FAYETTEVILLE — Barry Foster was looking for a place he could earn playing time as a college freshman during the 1986-87 college football recruiting cycle.
He found it with the Arkansas Razorbacks’ Flexbone offense of the Ken Hatfield era, and the quick start propelled the Texas native to a big career at the University of Arkansas and with the Pittsburgh Steelers, where he still holds rushing records for one of the NFL’s most storied franchises.
The first junior in Razorbacks history to declare for the NFL Draft is joining the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in the April 8 induction ceremony and he’s hyped about it.
“I’m an Arkansas Razorback for life,” said Foster, who is now an assistant principal at Grand Prairie High School in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex near his Duncanville High School launching point.
“It’s just a big deal. You’re talking about an entire state of athletes that have come through the years. To be able to have your name among all those great individuals, it’s just a tremendous honor man, and it’s really hard to describe knowing you’re going to have your name among the greats.”
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Foster, who wore No. 18 throughout his college career, left campus with 1,977 rushing yards in three seasons, sixth on Arkansas’ all-time rushing list at the time.
He is currently 19th on that list as seminal running backs like Darren McFadden, Alex Collins, Cedric Cobbs, Felix Jones, Jonathan Williams and more have come along behind him. However, playing primarily as a fullback in a stacked backfield among contemporaries like James Rouse, E.D. Jackson and a dual-threat quarterback Quinn Grovey, Foster’s rushing totals are hefty.
“One of the best in Arkansas history,” Grovey said of Foster. “A lot of people don’t talk about him as much as they should, but he could do it all. He could run it. He could run it from the fullback position, he could run it from the tailback position. He could catch passes out of the backfield. He was a fearless blocker.”
Said Hatfield, “If you could draw up a mold, he would be one for playing that position. He was strong, he was tough, he had speed, he had great hands.”
Foster, a 5-10, 223-pounder at the height of his pro career, said the dive back in the Flexbone suited him magnificently.
“It was perfect for my skill set,” he said. “I wasn’t an overly fast guy, even though I could play tailback, which I did for the University of Arkansas, I was much more comfortable between the guard and the tackle.
“I was a shorter, squatty guy, big strong shoulders. So I really excelled at going with the quick dive play off the tackle and stuff like that.”
Foster liked the pitch from Arkansas coaches and the prospective depth chart he saw for the Razorbacks when making his college choice.
“Back then, college players were coming in and they were not playing as freshmen, they were getting redshirted,” Foster said. “It was something all the colleges were doing for a lot of freshmen, just redshirting them.
“The University of Arkansas had a couple of seniors that were starters, but they didn’t have many fullbacks. In fact, they had to take Sammy Van Dyke, who was a halfback, and convert him to a fullback. I just felt like I could compete at the University of Arkansas at that time for some playing time and I wanted to play.”
Foster might be best known at Arkansas for his 80-yard touchdown up the middle at Miami, on which he outran a pair of safeties in the No. 3 Hurricanes’ 18-16 win on Nov. 26, 1988. The first-quarter touchdown tied the score 10-10 as the first touchdown allowed at home that season by Miami.
A couple of plays later in the game highlighted Foster’s versatility. He caught a 31-yard pass on a fourth-and-2 play late in the third quarter, then Grovey found him for a 16-yard touchdown to cap a 73-yard touchdown drive for a 16-15 Arkansas lead.
“Barry Foster was a guy who was always open on some of the best plays from a play-action standpoint that we would have,” Grovey said. “Yeah, he would catch them. He was always open and he would catch them. No doubt his pass-catching ability was really strong.”
Foster led the Razorbacks in rushing just once, with 660 yards and eight touchdowns in his sophomore year of 1988. Rouse bracketed him as the team leader with 1,004 yards in 1987 and 895 yards in 1989, and Jackson followed with three consecutive years as the team leader.
In an era of huge shoulder pads in the NFL, Foster found a fit in Pittsburgh in jersey No. 29. After averaging a robust 5-plus yards per carry in his first couple of seasons as a reserve, he won the starting job in 1992 for rookie head Coach Bill Cowher’s 11-5 team and exploded.
Foster led the AFC in rushing with 1,690 yards that year, trailing Dallas’ Emmitt Smith for the NFL rushing crown by 23 yards. The 1,690 yards ranks 38th on the NFL’s single-season rushing yardage list, and it still stands as the Steelers’ single-season record, as does his 12 100-yard games that year, which broke Franco Harris’ franchise record.
“It’s always good to be able to accomplish some things when you get to whatever level it is, whether it’s a regular job as a supervisor, or whatever it is,” Foster said. “You want to have success. … It’s always nice to be able to look back and say, ‘Hey, you know what, other than me just contributing, I did really excel at certain times in my career.’ So it was fun.”
Foster earned the first of two Pro Bowl nods in 1992 and had solid, but injury impacted seasons in 1993 and ’94 before he was traded to the expansion Carolina Panthers the following year.
Foster won public admiration for a move he made in 1995, after he came out of retirement and signed a $1 million deal with the Cincinnati Bengals, who needed a back when No. 1 pick Ki-Jana Carter blew out his knee in the preseason.
Foster realized his ankles would not hold up any longer, he retired again and returned a huge signing bonus.
“To his credit, he turned around and gave them the bonus money back, which they’d given to sign him just to give it a try,” Hatfield said. “But I think that’s the unselfishness of him and the type of person he is.”
Foster said the constant collisions he underwent didn’t shorten his career.
“What shortened my career was two ankle surgeries,” he said. “That’s what really derailed me from being able to finish up in the NFL. It wasn’t the collisions. It was just the freak accident with a torn ligament in my ankle and I never could really recover from those two surgeries.”
Now, Foster said he’s in a great place.
“I can’t complain,” he said. “My wife [Teray] is good. My children are good. My grandkids are good. I’m a relatively healthy man. I don’t have any complaints … considering I have friends who are dealing with mental illness from concussions and so much more physical pain from playing football.”
Foster’s work ethic and dedication to the game made him life-long admirers during his three-year stint with the Razorbacks.
“The thing I remember about Barry was he was a football player’s football player,” Hatfield said. “He would come out, he’d work hard and he’d do everything you say. Then, when the day was over, he’d go back in with John Stuckey, our strength coach. John would load some weights up on a little sled and he would have Barry pull those things after practice when he was dead tired.
“He just faithfully and religiously did that. I think it gave him not just confidence, but it gave him the power and the strength. In our offense, the key revolves around the fullback. You’ve got to have a good, strong person who is going to get hit every time, even if he doesn’t have the ball. So it takes a tough constitution to do that and Barry had it.”
Grovey said Foster could have easily been a full-time tailback for the Hogs.
“The Pittsburgh Steelers saw he had that ability,” Grovey said. “I’m telling you man, he’s one of the best. When you talk about the best backs in Arkansas history, putting somebody in the backfield, Barry Foster is always going to be one of the backs that I’m going to have in my backfield.”
Foster said he embraced his decision to run with the Hogs.
“I didn’t grow up an Arkansas fan ‘cause you’ve got the Texas Longhorns, and A&M and TCU and SMU and all that stuff,” he said. “But even as a Texas guy, I’m a Razorback for life and a part of that fraternity and I’m proud to be a Razorback, and that’s till the day I die.”