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A (TEDDY) BEAR OF A LINEMAN

You are not prepared for Bill Condon. You expect something closer to the image, which falls far short of choirboy.

You have watched him, in his Alabama uniform, push around some of college football`s best defensive linemen. You hear stories about fights with teammates in the dorm, about him getting stabbed leaving a concert in Birmingham, Ala.

You see him walking around campus in blue jeans and a T-shirt with a day`s growth of stubble on his face. And you say to yourself: ”Lock up the women and children, here`s one tough guy.”

And then, he sits down beside you, and you`re confronted with an intelligent, articulate human being who smiles easily and laughs a lot, a guy described by his roommate as a teddy bear.

”He`s a good guy,” said John Fruhmorgen, who has become one of Condon`s best friends since they arrived as freshmen in 1984.

”He looks like this big, strong, rough-looking man. But when you get to know him, he`s a teddy bear. He`s a very laid-back kind of person.”

The truth is, Condon doesn`t go looking for trouble. It seems to find him. He was caught on national television last season showing his displeasure over coach Ray Perkins` decision to send in the kicking team instead of going for a first down on a fourth and 1 against Tennessee. The cameras zoomed in on the sidelines, where line coach Jimmy Fuller and then Perkins chewed out Condon until they were sure he knew who the coach was.

He suffered a knee injury against Louisiana State. It required arthroscopic surgery. There was speculation that he might not be back by the end of the season. Condon was back trying to practice two days after surgery. He missed the next game because coaches couldn`t believe he was ready. He started against Auburn.

Less than a month before spring practice, he was attacked and stabbed in the shoulder while leaving a concert. It appeared he might miss spring drills. He was ready for work the first day.

Midway through spring practice, Condon suffered a severe knee injury that required major surgery. Playing this fall was considered out of the question. It would be next season before he could play again. You guessed it. He started in the opener, at right guard, where he has started 32 of the last 33 games.

”For a while, it did seem like I was jinxed,” Condon said. ”There was about a six-month period where so much happened. Not just the injuries, but a coaching change, and I was taking 18 hours a semester. There was a lot of pressure in a lot of different ways.

”Hopefully, that`s all behind me now. It`s hard to believe, but everything has worked out.”

He passes over amazing recoveries from injury as if it were nothing.

”Constant pain is easier than the little, sharp spurts of pain,” Condon said. ”But I look at it like, if it`s been fixed, then it`s ready to go. And I forget about it and go back to work.”

But what about the tough-guy image?

”He`s a great guy,” Fruhmorgen said. ”But if you try to intimidate him, if you try to push into his little area of space, well, he`s like a momma cat protecting her territory. He`ll respond.”

Older players remember when Condon came as a highly recruited freshman out of Mobile, Ala. He was raw, but he was strong. And he rubbed some of the older guys the wrong way with his attitude.

”As a freshman, you`re somewhat immature,” Fruhmorgen said. ”Sometimes he felt intimidated, and he didn`t like being treated like a freshman by some of the older players.

”Plus, he was good. He wasn`t arrogant. He just wanted to be a great football player, and maybe some of the older players were intimidated by him.”

There was the time Condon and his former roommate, Brent Sowell, got into a wrestling match. Condon loved to wrestle. Sowell didn`t. The versions differ as to what happened, but Sowell ended up with a cut on his head that required stitches and Condon had a black eye.

”I grew up with two older brothers, and maybe that`s where it all started,” Condon said. ”My mom worked all day, and they used to beat on me a lot when I was little. Maybe that`s what helped me learn to deal with pain.” Condon`s first home run got him into trouble.

”We were playing whiffle ball,” Condon said. ”One of my brothers was pitching and I hit a home run. I started around the bases in this home-run trot, like I was really something special. My brother got a (plastic) bat, grabbed me and started beating me with it. I guess I deserved it.”

Fruhmorgen said the Condons still argue about whether Frank or Mike was pitching that day.

”Only now, I can beat up both my brothers,” Condon said.

He isn`t looking for punching bags but he doesn`t like the concept of the big, dumb jock, and will go to great lengths to prove it false.

”We were in line to go to a movie,” Fruhmorgen said, ”and this girl asked Bill what he made on a statistics test. Bill told her he made a 96. She didn`t believe him. She didn`t think he was that smart.

”Bill got so mad, he left the line, went to his car and got the test to bring back and show her, just to prove he was not dumb.”

What Condon wants most is to be treated like an ordinary student. He is a perfectionist in football and very intense on the field, but football is not his all-consuming passion.

”I like to sit on the couch and relax, watch TV and eat food that didn`t come from the dorm,” Condon said. ”Mainly, I just like to get away from the dorm. Everything at the dorm reminds you of football-the pictures are football pictures, the people are all football players. Everything that goes on at the dorm is football.

”The NCAA always talks about us being treated like ordinary students. But we`re not. If an ordinary student gets in trouble, you never hear about it. Everything a football player does, everyone knows about it. The average student has it made compared to a football player.”

Condon is happy, though. He has a philosophy that keeps him going. It is the reason he rushed back to play this season instead of redshirting.

”I figure you have more control over what happens tomorrow than you do next year,” he said. ”So I try to take each day as it comes and deal with it. I`ve seen people who are always worrying about the future, working to make sure they`re happy later. But they aren`t happy now. And if you`re not happy now, you`re probably not going to be happy later.

”So I take it a day at a time.”