The labels were so pejorative they seemed beyond redemption, yet here was Kerry Collins Monday night on the biggest sports stage in the country after being called a drunk, a racist and a quitter.
In sports, any one of the three is a ticket to nowhere, and here was Kerry Collins once stuck with a trifecta of doom and now the quarterback of the New York Giants in the Super Bowl.
Collins and his coach, Jim Fassel, agreed the bigger success story is off the field, but they also know the turnaround of the man cannot be separated from the turnaround of the quarterback. Curiously, that’s how his problems began, when at the tender age of 14 he was not allowed to separate his childhood from his football.
He was a high school sophomore when his father, Pat, moved with Kerry from Lebanon, Pa., to West Lawn 30 miles away after a dispute between the father and a coach. They left Kerry’s mother, Roseanne, and older brother Patrick behind. The separation led to divorce.
“That sent a couple of messages to me,” Collins said. “First, that football was more important than anything. Second, the notion that if everything works out in football, then everything would be OK.
“I’m living proof that’s not the case.”
The family members will all come to Sunday’s game against the Baltimore Ravens.
“This is really–I can’t tell you in how many years–we’ll all be at the same place at the same time,” Collins said.
The story does not end here, of course. If Collins doesn’t win, he risks more labels. That is the steep price of professional competition, a price Collins understands with more perspective now than he did the moment he was drafted by the expansion Carolina Panthers in 1995 and heard these ominous words from owner Jerry Richardson on the telephone: “Son, do you know what the Lombardi Trophy is?”
He had taken his first drink at 13 and used alcohol as an escape and “a rebellious tool, almost like that adage, `I’ll show you; I’ll hurt me,'” he said.
The pressure needed a release.
“I encourage parents to let their kids choose their path because you can’t do it for them,” Collins said. “I’m thankful my parents made the sacrifices they made to give me an opportunity. At the same time, I don’t think age 14 is the time to start a career. I won’t make the same mistake with my children.”
At Carolina, he lived in a 5-bedroom, 61/2-bath, party house with a five-car garage, theater room and billiards room dubbed “Hotel Collins.”
“I thought if I didn’t party I was wasting my youth. As a result, I was kind of wasting my life,” he said.
After getting to the NFC title game against Green Bay in the second year of the Panthers’ franchise, Collins got drunk on the last night of 1997 training camp and used a racial slur in front of two African-American teammates.
“I used a term that was not meant to be used in a malicious way,” Collins said. “It was more in a joking manner. I was trying to be a funny guy. In a strange sense in my polluted mind, I believed in sort of a way it would bring some sense of camaraderie. I didn’t mean for it to be taken the way it did. They took it, because of the nature of the word, that I used it in a derogatory sense.
“I regret the incident. Certainly I’ve tried to make amends.”
By most accounts, his Giants teammates have forgiven the transgression.
“I like KC. I get along with KC,” receiver Ike Hilliard said. “Kerry has grown. Some things are overblown. You have to leave the past in the past. For me, he had nothing to prove. He’s an adult. None of us are perfect. Who am I to judge? Kerry’s a good person. I truly believe that in my heart.”
Defensive end Michael Strahan said Collins called him when he signed with the Giants before the 1999 season.
“He went out of his way to get to know guys and I think that’s important,” Strahan said. “What people need to understand is if you give somebody a second chance, they can turn their life around.”
Collins said he tried to show his new teammates, not tell them.
“My view was if I go in and give some big production and slap everybody on the back and say, `Those things didn’t happen. I’m not a racist …’ I didn’t see what words were going to do at that point. I knew it was not going to be a quick fix.”
Linebacker Micheal Barrow is the only teammate who also was a teammate in Carolina. On Monday, Barrow declined to answer questions about Collins.
After a broken jaw and the worst passer rating in the NFL in 1997, Collins took an eight-week backpacking tour of Europe to get away. He succumbed to the pressure during the 1998 season when a meeting with coach Dom Capers resulted in his release and the label of quitter. Collins insisted Monday night: “I never wanted to quit on that team. The meeting did not turn out the way I wanted it to turn out.”
Picked up by New Orleans, Collins was arrested for DUI following a Saints game back in Carolina. Saints coach Mike Ditka said Collins needed help and didn’t try to re-sign him. The NFL ordered Collins to another eight-week getaway, this time to the Menninger Clinic for substance abuse in Topeka, Kan., the same clinic that helped rehabilitate quarterback Brett Favre from Vicodin addiction before the Packers’ 1996 Super Bowl season.
“That I was in a structured, controlled environment to receive help was very shocking to me,” Collins said.
But he reported two weeks early and when he got out, Giants General Manager Ernie Accorsi and Fassel had thoroughly researched him, starting with Joe Paterno, Collins’ coach at Penn State.
“They all said he is a good kid,” Accorsi said. “And anytime you have a good kid and he goes off track, you have a chance to get him back. Joe said, `You want to be in a foxhole with him.'”
Collins was digging his way out of a hole.
“My identity was so much that of an NFL quarterback,” he said. “The rehab was really the first time I took a good hard look at myself as a person.”
Still, Collins admits his motivation was linked to his occupation.
“Part of this whole process with me is when I made the decision to try to become the best quarterback I could be. I didn’t want to waste that talent,” he said.
Collins credits counselors and a graduate-level psychology course he took at Fairleigh Dickinson University for helping him cope. From the Hotel Collins, he now lives in an apartment in Hackensack, N.J. Receiver Joe Jurevicius, a former Penn State teammate, lives in the complex and is Collins’ ride to work. Collins will get his suspended driver’s license back on Feb. 1, four days after the Super Bowl.
“For anybody to question him now is ludicrous,” Jurevicius said. “The man has proved he can make right decisions. He’s done things by the book. I think he’s answered all the critics.”
There will still be some who will wait until they see Sunday’s score. Until then, Collins said he is “indebted” to the Giants organization and to teammates.
“A big part of my motivation is to repay them,” he said.
Said Strahan: “I told coach Fassel when Kerry got here and all of the things were written about his problems … the second he takes us to the Super Bowl and wins it for us, those people will be hugging him.”
Said Collins: “It seems like winning takes care of everything else. I don’t necessarily believe in that; I think there’s a real human element that gets lost in all this. Regardless of the success that goes on the football field, I’m more proud of the things in my personal life on a day-by-day basis.
“It’s funny, the two seem to go hand-in-hand.”
