What's the big deal?

Rams' Faulk shuns talk of rags-to-riches story

NEW ORLEANS -- Marshall Faulk didn't feel like playing the game on Tuesday.

You know the one: Hometown football star returns to his roots to play one of the biggest games of his life, and regales us all with the story of how he made it here despite his humble beginnings.

Or thereabouts. There seems to be a variation on the theme at almost every Super Bowl.

On Tuesday afternoon of Super Bowl media day, it was Faulk's turn to spill the details on growing up poor in his native New Orleans. Questions poured forth on how the St. Louis star running back overcame the odds -- and a childhood partially spent living in a squalid New Orleans public housing complex -- to become the NFL's most productive and talented player.

The media wanted the story of the mean streets. Faulk, at least initially, was closer to just mean. Reporters pressed the homecoming angle. Faulk wanted to just acknowledge that he had come home and let's leave it at that.

But once he dropped the coy act and explained himself, Faulk's take on the story was much, much better than the stereotypical and somewhat clichéd story that we in the media spent so much time chasing. More reasoned. More nuanced. Not to mention original and refreshing.

Faulk's Career Stats Year  Team  Rush  Rec.  TDs  1994  Ind.  1,282  522  12  1995  Ind.  1,078  475  14  1996  Ind.  587  428  7  1997  Ind.  1,054  471  8  1998  Ind.  1,319  908  10  1999  Stl.  1,381  1,048  12  2000  Stl.  1,359  830  26  2001  Stl.  1,382  765  21  Totals      9,442   5,447   110

We know what you're thinking: Now there's a surprise. The media got it wrong. Film at 11.

"I think that sometimes the whole upbringing thing, people want to make a story out of it," Faulk said, surrounded by reporters while sitting in a little white booth on the Superdome sideline. "And I don't want a story. I play football and I love what I do. And that's that. And it has nothing to do with where I grew up or that I grew up in a rough environment or anything.

"There are people who grew up in rough environments, and you just don't hear about it. And they make it in business. They're doctors. They're lawyers. But we're not talking about that. I don't think that makes me what I am. What makes me what I am is that you have success, but you keep your head on straight and you make the right decisions in life."

To save us all some time, here are the pertinent facts about Faulk's childhood in New Orleans: He grew up as the youngest of Cicile Faulk's six sons, and lived until the age of 12 at the Desire public housing complex, among the most destitute projects in the country.

Later, his family moved to a small house in New Orleans that was sometimes heated by the kitchen stove. His mother worked multiple jobs to support her family, and Faulk himself briefly held a job selling popcorn during Saints games at the Superdome. While starring at Carver High, he also cut hair for $5 a head to boost the family's earnings.

Though he is now free, Marshall's brother, Raymond, once was sentenced to seven years in prison for armed robbery. Of the projects that the family once called home, Cicile Faulk last week told the Los Angeles Times:

"If you lived there, you'd understand," she said. "If you can make it out of there, that's good. If you see a black boy get out of there, that's a blessing. You never know when one of those stray bullets is coming."

Faulk on Tuesday was given every opportunity to either wallow in his past, or thump his chest about the escape that football provided him. To his credit, he did neither. Instead, he talked about how his mother taught him right from wrong, how he did not feel deprived because he had nothing to compare his childhood to, and how he wanted out of New Orleans, but not in an attempt to leave his past behind.

"You're misinterpreting what I'm saying when I say I wanted out of here," Faulk said. "I'm not saying, 'Oh, I hate this place.' ... I love coming home. I just didn't want it to stop there. I didn't accept just getting a high school education as it. I wanted to go to college, I wanted to move on. I wanted better things for myself and my family."

Faulk has another, even better reason for not indulging the media's penchant for turning his life story into melodrama. He is trying to drive home the point that you don't have to be a football superstar in order to make a good life for yourself, even if you were born into poverty.

"I try to tell the kids, I'm not trying to run away from where I came from," Faulk said. "It's just that [the media] makes it a big deal. And so the kids think that it's a big deal. And they think that they're up against the Great Wall of China and can't get over the hump. But you can. You've just got to apply yourself. And then you can make it.

"Is it hard? It's hard. I mean, it's not easy. There's some work that's involved. But it's just like everything else -- you work for it, you get it. And if you sit down and you talk about it and you make it like, 'Oh, it was rough. It was tough.' There are kids at home scratching their heads like, 'Oh, boy, I don't have what it takes to make it because I can't run the football like he does.' That has nothing to do with it. When I talk to kids, I let them know it's not about that. You can do it. You don't have to be a football player to do it."

More and more of late, Faulk's on-field toughness has been appreciated by NFL fans, players and coaches alike. But as early as 1992, football fans got a glimpse of that part of Faulk's game. In a 1992 article in Sports Illustrated, while he was still playing at San Diego State, Faulk was quoted saying: "When it's fourth-and-2, it helps if you have an evil side. On fourth-and-2, I'm Freddy Krueger."

It's easy to make the jump that his tenacity must have been forged in those dark early years of his childhood, when almost everything about his daily existence probably seemed like a fight.

Just don't try running your dime-store pyschology past Faulk.

"I just don't think it matters where you grow up in order to have toughness," he said. "I think it's within. I think it's the decisions that you make. It's a mindset. You can grow up in the Little House on the Prairie and if you have the mindset that you're not going to quit, that's that."

This much Faulk did admit to on Tuesday. Ever since the day the Rams lost at New Orleans in last January's wild-card playoff game, he has been dreaming of this particular homecoming. Of playing again on the Superdome turf, in a Super Bowl that for him is at least partly about vindication.

"For me, playing here, and playing in the Super Bowl here, it's huge," he said. "From the last game that we lost right here on this field against the Saints in the playoffs last year, all I thought about were all the things I had to do to get where I'm at right now."

Back home. Back in New Orleans. Back in the NFL's ultimate game.

 

Related information
Stories
SI's Don Banks: Brown does it all for Patriots SI's Don Banks: Patriots' Belichick sidesteps QB issue
Multimedia
Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video
Search our site	Watch CNN/SI 24 hours a day
	Sports Illustrated and CNN have combined to form a 24 hour sports news and information channel. To receive CNN/SI at your home call your cable operator or DirecTV.