Bear Woods isn't just one of the best names in college football. The Troy linebacker, with his long dreadlocks and crazy game-day face paint, is one of the more interesting characters, too. Oh, and he's one of the country's better linebackers.
Anyone who saw the Trojans' R+L Carriers Bowl game against Southern Miss could confirm that Woods can be a pretty scary-looking dude. I had a chance to chat with him this week and was really glad I did. The story behind those rope-curl dreads that cover half the numbers on his back: He first had the idea to grow his hair long to honor the mother of one of his best friends who was battling cancer. Eventually, after Woods' hair grew 10 inches, he had it cut and donated it to Locks of Love, an organization that turns hair into wigs for financially disadvantaged kids suffering from hair loss because of a medical condition, often cancer.
"I'd really seen the whole process, and I did it as a way to help," he says.
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Bruce Feldman | email
College FootballBruce Feldman is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He joined ESPN in July 1994 as a writer for ESPNET (now ESPN.com) and in May 1998 came to ESPN The Magazine.
ABOUT THIS BLOG
Bruce Feldman
Bruce Feldman is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He started at ESPN in 1994. He spent a good portion of two years in the South working on his book, "Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting."
His first book, "Cane Mutiny: How the Miami Hurricanes Overturned the Football Establishment," made it to No. 1 among sports titles in the fall of 2004.
Bruce can be reached via Twitter at @BFeldmanESPN. and his full ESPN.Com archives are located here.
