Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One

by Terry Crews

  Whenever we arrived in a new city for a game, the first stop was always a strip club. Even though I had my pornography issue, I couldn’t handle seeing women in that way live. Even back then, I understood that the dynamic of pornography was to get men to see women as objects, which distanced me from the women enough to allow me to deny their humanity, and somehow made it manageable for me, even though I knew it wasn’t good. If we were together in the same room, I saw them as people, and I couldn’t enjoy it. When I walked into a strip club, I knew I was seeing somebody’s sister, somebody’s mother, somebody’s daughter. After our first strip club outing, I realized: Man, I can’t do this. This is not me. I don’t want to do this. And so I sat outside many a strip club while my teammates were inside. It was hard because I didn’t want to be there, but just like in college, I didn’t want to be alone, either. I needed community, and I wanted to be with my crew. I could see how a person’s core values would get chipped away under such circumstances, and I tried to hold on to mine.

  My disillusionment with my teammates was one thing. I liked them as people. I just didn’t want to behave that way myself. The reality check I received from the NFL was another thing, and just like with college football, I was soon disappointed. I saw so much dirty stuff. My friend Anthony’s coaches told him they really wanted him to play in the next day’s game. He resisted because his knee was bothering him, but they persisted, saying he was the future of the franchise. Well, they didn’t play him once, not until the last two minutes, when they put him in for one play. When they cut him from the team the next day, he protested because he was hurt. They told him they had footage of him playing the day before, so he couldn’t be injured. They took his money and sent him away. It was the most brutal thing imaginable.

  Not to mention another fact I soon realized: The individual teams didn’t really matter because all of the money went to the league anyhow. Let’s just say that my whole opinion of everything changed very quickly.

  But there I was, among the most elite athletes in the world, and, of course, I wanted to do everything I could to prove I belonged. And I wanted to take my career in the NFL as far as I possibly could. I certainly wasn’t going back to Flint. This was just the beginning for me. And, besides, I had to keep playing because our money problems were only getting worse. I didn’t end up playing in a game until my second year on the Rams, which meant we had to live on $75,000 for that whole time. That would have been totally fine, except for all of the debt I’d accumulated, and the fact that I insisted on living like I was earning a lot more than I was. On top of that, we had a dismal year, ending up with a 3-win, 13-loss record. Not good, to say the least.

  My second year on the team, John Robinson and the coaching staff who’d drafted me were fired. Suddenly, I had to prove myself to our new coach, Chuck Knox, and his team of assistants. I was low on the totem pole to begin with, and the new coaches came in planning to make a ton of changes, which did not bode well for me. And then I came head-to-head with one of the coaches. He berated me. He dogged me out. He belittled me in every way imaginable. One time, he got a colonoscopy, and he privately showed me the pictures.

  “Look at that, you ever see a pucker like that?” he said.

  “Why are you showing me that?” I said, trying to look away.

  He kept trying to get my attention. “Hey, Tyrone,” he said. “Hey.”

  “No, my name is Terry.”

  “I like Tyrone. I’m going to call you Tyrone.”

  I was seething, but I let it go. He’s not going to break me, I thought. I wondered if maybe it was like that movie An Officer and a Gentleman, where they tried to break Richard Gere’s character until he found the magic way to get out from under them. Only I couldn’t see an end in sight, and nothing I did helped, not even when I played hard and made things happen on the field.

  One day we were in practice, looking over footage from the last game, and he zipped right through the film of me. That time, the other players noticed.

  “Hey, hey, hey, Terry just got an interception,” said Kevin Greene, the star linebacker at the time.

  “Ah, it doesn’t matter,” the coach said. “He’s not going to be here.”

  I couldn’t hide how mad I was. “What is that?” I said.

  “You know what?” the coach said to me. “You sucker, you’re going to end up with an apple and a bus ticket. That’s it. You can’t play. The only reason you’re here is because somebody up there likes you. But I don’t care about you.”

  He made me feel so small, but I was such a pleaser that I wanted him to like me, even though anyone could have told me there was nothing I could do to make things right with him. I took his abuse because I was so scared of losing my place on the team. And then he cut me at the end of the season anyhow. At first, I actually thought that maybe this was just another one of his tricks. But it wasn’t.

  It started to eat at me that I’d never stood up for myself and told him that the way he was talking to me was unacceptable. He had gotten inside my head in the worst possible way and made me feel so low. Now I didn’t have a place on the team, and I didn’t even have my self-respect. Honestly, that was the closest I’ve ever come to killing someone. I plotted the whole thing out, fantasizing about how I would wait for him to come outside after practice. Obviously, I never would have taken it that far, but it got so dark for a time that I felt like I could have done it.

  MY AGENT WAS UPBEAT, SAYING HE WAS GOING to try to get me on another team. There was nothing to do but wait. We’d spent the little bit of money I’d been given, so we were broke, and I kept thinking about all of the things I should have done differently, but it was too late for any of that now. We sat in our tiny apartment, and every little thing set me off. I yelled at Rebecca. I yelled at the kids. I said things to Rebecca she didn’t deserve. I definitely was not nice.

