Pros and Cons (36 page)

Manhood and Drinking.
Even the casual observer recognizes the association between beer drinking and manhood that is promoted during televised football games. Cowan referred to it as “the testosterone factor.” Masculinity, beer, and football go together. “There is an image of masculinity that many of them feel they have to project,” said Cowan. “You talk about a man’s man. Pro football players epitomize that. They are very masculine, very aggressive. There is an image factor that goes into that—’Real men drink. And real men drink as much as they want to.’ There’s an element to that that differentiates them from the general population. There’s an image aspect.”

Denial.
“Football players are the paragon of health,” said Cowan. And as a result, they are particularly resistant to admitting weakness. Cowan pointed to the questions that a player abusing alcohol will frequently ask. “How could I be an alcoholic and continue to achieve on such a high physical level? If I was an alcoholic I would be weak, wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning, wouldn’t be sober for my games, wouldn’t have the strength that I do, I’d be dissipated, etc.”

The NFL’s Promotion of Alcohol.
On February 14, 1997, new provisions went into effect under the National Football League Policy and Program for Substances of Abuse. While recognizing that “alcoholic beverages are legal substances,” the policy prohibits the abuse of alcohol, declaring that “such conduct is detrimental to the integrity of the public confidence in the NFL and professional football.”

Yet, as Cowan pointed out, there is an “extraordinary” amount of alcohol sold at NFL stadiums, not to mention the massive promotion of alcohol consumption on television during the broadcast of NFL games. “It’s not just a mixed message,” Cowan pointed out. “It is hypocritical as hell. You think of football, you think of beer. They have the Bud Bowl on Super Bowl Sunday every year.”

A
lcohol abuse is out of control in the NFL,” said Frier. “If alcohol is there, it’s going to be abused by the players. Simple as that. I had a friend when I played for the Bengals, Reggie Rembert—he had to take piss tests two or three times every week. But he was still out there taking chances.” Rembert was arrested three times for driving under the influence while playing for the Bengals and ultimately sentenced to a year in jail.

“If you’ve got an alcoholic, there’s only one way to stop them from driving drunk,” said Cowan. “That is to stop them from drinking. Period. You can take away their cars, family, jobs, anything. But until you sober them up, they’re not going to stop driving drunk.”

Many teams do not understand this concept. After cutting Rembert following his third DUI arrest, the Bengals drafted the University of Miami’s outstanding defensive back Tremain Mack in 1997. Prior to the draft, Mack had been arrested six times, three of those for driving under the influence. “He’s in terrible shape,” said Frier, familiar with Mack’s situation through his friends still on the Bengals squad. “He’s lucky to be in the NFL. Cincinnati would cut him if he was a regular rookie free agent making no money. But they try and help out their top players, and try to hide problems.”

Mack was arrested on October 25 for driving eighty-two miles per hour while under the influence. He was sentenced to thirty days in jail. “We hire people as players,” said Bengals president and general manager Mike Brown following Mack’s admission to the Clermont County Jail. “You have to realize that these are human beings who are not perfect and some of them will at times run up against a wall.” Brown, though, could only hope that a “person” with Mack’s record of DUI would not run
into
a wall.

As was the case with Rembert, the Bengals stated they would give Mack more chances after undergoing counseling. “We hope we can help him but if we can’t, if he fails two more times, then he’s out, done,” said Brown. “That’s the way it works.”

Despite being an advocate for treatment and rehabilitation, Cowan concluded that NFL teams don’t always act in players’ best interest. “There should be a line of accountability,” he said. “The greatest enablers in the world are the NFL, or have been historically. At some point in time you have to say, ‘We’re not going to put up with this anymore. We’re not going to continue to support you in your path to self-destruction.’ That’s part of recovery. If they did that with some players, maybe some players would get the point and take care of themselves and then have a chance to reenter the league.”

W
hile awaiting the outcome of Lamar Smith’s pending retrial on vehicular assault charges, the Seahawks signed Broncos wide receiver Mike Pritchard on June 19, 1996. Pritchard had been arrested for vehicular assault and drunk driving after he hit two pedestrians on October 29, 1995. He later pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges and was put on eighteen months’ probation and ordered to attend an alcohol rehabilitation program.

