Starting Over

The other coaching job Williams covets is at Grumbling, which has produced more than 100 NFL players. Williams graduated from Grambling in 1977 and has maintained close ties to the school and to its living icon, Eddie Robinson, who has won more games, 405, than any other college coach. Robinson, 78, will retire at the end of this season, und Grambling alumni often talk about Williams as a possible successor. Williams says coaching the Tigers would be a dream. But Grambling does not offer coaches multiyear contracts, and Williams says he cannot afford to work without one. Moreover, he's contractually committed to Morehouse through 2001.

The assumption is that if you've had a career in the NFL, you're set for life financially, but Williams says that's not necessarily so. Athletes' salaries seem extraordinary to the ordinary worker. But the money goes, says Williams, who made more than $1 million in two of his 11 pro seasons—nine in the NFL and two in the USFL. There's the agent, the taxman, gifts for family members, expensive vehicles, houses in two places, und before you know it, you're not us rich us everyone thinks you should be. Williams has children to educate. He had a daughter, Ashley, now 14, with his first wife, Janice, who died from a bruin tumor in 1983. (Ashley lives in Zachary with Laura.) His second marriage, to Lisa Robinson, ended in an acrimonious und expensive divorce; their son, Adrian, who is eight, lives with Robinson in Atlanta. Williams und his current wife, LaTaunya, a nursing student, have a son, D.J., who is nearly five, and a daughter, Jasmine, who is three. They live in suburban Atlanta. "Someday she'll work, but I'm the breadwinner for now," Williams says. "We ain't rich und we ain't poor, but I've got to work."

He means that in every sense. Rich or poor, he'd still want to coach. Football fascinates him, and he knows of nothing more satisfying than shaping the lives of young players. He's particularly happy to be at a school devoted to educating black men. He remembers when the Klan burned crosses almost every Friday night in Zachary. He remembers an annual warning to stay away from Highway 67, Zachary's main road, when the traffic for the Ole Miss-LSU game was coming through town. There was always the fear that a drunken redneck might throw a whiskey bottle at a black kid standing by the side of the road. Education, Williams believes, is the best defense against racism. Black colleges, he says, create a sense of worthiness in a black student in a way integrated schools cannot. When he goes on a recruiting cull for Morehouse, the sell comes naturally to him.

The day after his telephone conversation with Mays, Williams found himself walking down the corridors of Palm Beach Lakes High. (Nobody in the history of Morehouse had had a requisition approved more quickly.) Mays was impressed. Williams visited Mays's home und talked to him quarterback-to-quarterback, man-to-man. "Couch, you have to stay tonight und watch my girlfriend play basketball," Mays said to Williams.

Williams's mind raced. He hadn't put in for an overnight stay on his requisition. He had planned to fly back to Atlanta that night. Would the expenditure be approved? Would he be reprimanded?

"Watch your girl play hoops? Love to, man."

Before they left for the game in separate cars, Micah Mays turned to Doug Williams—yes, that Doug Williams—and said, "I'm coming to Morehouse."

Williams smiled. The old quarterback had found a new one. It was a start.