The Details: Tecmo Super Bowl Legend Works Behind The Scenes
February 15, 2017 | General, Track & Field
By Mason Kelley
GoHuskies.com
Shhh … don't tell anyone, but there's a legend working behind the scenes at Washington.
He is coaching the sprinters. He helped push Kennadi Bouyer to a breakout season last year. But he's more than that. He may be coaching track now, but in his playing days, he was electric on a football field.
As a returner, he was as exciting as Devin Hester. As a running back, he was shifty like Barry Sanders. And he was just as capable as a receiver.
For kids – myself included – who grew up playing video games and watching football in the early 1990s, this guy was a beast in Tecmo Super Bowl.
I rarely betrayed the hometown Seahawks in that game, but when I did, there was a good chance I was playing with the Cleveland Browns, simply because this guy was on their roster.
But, ask many of the athletes on the Washington track and field team about their new sprints coach and, well, they don't quite understand the past success of the guy now tasked with helping them develop as sprinters.
They don't know just how electric Eric Metcalf was in his prime.
Not only was he a three-time Pro Bowler, he was a two-time NCAA champion and the 1988 U.S. Track and Field champion in the long jump. He returned 12 kicks for touchdowns and had more than 17,000 all-purpose yards in the NFL.
Need more proof of his prowess? Just Google his highlights. He was fun to watch. But now here he is, working to help the Huskies on the track, taking a full-time position after spending years working as a volunteer assistant.
"Greg (Metcalf) and I have argued about this for years, but this is going into my sixth year," he said. "He always says it's my fifth, but it's my sixth."
Coaching Washington's jumpers would make sense. He knows a thing or two about competing at an elite level in the long jump. However, Metcalf actually prefers working with sprinters.
"It's more because I was a jumper and I was pretty good at it, so when I look at jumps it feels different if it doesn't look the way I'm used to seeing it," he said.
Training sprinters, though, "I get to see the fruits of their labor, the fruits of my labor when they step out there on the track," he said. "That's fun and amazing to me."
Already this indoor track season, the Husky sprinters have piled up more than thirty personal-best times and nine new marks on the school's Top-10 lists, with Bouyer looking to make a second straight NCAA Championships in the 60-meter dash.
But Metcalf's current position makes him laugh. He didn't really like to sprint when he was a standout at the University of Texas.
"It's funny because that's all I really wanted to do," he said. "I played football and ran track. It was basically the lazy bone in me. I didn't want to sprint and run the whole time I'm not playing football, because that's all I did during football season."
As an athlete, he preferred to play football. As a coach, sprints are his passion project.
"Now I get mad at people who don't want to run because they're sprinters," he said, laughing. "I would rather be in the NFL than go to the Olympics any day, however, I know that me coaching track helped kids, especially in the inner city where I coached, get to college on someone else's dime."
During his playing career, Metcalf would return home to Seattle in the offseason and help local inner-city track and field athletes. He enjoyed it. He realized he could provide a path to a college scholarship.
"It's tougher to get where you want to go if you want to play in the NFL, but if you're fast, you have a chance at schools at every level," he said. "If you're fast enough, a school will give you a scholarship."
And, as good as he was on a football field, he has found retirement just as rewarding.
"Football doesn't define who I am," he said. "I like helping kids and working to touch people's lives."
To help get kids to college, Metcalf started the Seatown Express Track Club while he was still playing in the NFL.
"I've been coaching track ever since," he said.
Now he is as good at teaching proper training technique as he was at making defenders miss on punt returns.
However, as much as he enjoys coaching, he still enjoys looking back on his days as Eric Metcalf the football player. He is the guy Willie McGinest called "Old School" and a player others referred to as simply "Tecmo Bowl."
"Hey, how many people can say they were on that?" he said. "I get to be one of them."
Even though, "I can't even get my own kids to understand who I am and what I did," he is happy with his post-football path. He is content to enjoy what he accomplished, while providing an opportunity for a new generation of athletes to pursue their passion.
"I like to help people and do what I can to get kids to a better place," he said.
Players Mentioned
