BOULDER — A full appreciation of the punishing, tackle-breaking touchdown run by Phillip Lindsay last Saturday, a score that helped seal Colorado’s biggest win in 15 seasons, requires a trip back in time to Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood in the 1960s.

Tony Lindsay, Phillip’s uncle, would walk out of his house on Elm Street back then and join the dozens of kids playing in front yards and on the asphalt at a time when young kids didn’t find their entertainment on a phone or a computer screen.

One day, a couple older kids in the neighborhood hollered at Tony, beckoning him to join their football game. They handed the pint-sized kid the ball and told him to run.

“And when I ran it, it was just a gift,” said Tony Lindsay, who became a standout running back at the University of Utah. “They said, ‘You need to play football.’ We developed a passion for it. We would go to (school) football practice and then come home and play in the neighborhood. We played in the streets, man. We would compete against the next block over. That’s all we had was football.”

Tony’s younger brother, Troy, soon tagged along. The Lindsay brothers fell in love with the game, absorbing it into their DNA on the streets of Denver, and on the field at Thomas Jefferson High School. Then they passed it down, with a combined seven sons who played high school football, and six who will end up playing the sport in college.

At the center of it all is Phillip, the middle of Troy’s five children, the kid who used to take beatings from his two older sisters who were “tougher than the boys.” Phillip Lindsay last week became Colorado’s first 1,000-yard rusher in six seasons, an achievement he said is born of a Denver family that has ingrained toughness and competitiveness in its children, qualities overshadowed only by the love that swells under the Lindsay name.

It’s that family bond that has allowed Phillip, a 5-foot-8, 190-pound fourth-year junior, to develop into the heart and soul of No. 9 Colorado, which will play for a Pac-12 South Division title when it hosts No. 22 Utah in the regular-season finale at Folsom Field on Saturday.

“It’s something that’s been brought up through our whole entire family,” Phillip Lindsay said. “Whatever we do, we do it to the fullest of our abilities, 110 percent. I’ve got little brothers and older sisters, and we’re all fiery. We’re all exactly the same. Our cousins, too.”

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Sisters set blueprint

The passion for football that Lindsay breathes may be a product of the Park Hill streets, but he credits his toughness to the women in his family.

The scuffles usually began in a small taekwondo dojo run by Phillip’s father. His older sisters, Cheri and Sparkle, were the first ones to learn the martial arts discipline. By the time Phillip was old enough to learn, he was just old enough to catch the wrath from his stronger, more experienced sisters.

“The girls kicked the boys’ butts for a long time,” Tony Lindsay said, laughing at the memory of his nieces doling out punishment.

“Anytime I would beat up on one of my brothers, I thought I was the baddest dude,” Phillip Lindsay said. “Then my pops would have my sisters come in and whip up on me.”

The tough love ignited a competitive fuse for Lindsay. By the time he began his high school career at Denver South, continuing a long line of Denver Public School players in the family, the undersized running back would skip lines in “Oklahoma” drills so he could test himself against players twice his size.

“He’s one of the meanest football players I ever coached in my life,” said Tony Lindsay, who has coached all three of his nephews at South. “He’s the Tasmanian Devil. He’s a nice, goofy person when you talk to him, but when he’s out on the field and you look in his eyes, they look like Dracula the way they move around. I would have to pull him out in some games and tell him to sit for a minute because he’d be so wired.”

That authentic edge helped Lindsay become South’s all-time leading rusher with 4,587 career yards, and he became the first South player to join the CU roster since 1983 when he committed to the Buffs in 2012.

“Tears every day”

But before he got to Boulder, Lindsay had to deal with adversity that cast a shadow over his football future, cementing another layer of toughness that would have broken most players. Lindsay suffered what was originally believed to be a knee sprain during the opening game of his senior season at South. He sat out the next game and then returned the following week. But in the first quarter of that game, Lindsay went down again, and it was clear that he had actually torn his ACL.

The recovery from surgery was as slow as it was painful. Five months after the operation, a time when players are usually beginning some light workouts, Lindsay’s knee was so clogged with scar tissue that he couldn’t bend it.

To help expedite the process of breaking up the scar tissue, Tony and Troy Lindsay would hold Phillip down and attempt to manually stretch out the knee.

“My pops would sit on my back and my uncle would try to bend it all the way to my butt,” Phillip Lindsay said. “If you’ve ever seen how scar tissue is and how you break it, it’s almost impossible. I’d be in tears every day trying to do that. We just didn’t have the money for the resources (for rehab).”

Hearing his son in such intense pain soon became too much for Troy Lindsay to bear, his brother said.

“It hurt so bad that he would scream and yell, and his dad couldn’t do that,” Tony Lindsay said. “Me and my boys would do it. Me and my boys would take him behind South and stretch it, and he would just have to cry. I hated hearing it, but we were going to that leg straight. If we had to break it again we were going to get that leg straight.”

When Lindsay got to CU in the fall of 2013, he began working with physical therapist Ted Layne, CU’s athletic trainer in the late 1970s and early 1980s who later opened his own practice. Lindsay said he saw Layne every day during the first part of his freshman season in an attempt to regain mobility.

“At that time, I wasn’t even thinking about playing,” he said. “I just wanted to be able to get my knee straight.”

Slowly but surely, with Layne’s help, Lindsay began to regain trust and flexibility in his knee. He redshirted that first season, then accumulated 1,358 all-purpose yards as a redshirt freshman, by far the highest total for a freshman in school history. He was CU’s leading rusher as a sophomore last season (653 yards) and is on pace to double that production this season. His 15 rushing touchdowns are tied for sixth-most nationally among running backs.

“Now I feel like I’m back in high school,” Lindsay said. “Everything is slowing down and I feel like I have more control of my body. I was having a lot of injuries at the beginning, but I’ve been able to tame that down. (Running backs) coach Darian Hagan has coached me up and allowed me to be free with what I do and be creative. As a running back, you have to be creative and have to be able to take chances because that’s how you get on a roll.”

Family first

The tattoo is a right of passage for many members of the Lindsay family. The men get it on their chests, above their hearts. The women ink it onto their ankles.

The two words are simple, but they mean everything. “Family First.”

“We just ball out and work hard,” Lindsay said. “That’s what our family is all about. We work hard and we don’t make excuses. We don’t let anyone else take our shine because we focus on ourselves. That’s how we are as a family. We’re a close family. We grind for each other and love each other deeply.”

Lindsay’s passion has made his teammates feel like they are extended members of that family. And when Lindsay calls them “brothers,” it’s clear it’s not a word he uses lightly.

“He’s always pumping us up,” offensive guard Tim Lynott said. “You can see it when he runs the ball. He pushes himself to give that extra inch. He just pushes himself to his limits. He motivated us that way.”

When Lindsay took the ball late in the fourth quarter against Washington State, knowing another score would ice the game away, he grabbed the games in the street at Park Hill, the intense fights in the dojo, the physical knee pain that brought him to tears — and he carried the ball 13 yards into the end zone, bigger defenders once again powerless to stop him.

The enigmatic Fox play-by-play announcer kept the call simple.

“Lindsay. Lindsay! LINDSAY!” Gus Johnson bellowed. By the end, Johnson was yelling Lindsay’s name at the top his lungs.

As if there were any other way.