  I felt such immense pain and pressure pushing down on me, and I wanted to give up. I wanted everyone to leave me alone. Not that it helped when people did leave us alone. I might not have wanted to run wild through the streets with my teammates, but I’d loved that feeling of being a part of a team, and I still wanted to hang out with the other players. Well, when we were cut, we called people who had been our friends the week before, and they didn’t call us back. I got it. We weren’t on the team anymore, and they were, and they felt uncomfortable. But it was rough. We still went to the same restaurants and grocery stores, and our kids still went to the same schools, but we were out, and they were in, simple as that.

  Finally, we returned to Flint and moved back in with my parents. The dynamic was problematic from the start. My sister, Micki, was in high school now, and she was always telling me how things should be. We got into a lot of fights. “You know, I’m a grown man with a family,” I said, not getting that the funny thing is, grown men with families shouldn’t move back in with their mothers, except under the most dire circumstances. Here I was, acting like the whole world was my hotel.

  Trish came in and inevitably took sides.

  “Well, your sister’s right,” Trish said.

  I was angry all of the time and scared about what might come next.

  Hard to believe I could be dumber than I already was, but things got worse. Right before the Rams cut me, they gave me a $40,000 signing bonus to come back to the team for a second season, and I went and bought a Nissan Pathfinder, which was the hottest car back then. Never mind that we didn’t have a place to live, and we were staying with my parents, so long as I had a nice car. Rebecca had been very supportive, but she couldn’t keep quiet this time.

  “Couldn’t we use that money to buy a small house, and maybe live there, and we’ll just keep the car that we have?” she said. “Or shouldn’t we get an apartment?”

  “Oh, no, no, I can’t do that,” I said.

  I cringe thinking about it now. I was literally outside of my parents’ house, washing my new car, while my wife and two kids were inside. But at the time, I just wanted what I wan
ted, and I didn’t think about how it was for anyone else.

  Now that I’d been cut, all I had was that car. And the car payments.

  Oh, snap, how are we going to do this? I thought.

  Finally, in 1993, the Green Bay Packers signed me. I went up there to join the team. But this wasn’t quite the solution I’d hoped it would be. The season started up, and I didn’t play. This meant I wasn’t getting paid. They gave me $200 a week to work out, and that was it. I had spent all of the money I had on the car, and clothes, and going out to eat, so I had no money, and the bills were piling up, and the credit cards were not getting paid, and creditors were once again calling all of the time. I couldn’t afford to make payments on the Pathfinder anymore, and soon there were repo men looking for me to take the car back. At least we were lucky enough that my parents let Rebecca and the kids stay on at their house in Flint.

  I spent all of that off-season in a motel room in Green Bay. It was cold and gray. I was still seething about my old Rams coach. I was trying as hard as I could with the Packers, but making the team was a long shot. Nothing was working out the way I’d wanted it to, and my wife and kids were far away.

  So, again, as happened during stressful times, I acted out. I rented a video machine and adult movies to play in the motel room. There were times I got magazines from the liquor store. When I went in, the clerk would ask what number I was, because the only black people in Green Bay at the time were on the football team. I did all of this without a car, walking to the video and liquor stores after I was done with workouts. Sometimes I’d work out in the morning, play dominoes with my teammates at our motel, then work out again in the afternoon, out of boredom, and then act out with pornography at night. In the strangest way, I felt like I deserved it. In particular, on Friday nights, after a long week of training and working out, the guys went out to bars and drank. Instead, I just found some porn and went back to my room. I treated it like my reward for a long week in Green Bay. This was the same pattern I’d had in college, and one I would have well into the years when I’d launched a successful entertainment career.

  Partway into the season, a teacher invited some players to her classroom in Milwaukee to talk to the kids. Well, we pretended it was for the kids, but we really just wanted out of our motel. We went and, compared to Green Bay, Milwaukee felt like New York City. Before the other players and I left, the teacher pulled me aside.

  “Anytime you want to come see the city, you know, whatever,” she said.

  And then she sent me a picture of her, with myself and another player from the team. Rebecca was visiting, and she saw the picture.

  “I don’t like her,” she said. “Something’s up with her.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with her,” I said.

  “I don’t like her.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  Yeah, wife always knows, that’s the deal.

  Green Bay in the early spring is not a tourist destination. I was going stir-crazy. So I went to Milwaukee to see the teacher. She showed me around, and then she set up this whole picnic.

  Uh.

  I felt nervous, but I didn’t want to be back at our motel by myself, thinking about all the things in my life that were going wrong. We spent the entire day together, and when it was time for me to go home, we started kissing in the car. I actually saw my wife in the backseat. I freaked out and yanked myself away.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said. “Oh, this is wrong.”

  I got out of there as quickly as I could. I continued to feel a pull toward the teacher. But when she wanted to meet me again, I knew it was no good, and I wouldn’t agree. At the same time, I didn’t know what I was feeling. Rebecca and I had been married for almost five years, and we’d been arguing more and more in the past year. When Rebecca called to talk, I didn’t know what to say to her.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I feel something’s up with you.”