Meanwhile, Lamar Smith and Mike Frier agreed to an out-of-court settlement in August of 1997, where Smith would pay at least $1 million to Frier.

On January 9, 1998, after over three years of legal wrangling that included a trial that ended in a hung jury and an appeal to the Washington Supreme Court, Smith pleaded guilty to vehicular assault and was sentenced to four months in prison. When entering his plea, Smith admitted to making “a horrible mistake.”

Smith’s mistake was not learned from, however, not even by teammate Chris Warren, who barely escaped the accident intact. On April 4, 1997, Warren was again at Sharky’s in Kirkland drinking with teammates. And again he climbed into the passenger’s side of a car being driven by a drunk teammate who drove away from the bar at excessive speeds.

This time it was fellow running back Mack Strong. Strong sped out of the parking lot and ran a stop sign at approximately twenty miles per hour. An officer then observed Strong’s car straddling the lane divider and veering into the lane of oncoming traffic. After driving one block on the right-hand shoulder and then swaying back to the center lane and nearly missing an island, Strong was pulled over and arrested.

An open bottle of beer was found in the car and Strong was unable to perform simple sobriety tests such as accurately repeating the alphabet or standing on one foot for more than two seconds. After being booked at the police station, Strong was released into the custody of Chris Warren. On September 30, 1997, Strong pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of negligent driving. He was fined and received a suspended ninety-day jail sentence. Warren escaped again without life-threatening injury.

“My God,” said Cowan when he learned of Warren riding in Strong’s car after his experience in the Smith case. “Amazing. That is amazing. It sure as hell makes me shake my head.”

Tragedy as a behavior-changing tool has a very short shelf life, especially in the NFL. “I’m just another casualty,” Frier said. “Life goes on. To tell you the truth, if this happened to someone else, I wouldn’t be hangin’ out drinkin’ all the time. But it wouldn’t stop me from drinkin’ because a guy’s career was cut short.”

In March of 1998, Smith was furloughed from a Seattle jail so he could fly to New Orleans to sign a four-year, $7.1 million contract >with the Saints. “All I can say is, ‘There but for the grace of God go I,’” said Saints head coach Mike Ditka, referring to Smith’s conviction. “We’ve all done it. We’ve used bad judgment with alcohol and a vehicle. Most people who do it get away with it. Some people get caught.”

16

The Convict

August, 1997

John Shaw, President

St. Louis Rams

St. Louis, Mo.

Dear John,

I know you’re shocked to hear from me, but you shouldn’t be. You told me the same thing when you visited me in Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center. I’ve always viewed your character with good admiration, even though I always felt I was underpaid, like every other athlete I’ve played with! I don’t know how you’ve done it for so many years, battling agents who represent clients, who all believe their clients are much better than they are, to make figures work. I’m sure ten, twelve years ago you never dreamed of having to pay a non-quarterback athlete ten, fifteen million bucks in a single contract period, and some are actually much higher than that.

The reason I’m writing to you is for one reason only. I want you to know how thankful I am that you supported me during some extremely stressful times in 93 on through 95. Never once did you question my guilt or innocence. You always tried to put the fire out or contain it as best you could. Your loyalty should never be questioned, however, I’m sure your critics have found ways to tarnish that, too. I hope the St. Louis community realizes they’ve got a winner there with you. I’ve often pondered why you’d take such a liking to me and I never came up with any acceptable reasons. With this latest drama in my life you probably can’t figure that one out either, but regardless of any of my circumstances, I salute you on behalf of myself and my wife and my beautiful daughter, and I apologize for any unwanted grief I have caused you in your support of me as a person, not as an athlete, a defendant or an inmate. I’m proud to have been someone you believed in.

But as I was reading the sports page I came across an article which saddened me. Allegedly a back up defensive tackle for the Rams faces conspiracy charges for crack cocaine or something or other.

