watched that same film, the only game film that exists of their local hero. Among them is Jim Nagy, senior director of the Reese’s Senior Bowl, the launching pad for countless college-to-pro football prospects.

“He clearly lacks some focus,” he said. “Great straight-line speed but, man, he looks straight-line. A really linear athlete. Not gonna make many people miss, but he hits it. He’s pulling away; he’s got some juice.”

Then Nagy sounds like novel-version Bear Bryant. “As a receiver, what are we going to do with this guy? He’s kind of a one-trick pony … but I think we could get something out of him on vertical routes, go routes. Down here at the Senior Bowl, he’d be a hard guy to defend on one-on-ones.”

Ultimately, Nagy and his staff decided they would extend an invitation to Gump for the Senior Bowl. After all, Gump did grow up just down the road in Greenbow. But there are two problems. Gump is too senior for the Senior Bowl. He’s around 84 years old now. Also, Greenbow doesn’t exist. Neither does the Legion Field he ran over and through and out of. Well, it does, sort of …

“Some people don’t think miracles happen. Well, they do.”

Gump’s home stadium in the movie is located a couple of time zones west of Alabama. Who knows? Perhaps during his 3-year, 2-month, 14-day and 16-hour crisscrossing run of America, Gump looked over his shoulder along Chavez Avenue at the football stadium of East Los Angeles College and thought to himself, “Well, that place looks familiar.”

Weingart Stadium was built in 1951, home of the ELAC Huskies. After a major renovation in 1984, the seating capacity was boosted to 22,355. That’s big for a community college, but not big enough to resemble Legion Field. So director Robert Zemeckis turned to his longtime collaborator and special effects legend Ken Ralston, the original Industrial Light & Magic guru who helped shape the Star Wars galaxy and helped Zemeckis send Doc Brown’s gigawatts-powered DeLorean back to the future.

Ralston and his crew took a group of several hundred extras dressed as Alabama fans and moved them from section to section of Weingart Stadium, eventually piecing each frame of film together like a jigsaw puzzle. This created not only a backdrop of packed stands, but also the added illusion of an upper deck. For Gump’s kick return action scenes, stadium flip cards spelled out “GO ALABAMA,” “GO FORREST” and “STOP.”

The stadium shots, enhanced by computer special effects that were in their infancy at the time, surprised even the movie’s cast. Courtesy 2024 Par Pics

“This was kind of at the start of all the computerized special effects we have now, so when you were there the place was empty, but then when you saw the movie you were like, ‘Where’d all those people come from?'” recalled Sonny Shroyer, who played Bear Bryant. If you recognize the name, it’s because he was also Enos, the hapless deputy from “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Enos donned the houndstooth fedora at ELAC as well as Beaufort, South Carolina, where the stand-in for Greenbow High was located. “I can tell you this, though: There were no special effects used for the double who ran for Tom Hanks in the wide shots. That guy could fly. And then when we did the close-ups, it turned out that Tom could too.”

Shroyer, who accepted a football scholarship to Florida State but after injuries graduated from Georgia, was in the same room with Bryant once, at a charity golf tournament hosted by fellow TV icon George Lindsay, aka Goober from “The Andy Griffith Show.” So, with those credentials, an evaluation of Forrest Gump the football player, please, Enos … er, Coach Bryant?

“All I know is I saw him touch the ball twice and he scored twice.”

“Momma always said you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes, where they’re going, where they’ve been.”

Gabriel Mangrum has seen Forrest Gump touch the ball much more than that. Like, 281 times to be exact. Mangrum, known as GManski to his social media followers, is a former wide receiver for the Fitchburg (Massachusetts) State Falcons who graduated earlier this year with a degree in film and theater. Born in Texas and a diehard Dallas Cowboys fan, the aspiring actor was already posting his meticulous football talent evaluations to social media. Then he started doing the same with famous football players from the silver screen, everyone from Rudy Ruettiger to “The Waterboy.”

