John Covington prides himself on being tough.
“My game is power,” he says. “I come at them any way I can. I can’t back down. I can’t do it any other way.”
The senior strong safety for top-ranked Notre Dame was talking about football.
He might as well have been talking about his journey from the drugs and violence on the streets of Winter Haven, Fla., how he grabbed a way out of the economic hardship in a family of 19 brothers and sisters, how he took taunts from his black friends-who derided him for living with a white family on the other side of town-and turned them into cheers.
Covington doesn’t talk much, but he has plenty to say-about goals, about accomplishments and about blacks and whites living together in harmony.
Asked about his role in Notre Dame’s 31-24 upset of Florida State last week, which included an interception of a Charlie Ward pass, Covington replies: “I don’t want the pub. Give it to the other guys.”
When asked about his biggest dream, he says it is not about going undefeated in the regular season by beating Boston College on Saturday. It isn’t even winning the national championship, as the Irish are in position to do.
“Graduation,” he says without hesitation. He sees a degree from Notre Dame as the beginning of a way out of poverty for his black family.
When talking of his boyhood and the remarkable path that brought him to Notre Dame, Covington speaks about his “black parents” and his “white parents.”
He loves both sets. His white parents, Sam and Karen Smith, traveled to watch him play against Florida State. His black parents, Walter and Betty, don’t even have a telephone.
Coming from such a large family, Covington learned the streets and how to get what he needed the hard way. While in grade school, it was not uncommon for him to stay out much of the night.
“There were a lot of drugs, a lot of dropouts, a lot of my peers just robbing stores,” he says.
He became friends and played football with Jarrod Smith and began to spend more and more time at the Smith home, about five miles from his own house.
“I was going into the 8th grade when I started staying there, and I moved in in the 9th grade,” he says. “I got tired of seeing my friends die at an early age, seeing great athletes resort to drugs. I just didn’t want to be that way. I just knew I had to change. I had to get away from where I was.
“Because there were so many kids, my Christmases stopped when I was in the 4th grade. They began again when I moved in with the Smiths.
“My family totally understood. The only regret my parents had was not spending a little more time with me.”
While his immediate family understood the move, Covington’s black friends didn’t.
“They called me a sellout,” he recalls. “They were jealous. There were a lot of people who went against me and wanted to see me fall.
“I was very comfortable with it. I saw it as an opportunity to succeed in life. Coming from basic poverty, I had a chance to see many things I’d never seen before.
“At my black house, we might eat at 10 o’clock or whenever. At the Smiths, we would always eat at 7. I would have to be in before dark. If I went out, it was only weekends, and I had a curfew.
“The Smiths sat me down and told me the rules, and I had to abide by them or I had to leave.”
The Smiths told Covington he could use his football talent to get a college scholarship, and when Florida State, Miami, Southern Cal and Florida came recruiting, the Smiths urged him to choose Notre Dame.
“I always had high goals. I always wanted to do the right things,” Covington says. “But if it wasn’t for the Smiths, I probably wouldn’t have gone to college because I didn’t really know how to get there. The one thing they pounded into my head from Day 1 was that I could get a scholarship if I did well in school and in sports.
“There were so many guys in my neighborhood who were so great, but they didn’t do the schoolwork. They robbed stores or sold drugs. I just chose a different road.”
Covington was good enough to play in all 12 games as a freshman. He was a part-time starter in his sophomore year and a starter and a nickel back last season.
His success on the field has eased his way back into the black community.
“The problem is with ignorance,” says the marketing major who is on track to graduate in four years in May. “It all starts in the home. Certain black families might teach that certain whites aren’t good to get along with, and they just generalize about all whites.
“It’s the same with whites about blacks. People are put in a category, and everybody of that same color is placed in that same category. That’s what the problem is.”
Sam Smith says he also took some funny looks and worse from the white neighbors on his side of town.
“They tried to give me a hard time, but I’m a very blunt person, and I don’t put up with it,” he says. “Racism. The kid was a beautiful kid. He got great grades, and he was my son’s friend.
“Other than the fact I had to yell at him that this wasn’t the Holiday Inn and he couldn’t leave his wet towels around, he was just one of us.
“The more I saw John, the more I liked him. It had nothing to do with race. He’s my buddy.”
This year, Covington is the big hitter and the leading tackler in one of the best defensive backfields in the country, and he can’t wait to get home for Thanksgiving.
“While I’m here, we beat Miami, Florida and Florida State,” he says with a wide smile. “Now, I’ve got all the bragging rights.”
