He Just Wants to Stay in Game : Holiday Bowl: Fred Whittingham Jr., sidelined by severe headaches at El Modena, becomes a fixture in BYU’s backfield.

It’s fitting that Fred Whittingham Jr. has played most of this college football season for Brigham Young with a broken bone in each wrist. That’s the type of football player he is.

As a senior at El Modena High School, Whittingham proved just how difficult it is to keep him away from the sport. He was hospitalized because of severe headaches after a football game in October. The headaches were determined to be caused by internal bleeding in his brain, and doctors recommended that he not play the rest of the season. Some doctors said he shouldn’t play football again. Although he wasn’t able to play for El Modena again, he did play in college.

Now Whittingham is the starting fullback for BYU (10-2), which will meet Penn State (7-3-1) in the Holiday Bowl tonight at 5 in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. He has been the Cougars’ leading rusher for the past three seasons and is one of two lettermen remaining from the 1984 team that defeated Michigan in the Holiday Bowl and won the national championship. A psychology major with a 3.24 grade-point average, Whittingham is an academic all-American.

Whittingham, son of Ram linebacker coach Fred Whittingham, isn’t an especially fast runner, and at 5-feet-9 and 200 pounds, he doesn’t have the ideal body for a fullback.

“He’s just not quite as tall or as big as other people but he’s big enough,” BYU Coach LaVell Edwards said.

He’s tough enough, too. As a child, he would stare down other children just to see what they would do. Consequently, he got in a lot of fights.

“I kind of grew out of wanting to fight,” Whittingham said, “But I guess it stuck with me on the field. Not the fighting but the competitiveness.”

Whittingham broke a bone in each wrist in successive games early this season. Despite the pain, he had his wrists wrapped, continued to play and avoided having the injuries X-rayed until about a month later.

“All (the X-rays) would have told me was whether they were broken or not,” Whittingham said, “and I really didn’t want to know because if they were broken I would have played anyway.”

Whittingham doesn’t volunteer information about injuries. “I try to stay away from doctors,” he said.

During his senior year at El Modena, five doctors told him he shouldn’t play football again. Blood was found in his spinal fluid, indicating that the severe headaches he was suffering were caused by hemorrhages in his brain.

The headaches had started in early October after a game. They were persistent but not especially severe. Still, they were bad enough that Whittingham went to a doctor, who could find nothing wrong.

But after the next game, in which he took a couple of hard hits, the headaches became severe on the bus ride home.

“He really got ripped several times, but that was the kind of ballcarrier he was,” said Bob Lester, his coach at El Modena. “He charged headlong into everything.”

His mother, Nancy, said Fred came home, said the pain was worse, then fell asleep. When he woke up, Nancy said, “I think he kind of had tears in his eyes; (he said), ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. This is hurting so much.’ ”

That night, his parents took him to St. Joseph Hospital on Orange for tests. The next day, he checked into Anaheim Memorial Hospital where the tests continued. His head was X-rayed from all angles but the doctors could not find the cause of the headaches. One neurologist suggested that he quit football. Another said it might be migraine headaches.

“It was kind of frustrating to know that my head hurt that bad, yet all those tests were coming up negative,” Whittingham said.

Finally, Whitting ham was given a spinal tap, which showed that there had been internal bleeding. The doctor told him to forget about football for at least the season.

Despite this advice, Whittingham got antsy when the headaches subsided a few weeks later. His team was driving toward the Southern Section playoffs and he wanted to play.

He was allowed to practice before the first week of the playoffs. But the headaches started to come back, and although they were mild, it was decided that he wouldn’t play.

He did play a month and a half later when El Modena defeated Foothill, 10-7, in a Southern Section championship game at Anaheim Stadium. He was in for only one play, as a decoy. It was meant to be a tribute to Whittingham. Lester said Whittingham was in no danger.

“I was more frustrated to be in a uniform and not be able to play,” Whittingham said. “I almost wished I just dressed in street clothes.”

Because the injury kept Whittingham out of almost half of his senior season, almost all of the coaches who had been recruiting him backed off. But not Edwards. The Edwards and Whittingham families had been neighbors in Provo, Utah, when Fred Sr. was a BYU assistant.

“They really do watch that closely and they can tell the difference between something that is a real problem and something that will pass by,” Edwards said. “If he were to have come in complaining of headaches, that would have been picked up in a hurry.”

Edwards said that although Fred didn’t get a scholarship because he was a Whittingham, the name certainly helped.

“There’s something to be said for genes and competitiveness,” Edwards said.

Nancy Whittingham tried to make it to every BYU home game during the 1984 season to watch Fred Jr. and another son, Cary, a senior linebacker. She said she was worried every time Fred Jr. carried the ball.

“I just kept watching him every second after the play,” Nancy Whittingham said. “I kept watching the sideline, watching for any movement that might tell me something.”

Whittingham had only 25 carries in his freshman year.

But he did get hit in practice, harder than he was hit in high school. But the headaches never returned.

“When I was getting hit as hard as I had in my whole life and my head didn’t hurt, I thought it was probably OK,” Whittingham said.

Although Whittingham had been given clearance to play by a neurologist at UCLA, he received no guarantees. “(Other doctors) just figured that any kind of a head injury wasn’t worth the risk,” Nancy said. “That doesn’t take into account how badly the individual wants to play.”

He certainly wants to play. Older brothers Kyle and Cary played linebacker for BYU, and both played for the Rams as replacements during the NFL strike in 1987. His father played linebacker for BYU and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and for the Rams, Eagles, Saints and Cowboys.

“If the tests had showed anything at all, we would have stopped him from playing,” his father said.

“It does put a little bit of a scare in you, but that’s part of anything in life.”

Whittingham took two seasons off on a mission for the Mormon church in southern Florida, and when he returned before the 1987 season, he became the starting fullback.

Whittingham’s single-game high this season has been 81 yards. Only once at BYU has he rushed for more than 100 yards. But despite averaging only about 10 carries a game, he led the Cougars in rushing each year that he started.

“For our kind of offense, he fits right in,” Edwards said, “he’s an excellent blocker, ballcarrier and pass receiver.”

But it’s carrying the ball that Whittingham enjoys most. When he does get hold of the ball, he doesn’t think of sparing his body.

“That’s just the way I am out there. I could probably minimize the abuse I take, but that’s not the style I play,” Whittingham said.