West Texas Tornado

Head coach John Parchman, dressed in a crimson polo shirt and khaki pants, stands in a darkened room in front of the Lee High School booster club in Midland. Remote control in hand, he reviews the film of the previous week's game against Longview, narrating the action play by play. "Cedric goes in here, around the side," he says as star tailback Cedric Benson scampers in for a touchdown from the 19-yard line. The audience responds with polite applause. A few minutes later, Benson breaks through the line for a 4-yard touchdown. Booster club: polite applause. Benson launches a brilliant 85-yard touchdown run and then a pile-driving 4-yard score. Booster club: routine clapping. Finally, halftime arrives.

If the booster club members appear to need a boost, it is, after all, understandable. They are spoiled. Their team was the winner of 25 consecutive games and back-to-back state championships during the 1998 and 1999 seasons. Last year USA Today crowned the Rebels the number one high school football team in the country. And during this remarkable run, Lee fans have also had the good fortune to observe the astonishing feats of Cedric Benson, who may well be the finest high school football player in the nation.

The achievements of Benson's junior year alone—his 3,526 yards was the fourth-highest single-season total of any running back in state history—are remarkable enough. But his career totals are likely to be even more impressive. In late September Benson became the all-time leading rusher for class 5A football in Texas, with 6,194 yards. He could finish among the top five running backs in the state for career yardage at any level. He became the first high school player in 41 years to own the cover of Dave Campbell's 2000 Texas Football magazine. "[N]ever mind the fact that we usually reserve the cover for a top Texas collegian or a top Texas college coach," wrote Campbell. "The cover subject should be somebody who has done special things. Benson is special." Widely acknowledged to be among the top prep running backs in the country, Benson was recruited by just about every major college program. He has committed to the University of Texas at Austin.

The fact that his career is playing out on what is arguably the country's greatest stage for high school football, class 5A district 4, and with one of the greatest teams in recent Texas history, makes Benson even more special. In Midland, where there is no major college or pro sports, high school football is the only game in town. Regulars—"lawn-chair sitters" as Coach Parchman calls them—come out to watch practice every day. During the traditional Thanksgiving morning practice, six hundred to seven hundred people turn out. This isn't Benson mania; this is just Midland. "It was like that when I got here," Benson says. "I kind of just got put in."

What he was "put in" is an extraordinary schoolboy football machine that operates from junior high school through high school. Although Benson first started to attract national attention after his sophomore year, the coaches at Lee had been charting his progress closely long before that. Like many of the state's top programs, Lee gets its players through a well-organized ladder of feeder schools. It is a system perfected at Permian High in Odessa, which used it to produce perennial powerhouses in the seventies and eighties. In the feeder-school system, the varsity head coach has complete control of all of the coaches and staffs down through the junior varsity, freshman, and junior high levels. In the Lee system, a computer card is created for every one of the more than three hundred kids who enter the football program at its two junior high schools. This allows coaches to keep track of not just individual statistics such as height, weight, and speed but also the overall number of players in the program at each level.

In a district without the feeder-school system, the coaches might not have any idea who or how many players will show up on the first day of practice. At schools such as Lee, Permian, Austin Westlake, and Katy—in fact, at most of the state's best programs—most of the players who show up already know the team's playbook. The junior high teams in Lee's feeder system are running basically the same offensive and defensive alignments that the varsity team does. The terminology is the same; the blocking scheme on a sweep is the same. "I'm blessed that I get to staff our schools," says Parchman, who considers the junior high coaches as much a part of his staff as the varsity coordinators.

Benson's progress through the feeder system provides a clear example of its usefulness to coaches. He had played on an anemic seventh-grade team that won only one game. During his eighth-grade year, however, his team went undefeated. So did his ninth-grade team. Every week, Parchman would report to the boosters on the feeder schools and it seemed Benson's name would always be mentioned, often associated with three-hundred-yard, multi-touchdown performances. The coaches had a clear vision of what was coming their way. At the end of each freshman season, Parchman and an assistant visit the freshman campus to talk to the most promising of the lot to assure them that they have a good chance of playing varsity. In a conversation with Benson, Parchman mentioned Josh Norman, then the star tailback at Lee and now at the University of Oklahoma. "I asked Cedric if he was going to be able to play like that when he got over to the high school," recalls Parchman. "And he said, 'Coach, I don't mean anything bad, but there were some runs where Josh got tackled. I would have scored.' And he just kind of grinned, but not in a cocky way, just confident." When Benson left, Parchman turned to his assistant and asked his opinion. "Coach Ratliff said, 'He just may be the real deal.'"

