Thursday, Nov. 05, 2009
Missouri’s Ebner toughened by brotherly love
By MIKE DeARMOND
The Kansas City Star
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ReprintCOLUMBIA | For eight-year-old Will Ebner this was a rare moment. Seated in front of the family TV. Remote in his hand.
No matter how much his brother, Clay, 10 at the time, wanted the channel changed, Will was in control. And he liked it.
Then he was flying off the couch.
“He came and just tackled me off the edge of the sofa,” Ebner remembered. “I fell into this glass table and got a cut on my eye.”
Or at least around it.
“My mom came home and I walked out in the garage. I had blood running all over my face. She goes: ‘What in the world happened?’
“It wasn’t as serious as it looked.”
Normal, really, for Will Ebner. Then, and now as a sophomore linebacker for Missouri. Known to be one of the hardest hitters on the team, Ebner contends he learned from the best. His brothers, Clay and Jake.
Jake, 6-2 and 290 pounds, played tackle for the University of Houston. Clay is at Houston now, and doesn’t play football. But he’s built as if he could.
“He’s one of these guys,” Will Ebner said, hunching his shoulders and splaying his arms out to the side in a muscle builder’s pose. “Everything I do, they taught me.”
Elaine Ebner, Will’s mom, sees it that way, to an extent.
“His brothers, Jake and Clay, paved the way for Will both academically and athletically and provided some brotherly competition and mentoring,” she said. “Sometimes friendly and sometimes unmerciful!”
But her youngest son, Will, always seemed to tackle things head on and with everything he had. Just naturally.
“At 4 years old, he would go out on the driveway and practice shooting baskets for an hour by himself,” she said. “Whether it be football, family, faith, fishing, hunting, friendships, Will is all in!”
If Elaine Ebner seems to speak constantly in exclamation points, Will Ebner comes off as understated off the football field.
It is more likely that he is simply deep in observation.
“I’m a person that pays attention to a lot of things that maybe some other people wouldn’t,” Ebner said. “I see a lot of things in Sean (Weatherspoon, MU’s senior linebacker) that I want to be able to do and I feel I can.
“The little things he does on the field, I try to take that into my game.”
Missouri coach Gary Pinkel sees more of the big picture.
“Both of them are able to flat strike you,” Pinkel said.
Ebner and Weatherspoon are two kids from East Texas. Ebner hails from Friendswood, population 36,446, hard by Houston to the city’s south. Weatherspoon comes from Jasper, north by some 160 miles, and home to approximately 8,499.
They didn’t know each other, or even of each other, in high school. But they’ve formed a bond that was strong before Ebner stepped up to what looks to be a permanent starting role the rest of the season at middle linebacker with junior Luke Lambert undergoing shoulder surgery today.
Right next to Weatherspoon.
“He’s like my little brother,” Weatherspoon said. “We’ve had some flights home. On those Southwest Airlines flights, hanging out.”
Returning from last Saturday’s 36-17 victory at Colorado, Ebner left his car keys on the airplane.
“He called me to come pick him up and we came to media day together,” Weatherspoon said.
Elaine Ebner sings Weatherspoon’s praises for a promise he made to the family.
“I told them I’d look out for him,” Weatherspoon said.
Weatherspoon, like Ebner, played on special teams as a freshman at Missouri. By the end of Weatherspoon’s sophomore year, he was on the field as a regular and made second team All-Big 12 at linebacker after finishing fifth in the league in tackles.
Ebner — with 42 tackles and just breaking into the starting lineup — currently ranks No. 27 in the Big 12 in tackles. Weatherspoon stands at No. 3 with 73 tackles.
But some opposing players — notably Colorado quarterback Tyler Hansen — might contend there is not much difference in the heft of hits delivered by Weatherspoon and Ebner.
With just under seven minutes left in the first quarter on Saturday at Colorado, Ebner hit Hansen so hard that he fumbled, the momentum of that hit sending the football bouncing backwards for a 13-yard loss.
Not only can Ebner dish it out, he can take it as well. Earlier this season, three days after arthroscopic knee surgery to take out shattered cartilage, Weatherspoon saw Ebner running on the sidelines at practice prior to a game he had been ruled out of playing.
“I looked over at him and said, ‘What’s he doing? They trying to kill him to get him back out here?’”
Ebner figured even if he couldn’t play he could get ready to play.
Ebner balks at the notion that Weatherspoon has taken him under his arm, that he is waiting to fill the star linebacker’s shoes when Weatherspoon moves on to the NFL next season.
“I like to see them as my own shoes,” Ebner said. “He’s a person I look up to. But they’re my shoes.”