THE PLAY CLOCK FLASHED 0:00 WHEN THE REFEREE BLEW HIS WHISTLE.
Mason Walters stood up from his spot at right guard, furious.
Texas was in the third quarter of their final game against Texas A&M, and faced a second and seven with a 24-16 lead. Quarterback Case McCoy had ….
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taken too long getting out of the huddle to snap the ball, resulting in an avoidable delay of game. As the cameras zoomed in to capture McCoy’s reaction, Walters got right in his face and gave a tongue-lashing of seismic proportions.
Was this just a slip of Walters’ character, a heat of the moment reaction, in front of the entire nation?
No. This is Mason Walters’ character.
He’s fiery, powerful, nasty in the trenches and will scream himself red until your fear matches his passion. And the Longhorns wouldn’t want him any other way.
“We need somebody to get the guys going,” junior guard Trey Hopkins said. “[His passion] is just displayed in an intense way.”
Frenship High School sits just miles outside of Lubbock, in the midst of what many would call ‘the middle of nowhere.’ Wolfforth, Texas, which didn’t have a population of more than 100 people until 1940, continues to exist because Frenship football does. The town’s supplemental newspaper is called ‘Frenship Today.’ The light blue water tower, not far from Frenship’s Tiger Stadium, reads ‘Frenship’ in white lettering instead of the actual town name. If Lubbock hasn’t done justice to West Texas’ Friday Night Lights reputation, Frenship certainly has. Parents wear customized buttons to the Friday night games with the acronym BTA: Beat Their Ass.
Wolfforth’s rugged nature left its mark on Walters, who earned the nickname ‘Big Country’ in school because he was big and extremely country.
He worked on ranches growing up, helped build fences and even erected wind turbines one summer. Walters also spent two years working with his best friend, Scott Williams, in the maintenance department in the high school — where his father, Marty, was in charge — moving furniture, helping assemble desks and chairs and painting lines in the parking lot.
“Mason was raised to be a man,” Williams said. “He’s a tough guy and never had anything given to him.”
Not surprisingly, Walters found a niche on the offensive line, where he, once again, was assigned the grunt work. A sophomore on the varsity team, Walters started every game of his career, with the exception of one: his first.
“I had younger guys I needed to stay loyal to,” Landy Perkins recalled, who coached the Frenship offensive line while Walters was in school, “but I couldn’t keep him out of the lineup.”
Perkins also worried about the defensive coaches stealing Walters away if he wasn’t put to good use. Walters was a spectacular athlete and reached 6’6” and 290 pounds as a senior in high school. The basketball coaches even called him up from the freshman basketball team to the varsity during the playoffs to help Frenship counter the opponent’s big man. “He did just fine, but he couldn’t make a free throw to save his life,” Williams said.
Walters also held a spot on the high school track & field team. As a sophomore, he was inches away from making the state championship in the shot put.
When Walters decided to enroll early at Texas, the decision was bittersweet for Perkins. After all, Perkins also coached track & field.
But today Perkins has the pleasure of watching Walters electrify on the national stage. A prime example is Texas’ season-opening 37-17 victory over Wyoming, in which Walters finished with 12 pancake blocks — easily capturing the No. 1 spot for the game. Trey Hopkins came in second with six.
Hopkins, the left guard, and Walters are quite different. Hopkins is gregarious and chuckles while he speaks. Walters, perhaps in jest, can come off as a grump. Hopkins can play both the saxophone and the clarinet. Walters would rather play with rattlesnakes.
While explaining his burning flair for competition in activities other than football — such as basketball — Walters lowers his eyes and makes a roundtable of reporters seem like purgatory.
“I don’t like to lose,” he growls, “and I’d tear you up on the court.”
His friends and teammates feel the heat too. Before fall camp began, Walters spent the night at Williams’ house, where the two played chess for five hours, deep into the morning. “He kept beating me, but he didn’t want to stop; he wanted to beat me more,” Williams said.
