COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’90 : A Third Chance : An All-American in ‘88, Stonebreaker Lost Seasons Because of Grades in ’87 and a Suspension in ‘89; He’s Back as Notre Dame’s ‘Old Man’

AUSTIN, Tex. — Venturing into the cold winter night, Michael Stonebreaker was a football hero--an All-American linebacker at Notre Dame, a member of a national championship team.

Only a few weeks earlier, he and his teammates had visited the White House.

He was, he recalled last month, “on top of the world.”

A few hours later, he was in a world of trouble.

He and his date lay severely injured in the wreckage of his car, which had plowed through a stop sign and smashed into a utility pole at about 40 m.p.h., police estimated.

It was about 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 25, 1989, and Stonebreaker, his blood-alcohol level high enough that he would later be charged with driving under the influence, had fallen asleep at the wheel.

The impact forced his hip out of its socket, and his nose and a kneecap were broken.

His image, too, was shattered.

But 18 months later, Stonebreaker’s date, Ursula Garzia, has fully recovered from her injuries.

And Stonebreaker is back together again, too, seemingly no worse for the wear and tear on his body--or a year’s suspension from the team that was the result of a related incident.

Several magazines rank him as the No. 1 inside linebacker in college football. Last April, the youngest son of Steve Stonebreaker, an agent and former NFL linebacker, was named as the outstanding defensive player in the Irish’s final scrimmage of spring practice.

Is he back to normal?

“There’s nothing normal about Michael Stonebreaker,” Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz said.

His Notre Dame career certainly has followed an unusual course.

“It’s been bizarre,” said Stonebreaker, who spent his summer in Texas, working for a friend as a personal trainer for high school players.

If he had his way, the 6-foot-1, 230-pound Stonebreaker might never have gone to Notre Dame.

A two-time all-state linebacker at John Curtis High in River Ridge, La., Stonebreaker preferred UCLA. But the Bruins, he said, rescinded their scholarship offer after other recruits made commitments to UCLA.

“I guess they didn’t want a short, white linebacker from Louisiana,” Stonebreaker said.

Actually, UCLA would love to have had Stonebreaker, said Bill Rees, the Bruins’ recruiting coordinator. “Unfortunately, we were filled up,” Rees said. “We just couldn’t take everybody.”

Stonebreaker enrolled at Notre Dame, where he developed into a key reserve by the end of his freshman season and was expected to challenge for a starting assignment as a sophomore.

But in the summer after his freshman year, Stonebreaker failed a class, dropping his grade-point average below 2.0. Although still eligible to play under NCAA rules, Stonebreaker was ruled ineligible for the 1987 season by Notre Dame, which maintains more stringent standards.

It mattered not that Stonebreaker had attempted to pass the class while recovering from ear surgery. He has been deaf in his left ear since he was 2, when he fell out of a car, breaking his ear drum and fracturing his skull.

“It was my own fault,” Stonebreaker said of his failure to pass a statistics course. “I didn’t do what I had to do. I made a mistake. I screwed up and didn’t do my schoolwork. When you sign your scholarship, you’re not signing just to play football. You’re signing to go to class every day and to do what’s required.”

Upon his return in 1988, Stonebreaker showed no ill effects from a year’s layoff.

In fact, he emerged as a star, moving Irish defensive captain Ned Bolcar out of the starting lineup and making 33 tackles in Notre Dame’s first two games.

By season’s end, the Irish were 12-0 and national champions. Stonebreaker was an All-American.

Less than two months later, he ran his car into a pole.

“I have no short-term memory of the accident,” Stonebreaker told a Chicago reporter three months later. “I don’t remember anything that happened. When I woke up in the hospital and saw all the lights, I asked the nurse.

“She told me I was in an accident. Ursula was in the emergency room. She’d be OK. Then, I felt this stinging down my right side, and I immediately thought they amputated my leg. I am an athlete, and it was the scariest moment of my life. I felt down for the leg and then I went into unconsciousness.”

