It sounds like God is a Michigan State fan.
At least you might think that if you sat with Eugene and Darlene Ringer in their North Dayton home this week and listened to the story of how their boy was bypassed by Ohio State and ended up in East Lansing, where he's become the surprise sensation of the Spartans football season.
Javon Ringer — a three-time All-Ohio running back at Chaminade-Julienne High School— is their son and he's now a viable candidate for Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors.
Coming into today's game at Ohio State, the 5-foot-9, 195-pound Ringer leads MSU in rushing with 404 yards, even though he's still considered a backup player. Or, as Spartans running backs coach Ben Sirmans put it the other day: "To put it in basketball terms, he's something like our sixth man."
Off the bench against Illinois, he broke the Spartans' all-time freshman rushing record, running for 194 yards on just 13 carries for an unheard of 14.9 yards-per-carry average. In the season opener against Kent State, he carried 12 times for 69 yards and a touchdown and caught two passes for another 12 yards. Against Hawaii, he rushed for 80 yards and scored three touchdowns.
Already this season,
Sports Illustrated has run four pictures of him and in last week's issue the magazine featured him with 10 other top freshmen from across the nation in a segment called "Young Guns ... true freshmen making big plays."
At MSU games this season — Darlene wearing her specialized shirt bearing a family portrait and the words "Ringer 39 Blessed," her green and white porkpie hat and those long, stylized green fingernails — the Ringers said they've repeatedly heard one question from Spartans fans:
"What happened at Ohio State? How did the Buckeyes miss out on him?"
If you follow local football, you know much of that story.
Although Ringer had one of the greatest careers in Miami Valley prep history — rushing for 6,136 yards and 78 touchdowns — he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in an early October game of his senior year and his high school career instantly ended.
"He had been getting regular
recruiting letters from about 25 schools, but after he got hurt, a lot of them let up on him," Eugene said. "We just prayed things would work out."
The Ringer family is big on prayer.
Eugene, 40 years a minister, is the pastor of Faith Temple Pentecostal Church of God on Kulmer Avenue. Darlene not only is active in the church, but she's the prayingest woman you'll ever see at a football game. She prays so much she has to watch tapes of the games afterward to catch up on what she missed.
And Javon — the youngest of an extended family that includes nine kids — knows a little about saying "Amen," as well. In fact, after he got hurt, he kept praying for some kind of divine intervention that would heal his knee so he could finish his high school season.
"His faith was so great," Darlene said, "that he told the doctor who was going to operate on him, 'Just before the surgery be sure and check my knee ... just in case (it got better).' "
After the successful operation, the family initially prayed that Ohio State — which had shown lukewarm interest — would stay the course. Whether it was the injury, other factors or simply that the Buckeyes were more interested in Maurice Wells — the Jacksonville running back rated higher by some analysts — OSU never made Ringer its top priority. The snub, Darlene admitted, hurt Javon for a while.
"That's when out prayers changed," Darlene said. "We're Ohio State fans and we had been holding out faith for them, but then we said, 'Lord, if this is not where you want him to go, then don't even have them offer him.' We figured that would take the choice away and make it simpler. And Ohio State never did make an offer.
"And then one Sunday when I'm getting ready for church, Javon walks in and says 'I made my decision. I'm going to Michigan State.' I figured he had been pointed to a place where he had a chance to be No. 1, but you still wonder when your son goes away to a place not in your own state: 'Will he get the support of the people?' "
Eugene smiled: "We know the answer now. Folks there seem to have taken to him."
Although Javon himself doesn't get a chance to tell you that — head coach John L. Smith doesn't let freshmen talk to the media until he thinks they've made "significant contributions" — there are plenty of other Spartans willing to sing his praises.
One is Sirmans: "You always wonder how a kid will adjust once he gets to college. Running the ball in high school is a lot different than the Big Ten. But Javon is meeting the challenge like I thought he would. The only thing that surprises me is how strong he is as a runner. And just like with our other two backs, if he wasn't sharing the job — if he got 25 carries a game — he'd be one of the rushing leaders in the Big Ten.
"The other guys know that. We were going over the tape of the Illinois game and one of our other backs watches one of Javon's runs and says, 'Now THAT was a great run. I would only have gotten 8 yards there and he got ... 65.' "
Yet, that's not what impresses Sirmans most about Ringer:
"After the Illinois game, I told Javon, 'If I would have let you in for a couple more carries, you would have topped 200 yards.' He told me he was happier to see Brett Kahn get in and carry the ball. Brett's our fourth-string back. To me, that's the sign of a great kid. Javon's parents have done a great job with him."
And they continue to be a big part of his life. They've made every game this season, and though they don't get a chance to talk to him before kick-off, the connection is there. When Javon comes onto the field for warm-ups, his mom said he looks in the direction of his parents' seats and gives a thumbs up:
"I know what it means. We're touching and agreeing in spirit."
The Ringers visit with him after the game, but they always make sure they're on the road early Sunday morning. Rev. Ringer's church services begin at 11:30 a.m. and Sunday school starts 90 minutes before that.
He tries to make both.
Gotta keep God thinking green and white.
Get more: Sign up for Dayton Daily News home delivery
