Simply the Pest

The tiny kid with the dancing eyes and mischievous grin dashes down the Ventura pier and through the door of a seafood restaurant. He grabs a mint from a tray next to the cash register and bolts back to the beach.

He runs two miles on the sand until he reaches his taskmaster father and hands him the mint. The small crime is repeated daily until the tiny kid becomes as much a product of operant conditioning as Pavlov’s dogs.

He runs. He eludes capture. He grabs the prize. He runs some more.

His reward? Stature.

It’s all Tyler Ebell has ever pursued. The tiny kid has grown up to become UCLA’s tailback as a redshirt freshman even though, at 5 feet 9, 170 pounds, he has been labeled too small so often that the words elicit another conditioned response -- belligerence.

No wonder he identifies with Mighty Mouse, sporting a tattoo of the rodent superhero delivering an uppercut that he got at a Ventura Hell’s Angels hangout at 14. Ebell relishes being the fruit fly in your face, the groundhog in your garden, the possum raiding the dog food in the dead of night, an annoyance impervious to eradication.

In four games, he has confounded some of the finest pest control experts in college football -- coaches Dennis Erickson of Oregon State, Mike Bellotti of Oregon, Jeff Tedford of California and Buddy Teevens of Stanford.

UCLA (5-3) won only two of the games against those Pacific 10 Conference opponents, struggling with injuries and play-calling. But for Ebell, October marked an uninterrupted ascent.

He cracked the lineup in the second quarter against Oregon State on Oct. 5 because of an injury to Manuel White and rushed for 203 yards, the second-highest total by a Bruin freshman. Three more 100-yard games followed, giving him an average of 146 yards per game for the month.

Ebell is 72 yards from breaking the UCLA freshman record for yards in a season (703, by Eric Ball in 1985) and is on pace to reach 1,200 yards. It’s still a far cry from his senior year at Ventura High, when he put up some of the best rushing numbers in the history of high school football, setting a national record with 4,494 yards and a state-record 64 touchdowns, but it’s more than nearly every so-called expert expected.

Most college coaches recruited Ebell as “an athlete,” rather than as a tailback and planned to convert him to defensive back or receiver. UCLA promised he would be a tailback, but Coach Bob Toledo admits he did not expect Ebell to become an every-down ballcarrier durable enough to get 39 carries, as he did against Stanford on Saturday.

Impatient and impetuous, Ebell can’t fathom why he began the season fifth-string. Why anyone would doubt his ability. Why anyone would discount him because of his size.

“I don’t really understand why it took so long to get me some time,” he said. “I felt I could have contributed earlier.”

He knew all along what is obvious to everyone now.

“He’s better running between the tackles than I gave him credit for, he’s done a great job of that,” Toledo said. “He does everything we want a back to do. He’s proven it to everybody. He’s energized our offense.

“We thought we’d have to use him as a situational, substitution-type guy and isolate him. Funny how things work out.”

*

The first person to believe in Ebell was his father. No surprise there, but conviction became obsession for Dennis Ebell, an ex-Marine and semi-pro football player.

His son soon was programmed to believe in himself.

“I’d wake up in the morning and there would be a quote hanging in my face, like ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog,’ ” Ebell said. “He expected a lot out of me, but he always made me believe I could do anything.”

He lived alone with Dennis, although he is close to his mother, Karen Hewlett, who also is in Ventura. Ebell’s friends were astonished when his father required him to do 50 pushups before he could go out to play.

“It was the two of us, and we grew up like Spartans,” Dennis said.

Ebell began playing youth football and always included his jersey number with his signature.

“He’d sign my birthday and Mother’s Day cards, ‘Tyler Ebell, No. 2.’ ” Karen said.

Call it a Napoleon complex, but he all the while he had his sights set on No. 1.

As a sophomore at Ventura he led the Channel League in rushing with 1,200 yards, but was voted second-team all-league.

“It was the first time I believed I was slighted,” he said. “That really made me mad. I kept the all-league team posted in my bedroom.”

Every game day he ate a turkey and provolone deli sandwich and watched video of Walter Payton and Barry Sanders. During the summer, he ran with his linemen on the beach in their shoes, grabbing mints to prove to Dennis that they’d made it all the way to the pier.

By the end of Ebell’s senior year, that single-minded drive had propelled him to 7,285 yards rushing and what was then a state-record 111 touchdowns.

He counted every yard, asking reporters on the sideline about his total during games and begging his coach not to remove him until he had eclipsed 300 -- which he did 10 times.

“The main goal is winning, always, but numbers matter,” he said.

*

Somewhere along the way, behind the mischievous grin and dancing eyes, Ebell became outspoken. Maybe it’s an inevitable part of the package for an undersized player whose aspirations are sky high.

When others do not share his faith in himself, he seethes. Even though he is in the lineup now, he can’t forget that it took his entire redshirt season and four games this year to get an opportunity.

It also bothers him that coaches said he was a fumble risk early in the season, especially as a punt returner. He muffed a punt against Stanford when a teammate was blocked into him a split second before the ball arrived, and he bristled when asked about it during a news conference.

“For the record, I did not fumble,” he said.

Dennis speaks his mind as well, although he regrets posting messages critical of Bruin coaches on an Internet board.

“They’ve been good to Tyler at UCLA, we were just frustrated it took so long for him to contribute,” Dennis said. “It was a long year and a half. I don’t believe he was getting a look.”

Washington, which UCLA plays Saturday, is among the colleges that did not recruit Ebell as a running back. He uses the memory as motivation, much like the all-league snub so long ago.

“I like proving to those coaches that didn’t give me a chance that I can run,” he said.

*

Watch Ebell scurry through a hole and his longtime infatuation with Mighty Mouse makes perfect sense. He began watching reruns of the cartoon when somebody gave him the nickname after a youth game.

He got the tattoo as a high school freshman with the blessing of his father as a reward for making the honor roll and rushing for 1,000 yards for the junior varsity. That’s also the year he began wearing the Mighty Mouse T-shirt under his jersey that he wears today.

“It’s so small now that I had to cut out the neck and arms,” he said.

Ebell has saved the day twice for UCLA -- rushing for 363 yards in victories over Oregon State and Stanford -- but he might want to update his icon.

He creates commotion and emerges unscathed in the manner of the 21st century cartoon rodent from the movie, “Lilo and Stitch.”

Stitch, an unruly four-armed alien with outsized incisors, is run over by a large truck and escapes injury. Likewise, Ebell has never been injured. Not in college, high school or youth league.

“All the things people say about small guys -- injuries, fumbles -- none of it has applied to me,” he said.

He has not dropped the ball in 135 carries this season. In 401 carries his senior year at Ventura he fumbled once -- and a teammate recovered the ball in the end zone for a touchdown.

His lack of height works in his favor.

“His pad level is low and guys don’t get a shot at the ball,” Bruin offensive coordinator Kelly Skipper said.

Ebell understands there are advantages to being short, but he still yearns to grow in the eyes of others. In the UCLA team photo, he is standing in the second row beside 5-9 cornerback Ricky Manning.

“I’m on my tiptoes,” Ebell said gleefully. “That’s why I look so much taller than Ricky.”

And he’s gaining stature with every carry.