He's a fun-loving prankster off the field, and with his blend of power and speed Arkansas tailback Darren McFadden usually has the last laugh on it

                    

Arkansas tailback Darren McFadden. Peter Read Miller/SI

By Phil Taylor

Apparently there are still some residents of Arkansas who don't immediately recognize Darren McFadden, the Razorbacks' multitalented tailback, when he's not wearing his red-and-white number 5 jersey. But even those uninformed few tend to stare at McFadden with a puzzled don't-I-know-you-from-somewhere? expression as they try to figure out if they went to grade school with him or if he's a cashier from the local Wal-Mart. McFadden finds this amusing -- actually, he finds almost everything amusing -- and he likes to string folks along while they try to place him.

"I'm not going to help them," McFadden says. "If they ask, I just tell them I'm a student. If they want to know my name, I'll just say people call me D." It's typical McFadden, a bit comical, a bit devilish, but it's a game he doesn't get to play as much as he used to. "These days," he says, "people pretty much tend to know who I am."

No wonder. It's hard for McFadden to keep a low profile after his dizzying ascent last year from a freak preseason injury to a second-place finish in the Heisman Trophy voting (behind Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith), the highest ever for a Razorback. Only a sophomore, he flashed into the national spotlight by leading Arkansas to the SEC West championship with 1,647 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns, including a collection of breakaway runs so breathtaking that asking his coaches and teammates to pick their favorite often sends them into a lengthy internal debate. Was it the 80-yard touchdown run against LSU? Or the 63-yard dash against Auburn? Or maybe it was the 70-yard scoring run as a freshman against Georgia, on which he accelerated so quickly the Bulldogs couldn't lay a finger on him? "You can take your pick," says Arkansas coach Houston Nutt. "He had so many runs where he hit the hole and he was gone, like everybody else was playing in mud."

The only group more familiar with the 6' 2", 215-pound McFadden than Razorbacks fans may be Heisman voters, who surely have him on their short list of leading candidates for this season's award. As the highest returning vote-getter, he has to be considered the favorite, although quarterback John David Booty of top-ranked USC is also getting early buzz. But even if he had not won the Doak Walker Award as the nation's best running back last year, even if he didn't break off highlight-reel runs and show off his quarterback-caliber arm -- he took direct snaps out of the shotgun in Arkansas's Wildcat package and completed seven of nine passes for 69 yards and three TDs -- McFadden would likely still be the center of attention around the Fayetteville campus and in his hometown of Little Rock. Fun-loving, prank-pulling, cross-dressing tailbacks tend to get noticed.

McFadden is always in search of a smile, no matter how small. He's the guy who taps you on your left shoulder and then disappears, chuckling, behind your right. When he returned from the Heisman ceremony in New York City last December, he called his friend Razorbacks trainer Dean Weber and tried to persuade him to drive to the airport to pick him up because he had been left behind by the Arkansas staffer who was supposed to give him a ride. Weber knew McFadden's sense of humor too well to fall for the trick. "He'll do anything for a laugh," says Felix Jones, who teams with McFadden to give the Razorbacks perhaps the best running back tandem in the country. "Ask anybody who knows him, they'll tell you he's a clown."

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