When he regained his senses, Stonebreaker discovered that all of his limbs were more or less intact.

He soon discovered, though, that his reputation was not.

Letters poured into South Bend, Ind., from around the country, more than a few unsympathetic.

“Some said I had embarrassed the university, and that I should be ashamed of myself,” Stonebreaker said. “But Notre Dame isn’t exempt from reality. This could have happened to anyone we know. A couple of (the letters), I looked at and thought, ‘Doesn’t this person have anything better to do?’ ”

Stonebreaker also faced several months of rehabilitation and, perhaps even more frightening to him, 80 hours of community service under the terms of his court sentence.

He chose to speak to high school students about the evils of drinking and driving, although he said of the experience: “It’s hard to open up to people and tell them your failures.”

Stonebreaker grew more expansive when he realized his impact.

“Everybody drinks and everybody parties and everything, and it’s something that I’ve done since I was 15 years old,” he told an audience that included a reporter from the Chicago Tribune. “And sometimes it’s an everyday occurrence, and drinking and driving is, also. That’s what you learn in New Orleans, where I grew up. And you don’t think twice about it, because what’s going to happen to you? Nothing’s going to happen to you.

“I always thought I was indestructible. Played football at Notre Dame. Never been hurt in my life. Nothing. Been dealing with big, 300-pound guys, just throwing them around. I just thought things like this could never happen to me.

“I was on top of the world. We had won the national championship. I was a potential first-round draft choice. And now I’m back at the bottom again. Don’t know if I’ll play football next year. Don’t know to what extent arthritis will set in or where I’ll be four or five months from now.

“I’m not out saying this just for the hell of it or just to get my community service done. People are telling you this all the time: ‘Don’t do drugs. Don’t drink and drive.’ They’re not out to give you a hard time. They’re doing it because they care about you.”

Stonebreaker experienced double vision for about four months after the accident, but recovered from his injuries in time to pass a physical last August.

By then, though, Stonebreaker had made another costly mistake.

A month earlier, he had driven onto campus, violating a ruling by Notre Dame’s office of student affairs, which had revoked Stonebreaker’s on-campus driving privileges after he was convicted of driving under the influence.

Although he claimed that he had driven only a short way to unload clothes and a television set for summer school, Stonebreaker was suspended for the season.

“I was (upset), but I’m not bitter,” he said. “If I had to choose all over again, I’d go to Notre Dame again, even though I’ve been through Notre Dame the hard way. It’s a good school. I’ve met a lot of really good people.

“At Notre Dame, you have to do things their way. You can’t fudge on anything. It makes you a stronger person, a better person. You’re going to (face) hurdles in life, and not being able to play football one year is not that big a thing when you’re looking at life as a whole.”

The year off doesn’t seem to have hindered Stonebreaker, who said the suspension actually may prove beneficial.

“My leg is so much stronger than it was a year ago,” he said. “I was setting myself up to get hurt, I think. The year off helped me physically to get back into the shape I want to be in.”

Stonebreaker made great strides last April, Holtz said.

“It seemed like the longer he went, the more comfortable he became, and by the end of the spring he was approaching the Michael Stonebreaker of old,” Holtz said. “I would expect that he would be much, much better this fall. He’s got a lot of competitiveness about him and an awful lot of talent.”

Except for “one bad decision,” Stonebreaker has been a model student and player, Holtz said. And when a reporter told Holtz’s secretary that he was preparing a story about Stonebreaker, he was told: “He’s been my favorite player ever since he’s been here.”

Said Holtz: “Michael is a very, very special, talented person. He made a mistake, (but) he’s not a perennial problem.”

Stonebreaker graduated last May with a liberal arts degree. Last winter, he petitioned Notre Dame’s Faculty Board in Control of Athletics to play football this fall as a graduate student. He didn’t consider going through the NFL draft because “nobody’s going to bank on a question mark,” he said.

Stonebreaker will be Notre Dame’s only fifth-year senior this season and already has been called “Old Man” by his teammates.

He doesn’t mind.

He has been called worse.