Herschel Walker

Football great Herschel Walker will appear on “Celebrity Apprentice” this season. Walker’s charity for the show is Alternative Community Development Services.

Walker was born on March 3, 1962 in Wrightsville, Georgia. He played high school football for the Johnson County Trojans from 1975 until he graduated in 1979. In his senior year, the Trojans won the state championship, with Walker rushing for 3,167 yards. He won the Dial Award that year, which is given to the national high school scholar athlete of the year.

Walker, a running back, played college football at the University of Georgia from 1980 to 1982. He was named to the All-American team and set the NCAA freshman rushing record. In his junior year, Walker won the Heisman Trophy.

Wanting to turn professional before his collegiate class graduated, Walker got an opportunity to go pro when the USFL was formed. He signed with the New Jersey Generals in 1983. At the time, the team was owned by J. Walker Duncan, but at the end of the 1983 season, Duncan sold the team to Donald Trump.

Walker would excel in the USFL, winning the rushing title in 1983 and 1985. In 1985, he broke the professional football single season rushing record with 2,411 yards. Over his USFL career, he would average 4.87 yards per carry.

In 1985, the Dallas Cowboys selected Walker in the fifth round of the NFL draft. The USFL folded and in 1986, Walker began to play for the Cowboys. He would earn Pro-Bowl invitations in 1987 and 1988, but in 1989, the Cowboys traded him to the Minnesota Vikings. Walker played for the Vikings for two and a half years, but he never regained the form he had with the Generals or Cowboys. He would bounce from the Vikings to the Philadelphia Eagles, then to the New York Giants and eventually, back to the Cowboys, where he finished out his NFL career in 1997.

Walker was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999. That same year, he was named to Sports Illustrated’s NCAA Football All-Century Team. His #34 jersey has been retired by the University of Georgia.

Walker wrote his biography “Breaking Free” in 2009 in which he talked about suffering from associated identity disorder (multiple personalities). Because of this, he claims to not remember his Heisman Trophy win.

Walker competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics for the two man bobsled event, finishing in seventh place. He won the Superstars competition in 1987 and 1988. Walker is a sixth degree black belt in tae kwon do and said on “Inside MMA” that he would be open to appearing on a mixed martial arts reality show. A Christian, Walker has also appeared on “The Hour of Power” with Robert Schuller.

Walker married to his college sweetheart, Cindy, in 1983, but the two divorced in 2001.
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