  After much cajoling, I broke down and told her what had happened. Obviously, she flipped, and she planned to drive up to Green Bay. I didn’t want to hurt Rebecca, but I also couldn’t get clear on what I was feeling about the teacher. My selfishness knew no bounds. I found myself wondering if I’d gotten married too young. Maybe I hadn’t sown enough wild oats. What is my thing for the teacher telling me? I wondered. If I truly loved Rebecca, why did I end up kissing this other woman? Is there something here? I don’t know.

  So I met with the teacher again. Even before anything more could happen, I realized there was nothing real between us. But try telling that to Rebecca. She was furious, and rightly so. As soon as she got to my motel, she started in on me.

  “Did you go see her again?” she said.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Why are you seeing her? I can’t believe you.”

  “I don’t know why. I don’t know what I want. I don’t even know if I want you. I think I’m going to get a divorce, and I think I’m just going to go to LA.”

  Yes, I was a model for the most astounding immaturity. All I wanted was to fly to LA and sit by the beach. That’s how out of touch I was with my family and myself. Rebecca looked like I’d struck her. She started to cry.

  “Terry, just don’t leave me,” she begged. “Just don’t leave.”

  Instantly, it all became clear: Watching her cry reminded me of how far I’d fallen. She’s asking me not to go, so I have to stay, I thought. I can’t do that to her and the kids. I just can’t. I’m a good guy. Well, maybe I wasn’t acting like a good guy, but I knew I wanted to be one.

  What finally shook me out of my crazy fantasy was that teacher, actually. I saw her visiting another player on my team. Wow, okay, I almost gave up my whole life, and someone who really loves me, for this tramp. That was a huge lesson for me. Now I’m sure everybody else could see it, but I’d been so naive up until then.

  I felt so lucky that I’d woken up before I’d lost everything. I went to Rebecca.

  “I’m a fool,” I said. “I saw that chick with somebody else. I think I idealized her, and I don’t even know why.”

  Maybe because I viewed my father as “the bad man” in my household growing up, I looked at my mother as holy. Whatever she said was right. All women were good. But, of course, there are some conniving women out there, and some conniving men, too. And when you idealize the wrong people, it can ripple out into everything else.

  Again, I felt very lucky I got the chance to realize I was just being a young dummy before it was too late.

  So, going into the next season, I put everything I had into camp, and I mean everything. I really gave it my all. I did great, and the coaches liked me, and finally, I felt good. I had my whole family up in Green Bay to watch the last game before the coaches decided which players they were going to cut. It had been such a long, dark time, and we were all ready to celebrate. After the game, I was on my way into the locker room when I heard my name spoken by “The Turk,” the guy who cut people.

  Ugh, no, are you kidding me? I thought. I know I did really well.

  Not well enough, apparently. And I was so close, too. There are forty-five players on a team, but they can keep fifty-three. So when they’re putting together the season roster, they go down to forty-five, and then back up to fifty-three. Well, I didn’t make it through the final cut. I couldn’t believe it. Sterling Sharpe, who was one of the star wide receivers on the team at the time, saw me packing up my stuff.

  “I can’t believe they cut you, brother,” he said. “You were doing your thing.”

  I had given it my all, and it hadn’t been enough. I was devastated. We still had no money. And now I was cut again, and there was nothing to do but drive back to Flint. But I couldn’t bring myself to go home just yet. Rebecca and I had my parents drive Naomi and Azi down to Flint, while we stayed behind an extra day to recover and kind of get our bearings. The day before, we’d been picking out places to live. That’s how confident I’d been. And now it was all over.
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br />   As Rebecca and I drove back to Flint, it was the quietest ride. We were both contemplating all we’d been through, and all of the drama, even just in our own relationship. I didn’t know where my head was at, now that my NFL dream was over. I’d been in it for a little bit, but after what had happened with the Rams, and now this, it clearly wasn’t working out. I was unemployed. I was broke. I began to think maybe this was my punishment from God for all the acting out with pornography, the teacher in Milwaukee, and every other dumb decision I’d made. Do I go back to school? Do I get a job? I was so exhausted, I couldn’t think anymore.

  “Let’s just stop at a hotel, any hotel, and take a break,” Rebecca said. “If we get some sleep, it will feel a little bit better.”

  Rebecca was always talking tremendous amounts of sense, but I never listened to her, except for in my rock-bottom moments. It was only when I was beat down that I could finally see the world as it was. Looking back, I don’t know how she stuck it out with me through all of this. I can only imagine she saw me as the ego-driven, immature narcissist that I was, and realized I was responding and reacting without thinking, and so she figured she had to think for both of us until I grew up a little. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she’d looked over at me sometimes and thought: I can’t leave you. You need me. You’ll die without me because you’re an idiot. She was right, and I’m so lucky I had her then, and I’m so lucky I have her now.

  Of course, where did we end up stopping? The place I most hated and swore I’d never go back to: Kalamazoo. But there we were. We checked in to a motel, and I went right to bed. I couldn’t face reality anymore, and so I lay down and curled up in a ball. Rebecca sat next to me and put her hand on my back.

  “I’m going to call your mother to find out how the kids are doing,” she said.