Fox gets shot to play for home crowd

Steve Guiremand

Wednesday, Dec. 15, 1999 | 10:13 a.m.

Vernon Fox found it somewhat ironic that he and his Fresno State teammates practiced for about two hours on Tuesday night at Green Valley High School.

"I never played on this field before," the 5-10, 200-pound sophomore from Cimarron-Memorial High said. "But my last game at Cimarron was against Green Valley and they knocked us out of the playoffs."

That was in 1996 when Fox was an all-Sunset Division running back for the Spartans, gaining 1,532 yards.

Nowadays the redshirt sophomore starts at free safety for the Bulldogs, who face Utah in Saturday afternoon's EA Sports Las Vegas Bowl at Sam Boyd Stadium.

Fox led Fresno State in tackles with 93 and was named the team's MVP for defensive backs. Not bad for someone who wasn't exactly thrilled with the switch to defense as recently as a year ago.

"I really didn't know how much of an impact I would make this year," Fox said. "I rarely played defense in high school. I think my senior year I played maybe 10 snaps at corner and about one quarter at safety. So when they moved me to defense here, I was basically starting from ground zero."

It wasn't until the middle of last season, when Fox began to see more and more playing time, that he actually gave up any thought of being moved back to running back, the position he was recruited to play at Fresno State.

"I was depressed at first about the switch," he said. "I didn't really want to play defense. I think the mental part of it was the toughest part. My whole redshirt year I had to learn a new position and how to backpedal and stuff like that. I was used to just running straight forward. That took a while to learn.

"But by the middle of last season, I started to get the hang of it and started to like playing there."

"He was a heck of a running back at Cimarron," Fresno State coach Pat Hill said. "We liked how physical he was. He's a very, very intelligent kid and an outstanding person. He's already a leader for us out there."

Fox said he is looking forward to playing in front of a large contingent of family and friends on Saturday afternoon.

"I feel truly blessed to be here and to be able to play in this game," he said. "My family comes about 15-deep to Fresno for every home game. Once they found out we were coming here, they started making their tailgate plans.

"It's going to be great to play in front of them here on Saturday."