Benson didn't start for the varsity team until the fourth game of his sophomore season, but that was the beginning of the end for the competition. He finished his sophomore campaign with 2,026 yards and 30 touchdowns as Lee went 15-1 and won the state championship. The next year it was 3,526 yards and 51 touchdowns in a 15-0 season. He set a district record for rushing with 353 yards and 5 touchdowns against Permian last year. Two hundred sixty-one of those yards came in the second half. Until Lee lost on the road to West Monroe, Louisiana, on September 22, the third game of his senior season, Benson had experienced defeat only one time in four seasons.

But football glory in a place like Midland can be a mixed blessing. The Benson mystique has lured television crews (FOX, MTV, among others) from all over the country to stand by and watch practice, hoping to get a word with the phenom. Benson had to ask Parchman to limit the number of interview seekers so that he and the team could concentrate. The glare of attention doesn't come from just outside West Texas. It's even brighter right at home, where in the town of 98,000, Benson's renown is up there with former resident George W. Bush's. A Benson appearance will induce whispers and stares in a grocery store and prompt awestruck kids to approach him for his autograph. "He feels that because he's under a spotlight he has to be very careful with every move that he makes," says his coach. Benson recently had the windows of his 1990 Mustang tinted, "not because I want to hide anything that I'm doing," he said, "but because everyone's always looking in at me."

Invasions reached their peak the night before last year's huge game against crosstown Midland High. The two schools share a bitter rivalry, and Midland was scratching at the door to the playoffs for the first time since 1951. A loss to Lee would have meant another year in the cold. The Benson yard was covered with toilet paper, repeatedly, on the days leading up to the game. Headlights were trained on the front windows from across the street. The phone started ringing at all hours. Some of the calls were death threats. Benson, along with the rest of the team, was asked by his coaches not to leave school during the day and to stay home at night. Midland High did not make the playoffs. Benson's 191 yards and four touchdowns made sure of it.

Benson was born and raised in Midland. He and his fourteen-year-old brother were brought up exclusively by their mother, Jacquelyn. At home, he's quiet, she says, and spends time playing with her two-year old son by her new husband. Benson's natural father lives in Memphis, where he has spent time in prison. Last summer Benson went to Memphis to visit him. Even though his father is absent, Benson is obviously still fond of him and forgiving of his past. "Just going down there I did a good job in kind of building his confidence," he says. "After you've served time, nobody cares about you that much. And all the years I've never seen him, I still love him." Back in Midland, the majority of Benson's friends are girls. "I'd rather hang out with girls," he says. "I feel like I can trust them."

At close to six feet and two hundred pounds, Benson is not an imposing physical presence. When he is not on the football field he is shy and gentle and gives the impression of wanting to retreat quietly to the back of a room. "Before the season, I was at a point where I was feeling that I needed to live up to what everyone was saying," he said one day after an intense practice, still wearing his pads. "But after the first couple of scrimmages, I got it all out of me and realized who I'm playing for—a team, not those people talking out there. I think that if I have a bad game, people are going to talk, but I can't listen to it."

"He tends to stay in his own head," says Parchman, describing Benson's contemplative demeanor. "That can be a problem for him sometimes." Benson knows this, admitting that he's "always either worried about something or thinking about something." He says that's one reason he likes football. "Nothing else matters when you're out on the football field except for the next play," he says. "I like that."

As his high school football career winds down, he is already being compared with Texas high school legends Earl Campbell, Eric Dickerson, Billy Simms, and the immortal Ken Hall. "I enjoy records, seeing what you accomplished," he says. But he adds that they don't mean anything to him during football season. Benson will be looking forward to baseball season and the pastoral relief it brings from the intensity of football. "I'm kind of a relaxed guy. I like to stand in the outfield by myself and just enjoy it," says Benson.

He can also start thinking about college. At UT he will follow in the cleated footsteps of his football hero, Ricky Williams. Though he watches tapes of Williams over and over again, studying the Heisman Trophy winner's moves, he says that the connection he feels to Williams is more emotional and empathic. "It's weird," says Benson, who has followed Williams' turbulent transition from college to the pros. "I don't even know the guy, but I really like him a lot. It just amazes me how much he has overwhelmed me. When he's sad, it's almost like I'm sad."