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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 10, 1987)
ber 10,1987 Thursday, September 10, 1987/The Battalion/Page 13 drug nigk orfe A&M’s Roper a “silent assassin” to auarterbacks as I teen opera::. ■ , Personal effort satisfying for linebacker, hopes team can pull together mdclc nu-i .!.• Ilian to take tl*| By Anthony Wilson States, unto . ■ y . . i • t Sports Writer rented m let:S 1 “ c drugs bv tnu. Aggie linebacker John Roper ap- I buyers in ears to be extremely laid back as he troit and Wr its and talks. One large Adidas is ropped up on the table in front of the ship usd im. A St. Louis Cardinals baseball ijuana was leaeM rests on the back of his head, this year. ‘dd a large pair of sunglasses sits on die northe. is nose, late Julv and* Underneath the glasses is hidden i pounds of ma. large bandage. Underneath the ihen sailed to! andage are five stitches, which ie western C ^P*' 1 acquired while engaging in met by a fret * s favorite pastime: hitting quar- who then t *rbacks. A hobby that is anything s . t | K .| utlaid back. mts unloadd "1 I>^ e hitting tjuarterbacks,” said r j and store a 6-foot-2, 215 pound junior. I warehouse that’s my goal — hitting him, mak- ig him nervous and letting him now we’re here to play. ie next lev “j tr y to g; t v\ jth pain. When I hit " 1,11(1 P° u n ( i' Dmebody, 1 try to let him know that, \tl.tnia, anoi f E ou come around this corner Denver and you’re gonna get hit the same < u I'alm Be. -ay.'” d parted the “That’s how vou get quarterbacks ased in Detro;: ” Roper said, explaining the m Miami to ( r t of intimidation. “You hit him the Detroit on Sept xst time. He’ll remember that. )(• pounds oft hei i the second time he fumbles unds of coca:: aeball before he gets the snap. If he vn said. DE.L. ees a blur coming from the blind Irugv stored ; de, he’ll remember getting hit and u . iel nb' et nervous. ..ime time thee hat’s part of football,” Roper dds “He knows that if he sees a if nine had pt lur he’s going to get hit and it might ine to NewI nly be his own man. If we can keep marijuana del ie quarterbacks and running backs ics .dsn w;n v ervous, then that changes the 1?mpo of the game.” n a Fort ls.!> Roper, who calls himself “the si- said. :nt assassin", appeared in the high- r( . n , ght films of newscasts for several ^ ' *ghts after the Lousiana State game . ; , ith a bone-jarring sack of LSU movers" v uar,er back Tom Hodson. The im- i|n| ls act was so hard in fact, that Roper | rt ,j n > tjured himself on the play. When , , ‘ ' I n\‘ .oper hit Hodson, his helmet slid it ta and Km . . , min in uilhaV °'f 1 an( * S P‘ U t ‘ ie s ^ ln on t * le ridge of his nose. Roper went to the ,, , >cker room for a quick stitching and i . j j"' 'aslback in the game within five ,,, s , . linutes. At the end of the game, Roper had accumulated 12 tackles. Eleven of them were solo and one was for a loss of 15 yards. He also had three sacks accounting for 25 yards in losses. On one play, his quarterback pressure turned out to be the turn ing point of the game. Roper hit Hodson as he was re leasing a pass on a third down play from the LSU 28-yard line. The ball wobbled through the air like a sick gull before falling into running back Harvey Williams’ hands. Williams gained 25 yards on the play and LSU went on to score 10 plays later. “I was very surprised,” Roper said about Williams’ miracle catch. “That pass shouldn’t have gotten off. “When I hit him I thought the ball might have gone straight up in the air. I didn’t know it was made into a first down play. 1 was pretty upset that he even had time to get the ball off. That let us know we were still rushing too slow.” Roper thinks the defense played well but should have played better. “I’d say we did pretty good,” he said. “But of course, they scored 17 points so it was a bad game. The score of the game should have been 3-zip. “But otherwise, as far as the de fensive corps goes, we did good for our first game. They got 247 yards and that’s the lowest we’ve allowed as a team in a season opener.” And even though Roper played an outstanding game, he still was not satisfied with his performance since the team lost. “It makes me feel good that 1 had a good game,” he said. “But then again, we