Losing to Win

It took over an hour to extricate myself from all the Belle Haven well-wishers who wanted to chat me up, relive old times, thank me for doing the show, and generally just have a moment of my time. Then there was the matter of a short meeting with Pierre, my best friend and agent. Pierre Picard had been a business marketing major at LSU, one year ahead of me when I showed up on campus. Originally from Beaumont, Texas, his family had deep roots in Cajun country. Pierre was also popular on campus, tall and good-looking in an old-school Billy Dee Williams kind of Idris Elba way. He was heavily into student politics and president of his fraternity. While most people on campus were kissing up and trying to be my friend, Pierre just nodded an acknowledgment and kept moving. We met the first time Carissa came to campus. I was running late, and by the time I caught up with her, she was sitting in the lobby of my dorm talking to Pierre as if they’d known each other forever. I gave him my best “mess with my woman and answer to me” look. He just laughed, thanked Carissa for a pleasant conversation, and walked away. For some reason, that impressed me. I sought him out, realized he was probably about the most business-savvy guy I’d ever met, and asked him to be my agent on the spot. He not only became my advocate in all things business but a good friend to me as well. He was the one who approached me with the idea to do the show, and though it was unconventional, I could definitely see using this as a vehicle to get back to where I wanted to be.

My childhood home had looked the same for as long as I could remember. It was a tidy-looking, blue double-gallery-style house with wraparound porches on both stories. Painted iron railings of stark white adorned the house. Large windows facing north and south gleamed as though freshly cleaned. The stucco and brick structure had outlasted many a storm and attempts at destruction by me and my younger brother, Meshach. The house still stood as a stately and serene haven in front of the rolling acres behind it.

I rolled to a stop at the curve in the paved portico of my parents’ home to see my father sitting on the aged walnut rocker on the front porch. Before I’d climbed out of the rental SUV, my mother stepped outside to join him. My parents were good, Southern, salt-of-the-earth, shoot-straight people. No matter how famous, wealthy, or worldly I became, they stayed the same: rock solid, rooted in Christian values, tolerant, full of unconditional love and steady advice.

Henry and Valentine Knight looked at me with equal parts love and censure. My father was about five foot nine and my mother stood five foot seven in heels. They were both slight and slender. Where he was light, she was dark. They complemented each other in every way. He liked to say she was the cookies to his cream, both in looks and personality. Henry once shared with me that he still woke up every day tickled to be married to the woman of his dreams.

They said I was a throwback to my grandfather, a Chickasaw warrior who stood well over six foot tall in his prime. My father, a mostly retired small-town doctor, had taken to dressing in dark jeans and a button-down denim shirt with lace-up boots. My mother, a fully retired schoolteacher, was dressed per usual: as if she expected a tea party to commence at any minute. Today’s pleated silk dress was in a soft shade of green. Pearls winked at her neck and ears.

“Maybe under the house, I don’t know,” I sheepishly acknowledged. “But Ms. Wayne clearly has nothing good to say about or to me. Did you see how she looked at me when I walked out on that stage? Whew. That death glare she sent me clearly broadcasted her wish that I was anywhere but near her and preferably six feet under.”

I followed her into the huge, recently renovated kitchen and sat down at the granite island. She handed me a glass of iced tea and I took a deep sip while I thought about Carissa and trying to “fix” the situation. Nothing quite like cool, sweet minty tea in the South. It was simple and expected. Unlike the issues between me and my former intended.

The rift between me and Carissa was multifaceted and complex in nature. It wasn’t easily categorized as “we didn’t want the same things”; it was a complete breakdown of communication, goals, and trust. It was messy and I had enough on my plate without diving into messy right now. When I’d said it was 70 percent my fault, that might have been too conservative. I still didn’t fully understand what I’d done to make her leave, but the fact that she had left without a backward glance didn’t sit well with me. Yeah, it was messy and nothing I cared to share with my parents. “I don’t know, Ma. One: I’m not sure if I can fix it after all this time. Two: It might be best to leave that water under the bridge. And three: She won’t want me to even try and repair our problems if things work out the way I think they will.”

“You both know when I got injured, I wasn’t ready to quit.” An understatement if ever there was one. My entire life up until two years ago had been about the chase of a Super Bowl ring. Until that point, I was a Pro Bowl wide receiver for one of the league’s elite teams. I was one of those guys who had played football since the age of six and been successful at every level. I won a high school state championship followed by an easy leap to a Division 1A college with a full scholarship. My sophomore team was the one that brought the Rose Bowl trophy back to Louisiana. I was runner up in the Heisman Trophy balloting in my junior year; supposedly I was a shoo-in to win it the following year, but I opted to leave and take my chances in the NFL.

Chosen as the only first-round draft pick of the Houston Stars, it was a challenge to find myself on an expansion team that wasn’t supposed to go far. I was single minded in my pursuit of greatness. I wanted to break all the records, sign the most endorsements, and get my name mentioned with the greats. If I neglected Carissa or took her for granted along the way, well, I figured that’s what it took to be great. She knew I loved her and that if I kept pushing the wedding date back, it had nothing to do with how I felt about her. I thought she and I had all the time in the world to be together, but the shelf life of an NFL athlete is short. It took eight years to get there, but the high-powered Houston Stars offense had arrived at the conference championship game only to come up three yards short of the Super Bowl in the last forty seconds.

The whole team imploded in the aftermath. My quarterback left, the running back quit to find himself, the coaches were fired, and a front-office shuffle began. The team was just pulling back together during a preseason game when The Incident happened. The details are hotly debated to this day. I believe I was the victim of a cheap-shot defensive back; others say I landed wrong. Either way, I tore both my MCL and my ACL. All of the specialists said it was a career-ending injury. I never announced my retirement; I just faded out of the spotlight. I isolated myself, packed on weight, and basically wallowed in self-pity for about a year. The only person I reached out to was Carissa. And by that time, she wasn’t having it or hearing it. Not from me.

One night, after refusing to sign a fan’s T-shirt, I overheard him calling me a “fat washed-up coulda-been” and it hurt. Insults that ring a little true often do. So I started rehabbing and getting myself together, making plans for the future. According to the specialist, the knee was at 95 percent. I had less than forty pounds left to lose.

I looked across at my parents and made my announcement. “I know the show is kinda stupid, but it accomplishes a few things for me. I want to use the exposure to show the league that I can come back. This could be my shot. I’m thirty-three years old. Most receivers are hanging up their cleats by now. I want one last shot at that ring. I want to go back.”

I threw my head back and laughed. “I could never surprise you. I needed to be mentally and physically ready. I needed to make sure I could make a real run at it without making a fool of myself. When I was sitting on my sofa well over three hundred pounds, I wasn’t ready. I talked to Pierre; he says the Stars will give me a walk-on tryout whenever I’m ready. We’re shooting for mid-August.” Pierre wouldn’t let me take this shot if he didn’t think I could do it. He had stood beside me when no one else but my family could stand listening to me.

She squeezed my hands. “Since you were a teenager, you’ve talked about two things you wanted in life. One was to win a Super Bowl and the other was to marry Rissa Wayne. And I gotta say, it doesn’t sound to me like you’re 100 percent ready to give up either dream yet. Don’t lose one holding onto the other.”