When the resurrected EA Sports College Football game dropped this year, Mangrum painstakingly created Forrest Gump — a 99 rating for speed, lowest possible rating for intelligence — added him to the current Crimson Tide roster and proceeded to manually play every single Alabama down in season mode to see what would happen.

“I rated him a one-star because he was literally coming off the street, just as he did in the movie,” Mangrum explained of his Gump creation. Of course, the PS5 processor didn’t start Gump. He didn’t even play. But Mangrum also ran every weekday practice session between games, and No. 44’s speed became too much to ignore. By midseason, he was on the field. And just as happened in both the book and movie, the first time digital Forrest Gump got his hands on the football, he ran straight to paydirt.

“When I ran with him, I worked hard to run just like he did in the movie,” Mangrum said. “He never jukes. Ever. And when he cuts, he turns his whole body, runs toward the sideline, and then turns toward the end zone, whole body again. That’s what I did. And he couldn’t be stopped.”

Forrest Gump’s final virtual 2024 stats: 1,487 yards, good for second in the nation (and 184 more than Boise State Heisman hopeful Ashton Jeanty), via only 206 rushes, good for an FBS-best 7.2 yards per carry; 165.2 yards per game and 17 touchdowns, also second in the nation. In addition, Gump hauled in 75 catches for 1,065 yards and nine TDs, easily the best among running backs. Along the way, the All-American led the Tide to a national title, as Bama beat Notre Dame 43-0 in the CFP National Championship game, of which Gump was named Most Outstanding Player.

“The only issues were that he didn’t fumble much, but when he did, it was usually at the worst time,” Mangrum said, adding, “And you might have noticed that at LSU, during the pregame, Forrest is over there celebrating with the wrong team.”

“What’s my destiny, Mama?” “You’re gonna have to figure that out for yourself.”

We attempted to interview the man who played Gump himself, while Hanks was making the promotional rounds for his latest film, “Here,” also directed by Zemeckis and costarring the actress who played Gump’s girlfriend Jenny, Robin Wright. His brief response was a reminder that he was no college football skills expert. He’s more of a baseball guy. Though it is worth noting that he did get in a vicious shot on behalf of his faux alma mater ahead of last year’s Alabama-LSU game.

During a speech at the World War II Museum in New Orleans, which he co-founded, he said, “Hope, faith, and collective effort may even lead to LSU beating Alabama tomorrow. If that can happen, ladies and gentlemen, we can accomplish anything.”

While not ready to play the role of an NFL scout, the two-time Oscar winner did praise the physical prowess that came with becoming No. 44.

“I worked out quite a bit, and it was all running. My buttocks, as Forrest would put it, were in particularly spectacular condition. If it shows up on our television, as it will from time to time, my wife [actor Rita Wilson] will request that it stay on until she gets to see me running away from the camera. My touchdown play, as it were.”

The touchdown play for this story came just as “Here” was arriving in theaters. It came Nov. 8 in Oxford, Mississippi, on the eve of Ole Miss’s rainy upset victory over Georgia. Trying to explain the premise of this story to a media pal, this very writer bemoaned, “The only thing missing is a chance to talk to Forrest Gump himself.”

The pal replied, pointing, “Well, why don’t you? There he is.”

And he was. Like a mirage on a desert highway around the 1-hour, 57-minute mark of an Oscar-winning film, Forrest Gump himself was running around the Grove, attempting to crash the show of another Alabama legend, Paul Finebaum. I shouted to him, “Run, Forrest, run! Over here!”

My question was simple. Forrest Gump, you didn’t get to play much college football, at least that we saw. So how do you think you would have fared in the National Football League?

“Aw man, I’d still be running. But I hit that portal. There’s a big party in the ‘Sip. So, Hotty Toddy ever since I left Bama. Life couldn’t be any better …” Then Forrest (real name: John Nance) broke into a dance.

The touchdown dance of a man with an IQ of 75, but an EA Sports talent rating of 99.

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