Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk Talks Rams, Coaching Southern & More with Rich

Marshall Faulk has been in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for 15 years, three years longer than he played, and he still had a story Rich had never heard.

The reason Faulk became a Ram is Eric Dickerson.

Dickerson watched Faulk play at San Diego State and mentored him from a distance, and their careers ran in opposite directions, Dickerson from the Rams to the Colts and Faulk from the Colts to the Rams. During Dickerson's Hall of Fame year, at the Pro Bowl, the Rams threw him a party. Faulk went.

"He introduced me to John Shaw," Faulk said. Dickerson, in the middle of an ordinary conversation, told Shaw he felt bad for Faulk because things were not going well in Indianapolis, and that dealing with the organization had gotten harder after a death in the ownership family.

Shaw took that back with him. The two teams had already held a joint camp practice the year before. The trade followed.

Faulk had reasons of his own. He wanted a new contract, he did not like where the organization was headed, and the Colts were going pass-centric behind Peyton Manning. "I was like, man, the writing is on the wall. I don't know if we're going to win while I'm here with a young quarterback."

He was right, and he watched it happen from a set. "The Super Bowl the year that I retired, we worked the Super Bowl when the Colts won."

On the running back money that landed this week, Faulk offered the take he knows irritates people.

"If you're good enough, they'll pay you," he said. "These backs that were not getting paid, they weren't good enough."

There is no resurgence of the position, in his reading. There is availability, and whether a front office believes it can build around you. Faulk pointed at Seattle winning a Super Bowl and moving on from its star back, and at Kenneth Walker leaving.

"I feel bad for Kenny Walker because he had a heck of a year. He's a guy that I feel like you can build around," Faulk said. "But they felt like he was just a piece, not a build-around. And that's why they moved on. You don't get rid of centerpieces."

Asked who the best running back in the league is right now, quarterbacks removed from the equation, Faulk did not waver.

"I go Saquon."

He likes Derrick Henry too. But the standard Faulk uses is a back who plays all three downs, runs inside and out, catches and blocks, and is on the field.

His new job is head coach at Southern, and the part he did not expect is the back office. "It's like having your own show," Faulk told Rich. "There's a lot of fires you got to put out."

That business side is real now, and Faulk is unambiguous about the biggest change in college football.

"I am going to say paying the players has really, really helped the game," he said. "We called it amateur sports, but it really isn't correct. It never has been."

His follow-up question is the one nobody has answered. "Where was Michigan and Ohio State, and where were they putting all this money? Alabama, where was this money going when they weren't paying it to the players?"

Faulk is not chasing that market at Southern. "I'm not trying to keep up. I'm just trying to get my kids to the money game," he said, and the money game lives in the FBS.

What he wants next is structure. Contracts that hold, players getting what they were promised, everyone playing by the same rules. He asked whether the sport can professionalize itself, then asked the harder version. Who is in charge?

As for his own coaching, he does not raise his voice. "I consider myself a teacher," Faulk said. "I'm an educator when it comes to the game."