STEEL HORSE

CLINTON, N.C. — A sign at Clinton High offers visitors a friendly warning. "Danger," it reads, "you have entered Dark Horse Territory."

It refers to the unusual nickname of the school's athletic teams -- Dark Horse Stadium, home of the five-time Class AA state football champions, sits next to the sign.

But it could also refer to a graduate named Willie Parker.

The Pittsburgh Steelers' 5-foot-10, 209-pound running back is not the first player from this rural town of about 8,600 to have made it to the NFL, nor will he be the first to have played in the Super Bowl when the Steelers meet the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday at Detroit.

But he undoubtedly is the first to have raced a pit bull as a teen, caught the eye of an NFL owner's son while still in high school, and all but disappeared in college before reemerging as an improbable 1,000-yard rusher for an AFC championship team.

A descendant of slaves who worked a farm not more than 10 miles from Clinton, Parker is the product of a blue-collar environment. Hog farming and hog processing drive the economy in Sampson County, and, when the wind blows just so, unsuspecting visitors had better brace themselves when stepping from their cars. Otherwise, the smell might knock them right off their feet.

Parker's father, Willie Parker Sr., was a hog gambrel before a shoulder injury put him on disability. Day after day for 27 years, he lifted the 200- to 300-pound beasts onto hooks for butchering.

The youngest in his family of six had much grander plans.

"When he was 5 or 6, he stood in front of the TV and he'd say, 'Me want to play for Carolina,' " his mother, Lorraine, said of the boy who did grow up to play for the Tar Heels. "I said, 'Get out from in front of the TV and go sit down.' And then when he was 10 or 11, he'd say, 'Me going to play for the NFL.'

"I said, 'If you don't get your behind out from in front of that TV

Parker got moving, all right.

Speed always set him apart.

One Thanksgiving, noting that a cousin's pit full was so well-trained that when his owner whistled from across a field the dog would run toward him in a full sprint, Parker asked whether he could race it.

"The dog's name was Tyson," Willie Sr. said, "and Tyson would come full speed toward my nephew. And my son would try to beat the pit bull. It looked pretty good at the beginning, but the dog ran away from him.