TARBORO, N.C. >> In the third week in July, the Little Vikings started their conditioning program. Sure, it was 95 degrees, with the kind of Coastal Plain humidity that glues your shirt to your back like a straitjacket.

But it won’t be any cooler when they get to Tarboro High in a few years.

The Little Vikings are seven to 12 years old.

“They got six-year-olds out there,” Tarboro assistant football coach Ricky Babb said. “You see them at the park and it’s not 2-hand touch. Sometimes I’ll tell a parent, ‘That was a hard hit. You need to get your child checked out.’ They usually say, ‘No, it’s all right, get him back in there.’’’

Little Vikings become Big Vikings, and they run the same offense, the Tarboro T. Two tight ends, three backs, and here they come.

Three times in the past eight seasons, Tarboro has won its divisional state championship. The 2011 championship team threw the ball 14 times. All year.

Of course, it had Todd Gurley.

“I had the easiest job in America,” Andy Harding said. “I was the offensive coordinator.”

Gurley ran for 38 touchdowns and 2,600 yards in 2011. He played through high ankle sprains in the state title game, a 39-36 win over Lincolnton in which the lead changed hands 11 times. Gurley ran for 242 yards and four TDs, the last one to win it, with 2:42 left.

Now Gurley is in Los Angeles, which only knows him by hearsay. He is already saying he doesn’t want 30 carries a game, that “it’s not the 1980s anymore.”

Back here, they know he’ll volunteer.

“He’d say, ‘Give me the ball,’ when it was close,” Harding said.

Then he smiled: “I’m leaving out a word there.”

Hero days

It’s lunchtime on July 23, when the sun acquires a special enthusiasm. The Tarboro coaches are in from practice. Head coach Jeff Craddock came here from Ohio.

“I wanted to get out of the snow and find some warmer weather,” Craddock said. “I think I did.”

Craddock, Babb, Harding, Bill Reames and Jamie Williams are telling Gurley stories. But they point out that Tarboro’s Kelvin Bryant was MVP of the USFL and won a Super Bowl with Washington. Shaun Draughn is in the NFL, too. And Tyquan Lewis is Ohio State’s top defensive player. The population here is 11,400.

Williams: “We’re blessed, like water coming out of a faucet.”

Babb “First game on varsity, as a junior, we’re up 20-0 and Todd’s running good. Then somebody else goes 20 yards. I call down and say, ‘Where’s Todd?’ He told coach, ‘They’re the seniors, they oughta do it.’

Craddock: “I almost strangled him. He wanted Malik Lawrence to get the ball, and Malik weighed 140. I said, don’t come out until I pull you out.”

Harding: “Against Edenton, he can barely walk and I told him he was getting the ball. He said, ‘I wondered what was taking you so long.’”

Babb: “Kelvin Bryant used to stand on the sideline. One night Todd came outside and jumped over somebody and got big yards. Kevin looked at us and said, ‘I could never do that!’

Reames: “He would work out in track and football, all summer. Then he’d give his guys lollipops for blocking for him.”

Williams: “It was all about his mom (Darlene). She had several jobs, worked in a cafeteria at another school (and in a nursing home). She was the rock and he wanted to get her out of here.”

Babb: “This coach, Tyrone Beddingfield, called us up when he watched Todd run up and down on Vanderbilt. He said, ‘They can’t even stop him in the SEC! No wonder we couldn’t.”

Bulldog mentality

The recruiters swarmed. Darlene said the mailman “got nasty with me” because of all the letters. Gurley whittled his choices to Georgia and Clemson. His rival and buddy, Keith Marshall, had picked Georgia.

“Todd always wanted to go against the best,” Babb said. “He was on our scout team as a sophomore and he ran right at our varsity defense every day, got smacked around. That defense gave up 4.8 points a game.”

A school bookkeeper baked a cake for Gurley with purple-and-gold icing, the school colors. When the gold came out orange, people assumed Gurley was Clemson-bound.

“A guy was here from Scout.com, representing Clemson,” Babb said. “Todd said, ‘Georgia,’ and he just packed up his camera and left.”

In Georgia’s opening game against Buffalo. Gurley scored on a kickoff return. As a freshman he was first team All-SEC.

“The tipoff was during warmups,” said Mike Bobo, Georgia’s offensive coordinator and now Colorado State’s coach. “You’d see the other coaches pointing. ‘There’s Gurley, that’s him.’ Because he’s so big in person. There’s an aura about him.”

As a junior, Gurley was suspended four games for accepting money for merchandise. He became eligible against Auburn and took a kickoff return 105 yards, but it was called back. Then he tore his ACL.

The Rams spent the 10th pick of the draft on Gurley. Last year he started 12 games, scored 10 touchdowns and gained 1,106 yards to make the Pro Bowl.

Useful hobby

In nearby New Bern, “Big Dave” Simpson thinks about gold medals that got away. He is the coach of Track Eastern Carolina. How good was Gurley in the 110-meter hurdles?

“He was better than that guy from Oregon,” Simmons said, referring to Devon Allen, who won the US. Olympic Trials.

Gurley began hurdling for Reames in Tarboro,because it would help his football. “He’d run a 300, and if he beat his previous time, I’d buy him a Sun Drop,” said Reames, referring to a locally-favored soft drink. As a junior, Gurley won the 2-A state championship.

“A guy comes at him in the NFL and he goes sha-boom. He couldn’t have done without hurdles,”

Reames said.

“Hip flexibility,” Simpson said, “and explosion. It’s ideal for football players.”

Gurley ran 13.88 in the 2011 World Youth Trials and got to the semifinals in the World Youth Championships in France, where he banged into a hurdle.

“He looked like a deer,” said Tarboro teammate Michael Graham.

“The girls would come out and hang by the fence, taking pictures of him,” Williams said. “Todd hates that. We were at a conference meet and he was hurdling so smooth. One of the coaches came by and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way. But he’s pretty.’”

Long way home

Gurley was born in Baltimore. His mother is back there now. They moved south when Gurley was in the sixth grade, and he grew up in the Lone Pine trailer park, a couple of miles outside town. They had the necessities, but not cable TV. Gurley watched more ACC basketball than college or pro football.

“We might run one 7-on-7 drill during the season,” Gurley said. “We ran the ball 90 percent of the time. It was always smash-mouth. It helped me develop a mentality.

“The hurdles helped, too. You see me doing a couple of those moves? I didn’t know anything about it when I started, didn’t know if I’d be any good. Then I started liking it. I miss the track a little bit. Yeah, I’m going to have to get back there pretty soon.”

He will, too, because everybody in Tarboro knows the ‘T’ doesn’t stand for him.