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By
HENRY GREENSTEIN hgreenstein@bakersfield.com
Feb 11, 2022
Former CSUB wrestler and NFL football player Stephen Neal
shares how much CSUB helped help as he is inducted into the university's Alumni
Hall of Fame on Friday night.
- Rod
Thornburg / For The Californian
Stephen Neal's atypical, profoundly successful athletic career brought him plenty of honors: a pair of unbeaten college wrestling championships at Cal State Bakersfield, a Dan Hodge Trophy, a World Wrestling Championship win — all before he became an NFL starting lineman and won three Super Bowl rings.
But as he's quick to point
out, his capacity for self-motivation — which helped him win all those awards,
and which he honed at CSUB — was never tied to external accolades.
"It was never about just
winning the championship," Neal said, "it was about accomplishing
other goals.
"My senior year, my goal
was to pin every single opponent I had; I fell short. Then it was to get bonus
points for every single opponent; I fell short twice of that. Then it was not
to give up a takedown; I actually accomplished that, but I gave up a
reversal."
One honor the Roadrunner legend will accept unreservedly: his induction
into the CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame, carried out Friday night at
the school's Doré Theatre. The class of 2022 also features local hospital
executive Terri Church, English professor Paula Parks and United Farm Workers
vice president Connie Perez-Andreesen.
Neal has retold many times the story of how CSUB
won his heart by showing him a hard-nosed wrestling practice when he toured the
school rather than taking him out for fun and frolic. It was at such practices
that he became the multiple-championship-winning wrestler, but also learned
from people like assistant coach Darryl Pope, who would "push (him) past
just being a champion."
The school also prepared him
to take his eventual left turn into professional football, CSUB president
Lynnette Zelezny noted.
"Even though we didn't have football and it was probably a
passion of his his whole life," Zelezny said, "he used the
opportunity with wrestling to master his skills ... If you want to take
advantage of opportunities here at CSUB, the sky's the limit."
The grind of professional
football was familiar to Neal. But on a football field, unlike on a wrestling
mat, other people — in his case, a young quarterback named Tom Brady — would
pay for his own errors.
"If I do something
stupid in football," Neal said, "the little baby giraffe back there
is getting slammed."
Neal won three Super Bowls as a guard with the Patriots, but
only got to play in the third win at the culmination of the 2004 season.
Finally, Neal felt like he really contributed.
"In wrestling, you only
get a medal if you win," he said. "And so to get those (first two)
rings and not play, and finally get to do that, it was exciting for me and for
my family, kind of validated that I do belong here."
Neal has stayed involved with
CSUB wrestling through turbulent times for the program, including budget cuts
in 2010 that threatened the team's survival. With funding stabilized, Neal said
he's optimistic about the future of the program that shaped him.
"We drove around the
campus with my kids and I was showing them the 2.7-mile course we used to run
three times a week," Neal said. "To get honored here just means so
much, because this is kind of where I went from a no-name person coming from
San Diego to having a little bit of recognition throughout the country."
