The cases are littered across the sports landscape with such regularity that they really should occupy their own statistical category: Call it second chances.
So common are they, in fact, that the category can be expanded to third, fourth and fifth chances, with as many examples of those who have failed as those who have succeeded and those for whom, ahem, the jury is still out.
Quarterback Kerry Collins? He took the Giants to the Super Bowl in 2001 after leaving a trail of alcohol-related incidents and arrests in Carolina and sputtering in New Orleans.
Lawrence Phillips? The former star running back for Nebraska and later the Miami Dolphins and St. Louis Rams currently is awaiting sentencing after being convicted in October of seven counts of assault with a deadly weapon for deliberately driving a stolen car into a group of youths after an argument in a touch football game.
Ricky Williams? He’s in Toronto, the highest-paid running back in the Canadian Football League while serving a one-year NFL suspension after a fourth violation of the league’s substance-abuse policy.
Leonard Little? He’s still on probation but recently signed a three-year contract extension with the Rams believed to be worth more than $19 million. Little was charged with speeding and acquitted of driving while intoxicated last year, a felony charge because he had pleaded guilty in 1999 to manslaughter, admitting he was drunk when he ran a red light and killed a 47-year-old woman the year before.
Too harsh to compare to Bears tackle Tank Johnson, whom the club suspended for one game after he was charged with having six guns in his home without valid Illinois registration, then going to a bar the next night on an outing that resulted in the shooting death of his friend and bodyguard?
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on whether Johnson fulfills his promise to become “a responsible man.”
“Anytime you’re given a second chance in life, I believe it’s up to you to take advantage of it,” Johnson said Tuesday.
He has as many examples to follow as to avoid–troubled and repentant athletes outnumbered only by beleaguered coaches and team executives.
Lakers coach Phil Jackson has been in the position of having to forgive and forget a host of legal and behavioral transgressions from such players as Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman and Kobe Bryant. But he doesn’t claim to have it all figured out.
“I’m not the three-strike person, but I’m definitely the fool me once, fool me twice person,” Jackson said. “You have to be profound in your ability to understand personality types. But you do have to have a standard and have boundaries. That’s extremely important.
“A lot of our athletes have to have boundaries because so many exceptions are made [because of their talent]. If there aren’t boundaries, it can overrun everything.”
Such was the case with Rod Thorn, now president and general manager of the New Jersey Nets who was GM of the Bulls when the club selected Quintin Dailey with the seventh pick of the 1982 NBA draft, a move he admits still haunts him.
The Bulls’ selection of Dailey came just months after the University of San Francisco guard was charged with sexual assault of a female dorm counselor, a charge reduced to simple assault after a plea agreement that resulted in three years’ probation.
“If someone’s a marginal talent or a player you deem incorrigible, those types tend not to get second chances,” Thorn said. “But when you see players who are talented, you can always talk yourself into giving them a second chance–`Oh boy, if this guy works out, we can really use him. Maybe in a different environment, he’ll be different.’
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
When the Tribune caught up with Dailey in ’99, he was a 38-year-old father of two living in Las Vegas and working for the Clark County parks and recreation department as supervisor of a program for at-risk kids.
But in ’82, the drafting of Dailey resulted in an avalanche of criticism, with women’s groups picketing every exhibition game. Drug problems followed Dailey to Chicago, and though he would play in the NBA for 10 years subsequent with stops in Los Angeles and Seattle, he remains one of the bigger first-round busts in Bulls history.
“Quintin had plea-bargained, and I was thinking at the time that this is behind him, but it wasn’t,” Thorn said. “Then he came to us and had drug problems and it just brought that all the more to the forefront.”
Thorn said with more resources now at a team’s disposal and the wisdom of experience, “I don’t think I’d ever do that again.”
Johnson avoided legal problems at the University of Washington, but he came to the Bears as a second-round draft pick under the cloud of poor scouting reports like the one in Pro Football Weekly’s draft preview that said he was “a me guy” who was “not respectful to staff and teammates.”
Gil Brandt, a longtime executive with the Dallas Cowboys, current NFL.com draft analyst and former boss of Jerry Angelo’s when the Bears’ GM was a scout for the Cowboys in 1980, maintains the Bears “still have a chance with Tank Johnson.”
“There are people you can rehabilitate and there are people you can’t and I would imagine in Tank’s case, Jerry did a thorough job of looking at his background and his character,” Brandt said.
Some players, however, are rehabilitated too late.
“We had Duane Thomas and he left us or we left him, then we brought him back and he was a model citizen,” Brandt said. “The unfortunate thing was that his career passed him by.
“Sometimes guys just can’t stand prosperity. You can give them all kinds of psychological tests, but what you can’t tell is what will happen when a person gets money all of a sudden and can’t say no to peripheral people. Some guys are strong enough to fight through that, and other guys aren’t. I don’t know how you tell. It’s a very, very inexact science.”
Jay Zygmunt, president of football operations for the Rams, said he understands what the Bears are going through.
“We went through agony with Leonard Little,” he said. “We looked at everything and believed he warranted a second chance. But it wasn’t easy and to be candid, there are compelling arguments on both sides.”
Unlike Johnson, Little’s problem was being directly involved in “a loss of life, and you have to be careful because you don’t want to be judge and jury,” Zygmunt said. “We do have courts and there is a presumption of innocence, but you don’t want to be naive.
“Giving someone, anyone, a second chance is a very, very complicated issue and one that is fraught with emotion.”
One of the factors in giving Johnson a second chance, Smith said, was that his teammates supported the decision not to release him.
“The bottom line is none of us are perfect,” said tight end John Gilmore, who was welcomed back to the Bears this summer after being charged with marijuana possession and three other misdemeanors in an incident outside a Chicago bar. “Everybody goes through life and everybody’s going to make mistakes. I don’t know anybody who’s perfect. Second chances happen every day. It’s a way of life and absolutely, I do believe in them.
“The difference in our position is that we’re under that microscope and everything is magnified and everybody knows about our mistakes.”
Gilmore said Smith’s comments likening his team to a family resonated in the Bears’ locker room.
“What kind of message is that, sending away somebody who gets into trouble?” Gilmore said. “When you’re a family, you have to stick together. Every situation is different, but to just get rid of somebody when they’re going through some things, you have to wonder what direction that person is going to go after that.
“This is our passion, this is what we do every day. Taking the game away, that could have a real negative effect on somebody. You take that away and then everything could spiral out of control.”
Bears receiver Rashied Davis believes the adverse publicity surrounding Johnson and other athletes in trouble is almost punishment in itself.
“Throughout the country, we’re portrayed as being bad guys when mistakes happen,” he said. “We get judged right then, on the spot, and then that’s who we are for the rest of our lives. When other people see us, it’s `That’s the guy who did this or did that.’ I don’t think that’s fair, but at the same time, that’s our lives. We get paid the big bucks and people are going to see what happens in our lives. . .
“But I just feel people are too harsh and too judgmental on other people sometimes. Who are we to judge? We’re not God.”
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Reclamation projects
Leonard Little
Pleaded guilty in 1999 to manslaughter, admitting he was drunk while driving when he killed a woman. Acquitted of a DUI charge in 2005. Signed three-year, $19 million extension in 2006.
Kerry Collins
Several alcohol-related incidents and arrests in Carolina, New Orleans in 1990s. Went to Super Bowl in 2000 with Giants. Lost starting job to rookie Vince Young in Tennessee this season.
Lawrence Phillips
Nebraska star struggled in NFL, pleaded no contest to assaulting woman in club. Awaiting sentencing for driving a stolen car into a group of youths following an argument in a touch football game.
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misaacson@tribune.com
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