At home on the mounds, at peace in the pits

Editor's note: This story was originally published in January 2016. MOUNDVILLE, Ala. -- The drive through Moundville, Alabama, takes all of 109 seconds, and that's only if you get caught at the stoplight where Route 69 intersects Market Street. It's the only stoplight in town. Small barbecue joints dot both sides of the road here, with names like "Big John's BBQ" and "Pappys Barb-q." There's a double-wide trailer that advertises fireworks in red block lettering. Pam's Diner promises meat and veggies. Hale County High School is the largest building on this straight-through-town ride. Its football field is separated from the main building, a quarter-mile south on Route 69. A dusty road leads to the stadium and surrounding athletic offices. This is Rowdy Harrell Way. The man this road was named after is perhaps the best football player in the high school's history. He did things the Rowdy Harrell way. Large framed photographs of him are still plastered on the walls in the head coach's office, even though Harrell graduated more than five years ago. The current head coach wasn't even at the school during his playing days. Harrell later played football at the University of Alabama 17 miles north, a walk-on player living in a galaxy of five-star recruits overseen by Nick Saban, one of the best coaches in the sport's history. He won three national championships. Now he is the rear tire carrier for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

'ENTIRELY NEW WAY' Harrell isn't a self-promoter. He doesn't shy away from his incredible story -- of a guy from a town that is 3.8 square miles making it, both at Alabama and now in NASCAR's top division, for its most popular driver -- but he doesn't broadcast it, either.   He's talking about it now for one reason. "I do it for the kids," Harrell said, leaning against a hauler last October at Talladega Superspeedway. "I want them to know that people who think you can't do anything big if you're from a small town … that's BS." Harrell is proof. Rowdy -- Harrell's middle name, after a Clint Eastwood character in the 1960s TV series "Rawhide" -- is a big man, with big aspirations from a tiny town of 2,427 people. It's a town that is best known for what locals call "the mounds." These large earthen formations rise up like great sloping hills in the middle of a flat field. Trees surround them, as well as a grassy area used as a football field. Eight hundred years ago, more than 1,000 people lived within a mud-plastered town surrounded by wooden walls. That town, now a famous archeological site, was Moundville. At its height, Moundville was the largest and most powerful political and religious center of the Southeast. Native Americans lived there for 10,000 years. These mounds still stand, but like the town of Moundville itself, they exist at the intersection of past and present. On this October evening, they stand tall as the sun sets behind them, casting a purple hue over the landscape. It could be 2015. It could be 1015. For Harrell, the mounds are where his life and football intersected. There is a museum that sits on top of one of the largest mounds. There is a staircase from the ground to the door. There are 96 steps. Harrell hasn't been there in years, but he remembers. The number is burned into his brain, the product of running those steps many, many times per day under the unforgiving Alabama sun, the humidity giving the air a special thickness felt only in a Deep South summer as Harrell sweated away the pounds he didn't want. 96. 96. 96. "I would run those probably 20 times a day," Harrell said. "I would be out there, by myself, hopping up it on one leg then coming back down, then hopping up on the other leg. It was just me sweating every day. I knew I had to get in better shape. The way I was, I wasn't going to cut it. To go play for Nick Saban, I had to learn an entirely new way to do things." Harrell lost 40 pounds in one summer. And he's still learning a new way of doing things. 'A CHILDHOOD DREAM'