lost. So evidently what I did wasn’t enough. What it says on paper and what it says in reality doesn’t mix.” “I expected John to play well,” A&M linebackers coach Bob Davie said. “He didn’t play well last year over at LSU, and this was a chance right off the bat for John to show case his talent. I think he’s one of the premier players in the country — I really believe that. “The test for him is gonna come next week. He played well enough in that first game that it would put him in the next level with any kid in the country, but he’s gotta do it all sea son.” Roper said A&M will stick with its usual defensive game plan when they play the University of Washing ton on September 19. “It’s still going to be the same game plan,” he said. “We don’t switch up for other teams. No team’s “I try to hit with pain. When I hit somebody, I try to let him know that, ‘If you come around this corner again, you’re gonna get hit the same way. ’ ”— A8cM linebacker John Roper so important that we have to do this for this team or this for that team. We’re just playing our regular foot ball and whatever happens, hap pens.” Roper, who has started in parts of his freshman and sophomore years, is the most experienced of this year’s young pack of Aggie linebackers. However, he insists no one person is the leader of the group. “I’m not the leader of the line backer corps,” Roper said. “I’m just one of the fellas. We’re all leaders when we’re out there on the field. We all have to lean on each other to keep us playing right.” For the third consecutive year, A&M has opened the season against a nationally ranked opponent and failed to make an impressive show ing. The result has been an 0-3 re cord in opening games. But Roper would rather play a tough team than Podunk U. any day. “It lets us know how well we can really play,” Roper said about play ing a formidable opponent. “If you play a sorry team and you go out there and beat them, you get too high and you think ‘We can whip anybody.’ “But if we go out there and play a hard team and lose, then it lets us know we have to work harder. If we beat a hard team, it lets us know we still have to practice a little bit harder because there’s somebody else out there that’s harder than they are. “We need to play somebody hard at the beginning of the season to see who really wants to play,” he added. “Because if you’re weak, it’ll show on the field. If we go out there and play a hard game, we know who we’re going to start.” Roper said the team had had aspi rations for a national championship, so the loss to LSU is disappointing. “We had hoped for it,” Roper said about winning a national championship. “Everybody’s think ing about a national championship. But there’s really no hype. It was in the back of our minds. But we can win it if we put our minds to it. “It (the loss) is a little more disap pointing but more for the fact that we’ve lost to them (LSU) two years in a row. That’s the most disappointing thing. National rankings will take care of themselves.” Even though dreams for a na tional championship at A&M this year are probably hopeless, Roper’s other goals for himself and the team are still well within reach. “My goals for myself are just to come out and play hard and be an All-Southwest Conference player,” said Roper, “As far as the team goes —just to win and go back to the Cotton Bowl. One of my long-term goals is to go into the (National Foot ball League) draft and go high in the draft.” Photo by Robert Rizzo Texas A&M linebacker John Roper looks on from the sidelines dur ing last week’s game against Louisiana State at Kyle Field.Roper had 12 total tackles in the game and suffered a cut to the head early in the game. A&M has a week off to prepare for Washington. ie Denver: and Alejandro] n, Fla., identifiti flicking negotid t est FalmBeadi 9ar$ :henl dteci was no Ic s, sent the cotj plummeting. Hj set-aside pregia all of Wedtera it, the compa] :l some $250iid! work without o >n about the ij <1 to the Sec™ mmission form imittee ch:iirnij| -Mich, said, nd Bragg, w ‘tit for allej he White Houstj I lech, each soHJ : k in March Iner’s recordssj “While millions] I f rom companil (kets of compaJi ‘ll-placed cons] payers lost tens] ars paid for pi would neverk] BHll! 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