John, has anyone heeded the tragedy I experienced? Do the guys realize that a wrong decision can ruin their lives and send their families in great pain. We as athletes have got to realize that we are not above the law, in fact we are at greater risk because of the negative exposures. It kills me to know that athletes haven’t learned from my ridicule. These guys must think they’re invincible, invincible from trouble and/or harm. They must not know I was a starter for four and a half out of the six years, graduated 3.1 GPA, never tested positive for any form of drug abuse, not even liquor. I come from excellent parents and family, never been arrested prior to the charges. But look what happened to me. My immediate down fall was allowing a circle of guys to get too close to me knowing full well their interests were different from mine. That mistake was the beginning of what would ultimately become the worse nightmare of my life.

I really wanted to write to Lawrence Phillips before the ‘96 season got under way to give him some support. I suppose I basically wanted to introduce myself to him to bring actual reality of a fallen athlete into his realm of thinking. I do regret not writing that letter because maybe a few words of encouragement from me could have saved him from some unwanted press. But then again maybe not. It’s just hard having to watch other athletes succumb to negative temptations that often end up biting them in the ass like it did to me.

Good luck this season. I’ll always consider myself a diehard Ram.

Thank you much,

Darryl Henley

Inmate #01915-112

Marion—United States Prison

I
f ever NFL Films were to create its own version of the critically acclaimed 1972 anti-crime movie
Scared Straight,
Darryl Henley would be a natural for the starring role. He wouldn’t play the role of host in the movie, which Peter Falk (of television’s
Col-umbo
fame) handled so ably. Falk, you see, was an outsider, walking juvenile delinquents through a real-life maximum security prison in an effort to scare them into walking on the other side of the justice system.

No, Henley, once one of the NFL’s most feared defensive backs, would play the part of the insider, the hardened inmate who was the real star of the show. For Henley, like that inmate, is hoping that by telling his horror story he might keep others from taking the same path.

In the first and only interview the six-year pro granted since his 1997 sentencing to forty-one years in America’s toughest prison, Henley didn’t want to talk about his crimes. He didn’t want to talk about his prison mate, Mafia boss John Gotti. And he didn’t want to talk about the many books he now has time to read.

He did want to talk about the NFL, about players breaking the law, and about where it can all end up if someone doesn’t step up and scare some players straight.

A
second-round pick out of UCLA in 1989, Henley was everybody’s All-America. In most drafts, Henley’s coverage skills would have made him the toast of his position, but he happened to enter the NFL the same year as a gold-drenched, brash young man named Deion Sanders.

While Sanders was making an immediate impact on and off the field in Atlanta, Henley was drawing praise for his round-the-clock practice and study habits with the Los Angeles Rams. In 1989, Henley’s rookie season, the Rams played their way into the NFC championship game, the last time the franchise has been to the playoffs and the last time the team posted a winning season. Though Henley’s playing time was limited, winning soothed his ego. The next year, Henley earned the starting spot, but the team began a five-year spiral under coaches John Robinson and Chuck Knox that turned playing for the team into a “miserable experience.”

As a starter in his third and fourth years with the Rams, Henley led the team in passes broken up in both 1991 and 1992 and finished fourth on the team in tackles both years. Yet the Rams ended those seasons 3-13 and 6-10.

With each frustrating loss, Henley’s attention turned further and further from the field. “At a certain point, I hated going to the [Anaheim] stadium,” Henley said. “I hated getting in my car and going to practice. I hated it. Everyone started pointing fingers. People said, ‘Well the coach was this …’ That wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t management. It wasn’t John Shaw. It wasn’t John Robinson. It wasn’t Chuck Knox. It wasn’t those guys. It was the dudes on the team. They didn’t have the desire and the commitment. They didn’t have the attitude to win. They weren’t staying around practice, working out. You get beat by deep balls, you should be staying after practice, showing up on Tuesday on a day off. Nobody was doing that. My rookie year, when I was screwing up, on Tuesday mornings, on my day off, they had me up there with the coaching staff. I was up there and I loved it. They had my ass working out, going over mistakes that I made to the point where I started doing it on my own. And then in ‘91 and ‘92, we didn’t have that anymore. Those dudes were getting killed. Crunched. Offensive and defensive. But at the end of every practice, the discussion was ‘What are we doing afterward?’ After a while it starts to have a real effect on you. A real effect. To the point where I lost my love for football. I allowed myself to become bored with something that I had always wanted to do all my life. How can you get bored with money, women, football, cameras, TV? How can you get bored with that? It’s everybody’s dream. How can you get bored with that?