The UK football great who ‘had nightmares’ for years about the last play of his career
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We Meet Again
The Lexington Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com are publishing a series of stories catching up with former University of Kentucky athletes. Click here to read all of the installments published previously.
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Editor’s Note: This article is the second of a series in which the Herald-Leader is catching up with former University of Kentucky athletes.
The most electrifying run by a Kentucky Wildcat in the history of the former Commonwealth Stadium came in the fourth quarter of UK’s 1984 Homecoming Game against Rutgers.
From the Kentucky 24-yard line, Mark Higgs took a pitch and scooted around end.
Higgs cut off a block, danced right, then cut left — all the way across the field. At the Rutgers 20-yard line, Higgs came to a full stop, juked past Rutgers safety Harold Young, then cut back right again.
The UK freshman reached the Scarlet Knights goal line just as a defender tackled him. Higgs fell into the end zone for a 76-yard touchdown run that clinched a 27-14 Kentucky victory.
Yet for years after his UK career ended, the play that lurked in Higgs’ dreams was not his breathtaking TD run vs. Rutgers.
Instead, he had nightmares over the final rush of his Kentucky career, a fourth-and-goal carry in UK’s 1987 regular-season finale vs. Tennessee.
“It would wake me up in the middle of the night,” Higgs says.
A UK recruiting coup
When Higgs ended an iconic high school career at Owensboro in 1983, no one in our state’s history had then run for more yards than the 6,721 he gained.
A 5-foot-7 bundle of dynamite with massive thighs, a muscular physique and a luminous smile, Higgs was a rock star in Kentucky.
The running back was seen as a “must-get” for the University of Kentucky coaching staff of Jerry Claiborne. Recruiters from Alabama, Tennessee, LSU, Indiana, Arizona and UCLA all made determined runs at Higgs.
As a child, Higgs rooted for LSU, where his older brother, Kenny, had been a basketball star.
Opportunities to play close to his family and to go to college with friends from Owensboro led Mark Higgs to pick UK.
The running back corps at Kentucky in 1984 was stout. George Adams was a senior-to-be, Marc Logan a sophomore-to-be and Higgs was joined as a true freshman by Ivy Joe Hunter.
Those four would go on to combine for 28 seasons in the NFL.
Playing behind Adams and Logan, Higgs dazzled on a UK team that finished 9-3.
In the victory over Rutgers, Higgs rushed for 116 yards and two TDs on four carries. He had an 84-yard run against Vanderbilt.
Inserted into UK’s Hall of Fame Bowl tussle vs. No. 20 Wisconsin with Kentucky trailing in the fourth quarter, Higgs sparked the drive that yielded Joey Worley’s game-winning field goal.
Higgs was widely seen as UK’s star-in-waiting.
A catastrophic knee injury
The headline in the March 31, 1985, Lexington Herald-Leader carried grim news from Wildcats spring practice: Higgs injured, may miss season.
In a drill, Higgs had suffered a devastating knee injury.
“We were doing this inside drill,” Higgs says. “The inside drill consists, you’ve got about three or four linemen and you’ve got to run in between the lines. Coach Claiborne claimed he was trying to get me tougher. He had me doing that drill for the longest time.”
On the play where he got hurt, Higgs says, “I was dragging one guy, I had my leg planted, and another guy came and hit me.”
Higgs had suffered the “unholy triad” of knee injuries — he tore the medial collateral ligament, the anterior cruciate ligament and the meniscus.
He says the circumstances that led to his injury impacted his feelings toward Claiborne.
“I blamed Claiborne. I never liked Jerry Claiborne after that,” Higgs says.
Dr. James Andrews, the famed orthopedic surgeon, performed surgery on Higgs’ knee.
Higgs threw himself into rehab.
“The thing about Mark, and people probably don’t realize it, is how competitive he is,” says Greg Nord, the Claiborne-era Kentucky running backs coach. “He was the kind of guy, you couldn’t tell him he couldn’t do something.”
Told he would likely miss the 1985 season, Higgs — miraculously — made it back for the season opener.
Yet he was not the same back, not as a sophomore (no run longer than 39 yards) nor as a junior (no run longer than 24 yards).
