Engineering in his blood, football in his bones

Anoka County Engineer Doug Fischer said he knew he was no longer an athlete the day he pulled a muscle changing one of his kids' diapers. But Fischer -- a former Iowa State linebacker, who grew up in the shadows of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and was given a football by hospital personnel at birth -- has a great football story he loves to tell.

It was late December 1978. Fischer, who attended the same Canton, Ohio, high school as Vikings great and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page, was a junior who dreamed of playing for Ohio State. His older brother, Mark, then a senior, was being recruited and would ultimately sign with Notre Dame, but knowing Doug's obsession with Ohio State, he agreed to let legendary Ohio State coach Woody Hayes make a recruiting trip to the Fischer home.

Then, just days before the scheduled visit, came a fateful Gator Bowl game between Hayes' team and Clemson. Near the end of the contest, a Clemson defender intercepted a pass and ran out of bounds by the Buckeyes' bench, clinching his team's 17-15 victory. With a national TV audience watching in disbelief, an enraged Hayes punched the defender in the throat.

Hayes, who was fired the next day, had been scheduled to visit the Fischer home the following Monday.

"He's still coming for dinner, isn't he?" Doug Fischer recalls asking his family. No, he wasn't.

"Woody was the great recruiter," Fischer, 48, said recently. "He never recruited players. He recruited players' mothers. He would come in a house and almost ignore the player and gush over Mom's apple pie."

With Hayes and his bigger-than-life presence gone, Fischer eventually eliminated Ohio State from his college wish list. He says he was offered a scholarship to Notre Dame but wanted to shed the image of being "Mark's little brother."

Like football, engineering runs in the Fischer family. Fischer's grandfather and father were engineers. As a kid, Fischer and his buddies played football in unattended lots and back alleys -- unless he had the chance to spend a day at work with Dad.

A four-year letter winner and three-year starter at Iowa State, Fischer came to Ames on a mission: He was there to play football, because it offered the clearest path to a college degree.

There were legendary figures along the way -- coach Tom Osborne at Nebraska and Barry Switzer at Oklahoma. Iowa State boasted a few notables of its own: Mack Brown, University of Texas coach, was an assistant while Fischer played in Ames. Linebacker Chris Washington and offensive lineman Bruce Reimers, both teammates, were starters in the NFL.

Fischer, at 6 feet and 225 pounds during his playing days, would have loved to play professionally but was realistic enough to realize that big-time college competition was to be as far as he'd go.