Once he returned to Austin, Walters continued to push forward with his competitive edge. The Longhorns picked a few fights during fall camp — not uncommon — and most reckon Walters played a part in several of them.
“We’ll do pass rush drills and it gets competitive. We have at least one fight every seven practices,” defensive end Alex Okafor explained. “It gets intense, but after the fight we’re all love … all family. You just have to come with it every day against Mason. He’s an intense guy.”
Walters’ peers on the offense receive a healthy dose of his intensity and passion on a daily basis. If Hopkins is pulling teammates aside to whisper pointers in their ear, Walters is conducting a one-man symphony, arms waving as he barks out orders. He’s up front with the coaches as well.
“Mason has come-to-Jesus talks with me,” head coach Mack Brown said. “And at 6’6”, 320, you usually just say, ‘Yes sir.’”
Molly offers the following with a disclaimer — “please don’t make him seem too soft,” — but her brother does have a sentimental side. Walters enjoys watching movies like, ‘The Notebook’ and ‘A Walk to Remember.’ He wears size-18 furry slippers. He locked himself in a bathroom this summer until the super-scary spider in his house had been exterminated.
“He’s a big nerd, a teddy bear and so sweet,” Molly laughed, “until football got to him.”
Speaking of soft…the Longhorns didn’t lose many games until 2010, when they lost them in droves — going 13-12 the last two years. But the offensive line hasn’t been right for a while. The reason? A prolific passing game called for linemen to move backwards rather than forwards. Over time, so did the Longhorns.
The team ran the ball worse and worse each season. The 17th-best rushing attack in 2007 became the 41st-best attack in 2008. No. 61 in 2009 turned to No. 66 in a miserable 2010. An infusion of talent at running back in 2011 helped reverse course, as the Longhorns ran for 202.6 yards a game, earning the No. 21 spot in the nation. For the first time in a long time, the offensive line wasn’t a point of weakness as the Longhorns entered fall camp.
“The guys understand exactly what we want to try to accomplish. We want to have a powerful running game and still be vertical throwing it down the field,” offensive line coach Stacy Searels said.
Walters plays a big part in attaining this goal. He entered the season with 25 starts under his belt, considerably more than any other Longhorn. When he steps onto the field, in the weight room or the team meeting room, he’s setting an example.
“He’s the hardest worker we have. Not to say the other kids aren’t working hard, but he really pushes himself,” Searels comments. “He’s very demanding of himself in practice. He doesn’t like to mess up. The other guys see his fire and that makes him a good leader.”
If he didn’t put in the hard work himself, Walters said that it would be inappropriate to get after his teammates the way he does.
“You can say whatever you want, but guys on the team have to respect you,” Walters said. “And you earn that through your work in the weight room and how you play. Coach Brown always talks about how great players can’t have a bad day, and that’s extremely true. If you lose the respect of your teammates, you can’t lead. If you put yourself out there like that, you’re going to have to live up to it every week.”
Walters and his teammates faced a learning curve when it came to expressing their passion for the game. Walters toes the line between amped and insane. For a while, he thought something was wrong if the guys around him didn’t match his rage.
“I do misread guys. That’s one of the things I’ve had to grow with,” Walters said. “I’ve had to be more level-headed, but keep the passion.”
He faced the same problem in high school. “Mason was a leader but in his younger days didn’t know how to direct that,” Perkins adds. “As he got older he channeled his energy and became the best leader we had while I was there.”
When Walters made the varsity squad in high school, he noticed Frenship, despite its status as a state powerhouse, wasn’t unified in the locker room and devoid of leadership. So he made changes. “His junior year, he started leading the seniors and held a bible study,” Molly said. “He took the boys on that football team and molded them into men.”
Walters, a team captain, will continue to do the same with the Longhorns, who will try to change the outside perception that they’re soft.
Take one look at their leader, and you know they’re not.
“I pride myself on being a physical player … somebody who sticks out on film,” Walters said. “The opposing team knows I’m a go-getter and that I’ll be a challenge.”
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