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Jessie's week Giants LB Armstead stayed on the straight and narrow
Updated: Thursday February 01, 2001 2:22 AM
TAMPA, Fla. -- At this point in Super Bowl week, all the stories tend to blend together and the subplots have been well picked over. The quotes sound monotonously similar, and the players, coaches and media are tired and talked out. But every once in a while there's somebody with a real story to tell. A story that stands out. A story that resonates far beyond the gabfest that this game has become. For me, that story this week belonged to Jessie Armstead. Some will remember Super Bowl XXXV week for Brian Billick and Ray Lewis and Kerry Collins. For the stories they gave us or the words they did or didn't say. I'll remember Armstead. And the quiet but lasting lessons he imparted about life's choices. For simplicity and significance, it's tough to beat the road-less-traveled story that Armstead told.
"I just walked the other way," said Armstead, the eighth-year New York Giants linebacker. "It's hard, but if you go the other way, you'll be thankful one day in your life." Armstead was 17 and a member of the Dallas Carter High 1988 state champion football team. He was one of three players on that team to sign a Division I college scholarship. The other two, Armstead's closest of friends and teammates, went to prison first for armed robbery. Armstead had the opportunity to join Derric Evans and Gary Edwards as they took part in a series of robberies of video stores and fast-food restaurants that year. They asked him to come. And he thought about it, but not long. He kept remembering the look of anguish in his mother's face when the year before he had been caught shoplifting some clothes and spent 10 hours in juvenile. He wasn't going to make that mistake again. "It was the turning point in my life," Armstead said. "I think about it all the time. I could have gone on with them. I went with them everywhere else. I made a choice." Evans had signed with Tennessee and was considered the top defensive back in the nation coming out of high school. Edwards, Armstead's near constant companion, had agreed to attend Houston. In September 1989, Evans was sentenced to 20 years (he served almost seven years). Edwards was sentenced to 16 years (he served nearly four). Both were released for good behavior, but football for them was over. Both were talented enough to play in the NFL. "Derric would have been a first-round pick, if not a top 10 pick in the draft," Armstead said. "I think Tennessee went and got Dale Carter out of a juco after Derric went to prison."
Armstead went to the University of Miami, won a pair of national championships, and was selected by New York in the eighth round in 1993. He has made the Pro Bowl in each of the past four seasons. Sunday he'll make his Super Bowl debut. And no doubt think of how different life turned out for the three stars of their high school football team. "[My mother's] really proud, because I had a chance to go either way in the neighborhood," Armstead said. "But her and my father fought so I wouldn't go the other way. But a child, when he's 17 years old, has to make a decision whether he'll go right or left. You go right, no matter what you do in life it'll be all right. You go left, and your Mama and Daddy can't save you, because the system has you." Armstead is talking now partly because he regrets not talking back then. He believes he could have kept his friends out of prison by turning them in as soon as he learned of their plans to pull off a series of robberies. "I told them not to do it, but I had an opportunity to tell the [Carter High] head coach [Freddie James] what went on, and I didn't do it," Armstead said. "I was wrong on that part for not telling. Sometimes you have to tell on a friend to help him out. "I feel bad because I could have made a difference in their lives by telling it that day. They could have hated me from that day on, but I would have done the right thing for them. They wouldn't have gone to prison." Armstead didn't buckle to peer pressure because he said he had too much of a promising future to throw it all away for so little.
"I told the Dallas Morning News when I was 17 years old that I was a million dollar check waiting to be cashed," Armstead said, beaming. "You have to make sure you don't let your friends deter you. Friends will try and tell you, 'Hey, man it's cool. Let's go do this.' But, no, it's not cool. It's cool to go the other way. "I think anybody could be in that situation. Sometimes you never know what's going to happen. But you just try and put yourself in the best situation, and try to stay out of it." The juxtaposition of Armstead's choices and the ones made last January by a linebacker on the other Super Bowl team -- Ray Lewis -- is almost too obvious to point out. Whatever you believe about Lewis, no one could argue that he chose his friends well, he put himself in a good situation and he managed to stay out of it. Not completely at least. Many will remember the Lewis story as the morality play of this Super Bowl. In some ways, the last two Super Bowls. Me? I hope I'll recall Armstead's words and choices far longer than Lewis's. But maybe both of them will linger in memory, helping me to re-double my efforts to show my two young sons how stark the difference is between going right and going wrong. Don Banks covers pro football for CNNSI.com.
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