The ‘nightmare’ carry
On the first run of his senior season in 1987, Higgs ripped off an 85-yard TD against Utah State.
His explosiveness at last back, Higgs finished 1987 with 1,278 yards rushing, at the time a UK season record.
“(Higgs) was a special talent,” says ex-Kentucky quarterback Bill Ransdell. “His ability to keep his balance, the way he was built, just had those monster thighs. … He could spin and move and then he could pick it up in the open field and go.”
Higgs’ stellar senior season had a wildly unfulfilling ending.
Tennessee was leading Kentucky 24-20 late in the game when UK marched to a first-and-goal at the UT 5.
On first down, Higgs took a pitchout right, cut it back just outside the tackle and gained 3 yards.
It was second-and-goal from the 2 when Higgs ran behind UK right guard Dermontti Dawson for no gain.
On third-and-goal from the 2, Higgs dove over the top of the right side of the line and came up inches from the goal line.
For fourth down, UK ran the exact same play. Tennessee nose guard Mike Whitehead hit Higgs before the back could even launch his dive.
No gain.
Ballgame, Tennessee.
Says Higgs: “Oh, man, we’re running the same play every time. I’m like, ‘Hey, run the sweep or something, change it up, do something different.’ It was messed up. The whole defense knew (what UK would run). … That was a bad way to go out.”
Settled in Miami
After UK, Higgs enjoyed an eight-year career in the NFL with Dallas, Philadelphia, Miami and Arizona.
His two best years came with the Dolphins: Higgs gained 905 yards rushing in 1991 and 915 in 1992.
Today, Higgs, 54, owns a south Florida medical transport concern. He has one daughter, Jeanna, who is a nurse in southern California.
His nightmares over the finish of his UK career, Higgs reports, ended after a moment of catharsis during his NFL years.
In the second “Monday Night Football” game of 1992, Miami was trailing Cleveland 23-20 in the final seconds.
From the Browns’ 1-yard line, quarterback Dan Marino handed the ball to Higgs. This time, Higgs soared over the line and landed in the end zone for the game-winning TD.
“That helped me deal with the pain from college,” Higgs says. “(After that) the nightmares stopped.”
Q and A
1. What do you remember most about Coach Jerry Claiborne?
“(Laughs). “I’ll pass on that one. I’ll let George (Adams) answer that one.”
2. Was there ever a time when you questioned picking Kentucky?
“It’s the untold story,” Higgs says. “I left the university one time.”
After missing a curfew by some 15 minutes during his freshman year, Higgs was suspended for one game. Upset over a punishment he considered disproportionate to his offense, Higgs says he left UK and went home to Owensboro.
Higgs says intermediaries, including former Kentucky Gov. John Y. Brown Jr. and then-UK president Otis Singletary, reached out to him and helped smooth things over. The running back returned to UK.
3. If you hadn’t picked UK, to which college would you have gone?
LSU.
4. What is your favorite on-field memory as a Wildcat?
Kentucky 20, No. 20 Wisconsin 19, Hall of Fame Bowl, Dec. 29 1984, at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala.
5. What’s the most recent UK sporting event you attended?
Florida 28, Kentucky 27, on Sept. 23, 2017, at Kroger Field. UK lost after leading 27-14 in the fourth quarter. The Wildcats gave up two touchdown passes to Florida receivers who were uncovered at the line of scrimmage.
“I was sick, literally sick,” Higgs says. “Because they wouldn’t have beat us if we just cover the receivers.”
6. Who has been your favorite UK player to watch during the past few seasons?
7. Who was your sports idol growing up?
Tony Dorsett and Walter Payton.
8. What do you wish someone had told you before you began your college sports career?
“I wish somebody had told me I should work on catching the ball a lot more. If I could catch the ball when I got to UK, I would have been a first-round pick my senior year.”
9. What is your biggest regret from your time at Kentucky?
”That we didn’t make another bowl after the first one — and not beating Tennessee my senior year.”
10. Which of your former UK teammates do you stay in contact with the most?
“I talk to George (Adams) every week. And Joker Phillips. And Anthony Gardner because he was my roommate.”
This story was originally published April 20, 2020 at 7:22 AM.