Hendrick Motorsports pit crew coach Chris Burkey recruits college athletes into the organization for both their physical skills and their inexperience. Burkey knows when the athleticism necessary to be on a Sprint Cup Series pit crew exists, because he can see it with his eyes and measure it with his stopwatch. Guys like Harrell, who transfer from the football field to a Hendrick pit crew combine, also don't know anything about the choreography of a pit stop. That is the preferred method. When Harrell arrived at Hendrick, he had no bad habits in his pitting technique, primarily because he had no habits at all. "I worked for Coach Saban with the Miami Dolphins, and so we know a lot of guys down there at Alabama," Burkey said. "I got in contact with (strength coach) Scott Cochran. We started talking, and the No. 1 guy he mentioned that would be a good potential prospect was Rowdy." By that point, Harrell had proven himself to coaches at Alabama by outworking many of those on scholarship, by not missing practices and by showing up early to meetings. It's difficult to play at Alabama for four years as a walk-on. The school technically has no obligation to you, and the loss of investment if a walk-on leaves the team is nominal. "I watched guys quit," Harrell says. "I watched guys pass out, I watched guys who didn't do the lift right, and the coach said 'See ya.' It's not a business, but it's kind of run like a well-oiled machine. If ya don't got it, ya don't got it, no hard feelings. I watched guys drop and drop and drop, and it made me just push myself so much more. "It was my childhood dream to play at Alabama, but it was (also) a far-fetched dream." Most everyone who grows up playing football in Alabama wants to play for either the Crimson Tide or the Auburn Tigers. The lure of the Tide is what kept Harrell pounding those 96 steps. The motivation remained even once Harrell joined the team as a walk-on. There were 40 walk-on players, including Harrell, when Rowdy was a freshman. His senior season, only one other player from that group was still on the team. "Rowdy, the big thing with him was, he competes," Burkey said. "He's a competitor. He meets the skill set, the height, weight and all the variables we look at for a tire carrier. The feedback we got from Alabama was, he was never late. He was a leader. He does all the small things. That's probably half of what we look at because we don't want to bring in bad guys here." In fact, the only issue Burkey had was getting in touch with Harrell. There's no reception at his parents' house in the woods. "Way out in the damn sticks," is how Harrell describes its location. "When you go out there you're just separated from the world pretty much." "I would never be able to catch him because there's no cell service where he lives," Burkey said. "He told me, 'Give me a couple hours' notice to work my way out of the woods to get in touch with you.' "

Photo courtesy Nigel Kinrade Photography

Harrell is out of the woods now, in more ways than one. He's a few years removed from winning his third national championship ring, which his dad added to the collection in a safety deposit box at a bank in Moundville. The kid who lived in the sticks has become the man who lives in the city. "Going to Alabama, winning those titles, it was a dream," Harrell said. "I still haven't come down from it. Working in NASCAR now is just an extension of that dream."  'AS LONG AS THEY'LL HAVE ME' The No. 88 pit crew had two new full-time members in 2015: Harrell and Dustin Lineback, who returned to the team in a new role as front tire carrier. The lineup was shuffled throughout the year as the team dealt with a variety of issues. Stops were often fast, but loose wheels seemed to plague the group at inopportune times. Earnhardt Jr. advanced to the second round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, and with teammate and shopmate Jimmie Johnson eliminated in the opening round, there was the opportunity for Hendrick Motorsports to at least consider making a change to the No. 48 and No. 88 pit crews. In theory, the organization could have shuffled the teams so that its fastest, most consistent people were all on the No. 88 car moving forward. The company elected not to do that, with Dale Jr. publicly supporting that decision. RELATED: Junior sticks up for pit crew during Chase "I'll be honest with you. … I don't think you build a guy's trust (that way)," Earnhardt Jr. said at the time. "He needs to know that you believe in him; the same for the driver. The driver needs to know the team believes he can do it. "If I take the 48 guys because I think they're better, then what am I going to do next year when we have to start from scratch again? All those guys that are on my car now are going to be pissed off because I don't believe in them because I took the 48 guys when the going got tough. "So I don't believe in doing that. I think that my guys can do it; I think we will find the combination that works for us to get to the end of the season and beyond." It was a moment of leadership that trickled down to the pit crew. "That meant everything," Harrell said. "To be honest, there ain't nothing else that I really want to do. I can honestly say this is what I was supposed to do. As long as they'll have me here, I'll stay."

Rowdy Harrell's life story is inked on his arm.

THE FULL PICTURE Harrell has documented his journey from tiny town to title town to the hub of NASCAR, with a needle as the pen and his body as a blank slate. A quick glance at the tattoo on his upper arm reveals a strip of color. It looks like that gorgeous streak in the sky that paints the mounds purple and pink. It is, in actuality, the colors of the NASCAR logo. There's the ancient Native American symbol -- the first thing discovered during a massive dig at the mounds -- that also graces the town's water tower. A large outline of North Carolina, its colors and design matching the state flag. Road signs of 285 and 459, which connect both highways in Alabama and the pieces of Harrell's life story. Then there is the tree, huge and hulking -- a representation of Rowdy Harrell himself. The branches extend and expand, reaching toward whatever's out there. But the roots still have their hold.