by Lex Luger
I wasn’t used to not getting what I wanted, but I eventually pulled myself together. We agreed to make the long-distance relationship work. We’d call each other several times a week, and I anxiously awaited the end of the season, when I could visit her over Christmas break.
The contrast between Sunshine U and Happy Valley was day and night. Where Penn State had been full of rolling hills and forests, Miami was sand and palm trees.
One of the hot spots for students was the quadruple-size swimming pool with an adjacent smoothie bar at the heart of the campus. Girls would wear sarongs over their bikinis to class. It was surreal, to say the least.
The focal point for me was the athletes’ cafeteria. From 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., we could go there and order whatever we wanted to eat—a training table extraordinaire.
I was housed in a coed dorm, sharing a room with another football player. Neither of us was interested in going to class. There were way too many other, more fun, things to do.
When I arrived on campus, I picked up a bundle of books for my classes. I never opened them. It was a Miami football tradition to not “break the seal” on any textbooks. I’m not sure how such a wretched “tradition” ever began or if it’s around anymore today, but it was expected when I attended The U.
As far as interior decorating, we put tinfoil on the inside of our dorm-room windows, closed the hurricane shutters, and then turned the thermostat down to fifty-five degrees, making it like an icebox inside. For us big guys, it was an ideal temperature for sleeping; we were like hibernating bears. We’d stay up until the wee hours of the night, crawl under the covers, wake up at noon to grab lunch, then head off to practice. The daily routine worked perfectly for me; I was practicing with the team but was redshirted, ineligible to play for another year because of the NCAA rule on transfers.
On the days when we did get out of bed early, we’d head over to Crandon Park Beach in nearby Key Biscayne, which was the hot beach back then. We’d spend the day there, making it back in time for practice.
With so much going on, who had time to worry about school?
Because we weren’t opening our books or going to class, we concocted a plan to cheat on tests. It became a game to outwit our professors, who were always trying to catch us. But we had devised elaborate and creative systems of cheating that utilized the help of the Hurricane Honeys—female students who showed visiting recruits around campus—as well as other coconspirators.
Our deception worked, but I have often thought that if we had spent half as much time studying as we did preparing ways to cheat, we’d have all gotten As.
Of course, we made time for a social life, too. On Friday nights during the off-season, we’d load our cars with girls and drive to Big Daddy’s, the local hot spot whose “Drink and Drown” night was a big draw for students. We could drink all we wanted fairly inexpensively, and we usually got pretty hammered.
One night, after drinking at Big Daddy’s, we started talking about the rich kids at school with their luxury cars that their parents had bought them. “They drive around in their Mercedes and BMWs, trying to look cool in their Ray-Bans. Let’s have a little fun with them.”
We parked down the street from a number of sports cars, grabbed the beer cans we had been drinking, and began stacking them on the hoods.
“C’mon, I have a better idea. Follow me.” I scrambled on the roof of a Mercedes and began jumping up and down. A few of my buddies joined me. With two or three of us jumping simultaneously, we could stomp the roofs of the cars down to the seats.
We didn’t consider how much destruction we were leaving behind; it was too much fun while we were doing it. Over the next few weeks, we changed the game and started flipping cars on their roofs; it took us only about fifteen seconds per car. When we finally got bored and stopped, we had damaged half a dozen cars without getting caught.
For all the goofing off we did, when it was time for spring football, I was ready to get down to business.
By the spring of 1978, I had grown to 270 pounds, and following a great spring practice I earned the starting position at right guard. Coach Lou Saban and his staff loved what they saw and soon began touting me as the next great football player to hail from the program.
A Dallas Cowboys scout who attended our practices pulled me aside one day. “Keep working hard,” he advised me, “and you’ll be a surefire NFL first-round pick.” I appreciated his words of encouragement, which fueled my drive. College was a stepping-stone to the pros for me, and I was confident I’d make it.
Miami wasn’t the national powerhouse that it would become a couple of years later, but it was definitely a program on the rise. My future on the gridiron was looking bright. I went home to Buffalo that summer since my parents had moved back.
When I returned to Miami that fall, I shared an on-campus apartment with two teammates—Tony Galente and Jim Burt, who had played high school ball with me. The three of us together were a volatile mix, and one evening a memorable escapade escalated into complete madness.
That night Jim got into a fight on the telephone with his girlfriend from back home. Just a few weeks into the football season, Peggy and I had broken up over the phone, and I was still fuming. Tony was having girlfriend problems too.
Suddenly, Jim picked up his brand-new TV and hurled it to the floor, smashing it to pieces. Tony and I looked at each other for a second, then joined the mayhem.
We went on a rampage, trashing everything in sight. We ripped out the built-in bookshelves, the bathroom sink, and the toilet. In about three minutes, it looked like a hurricane had blown through.
Just then, we heard someone banging at the front door. Burt darted to the bathroom and somehow squeezed his big body through the small window and scurried away into the night. Tony fled out of a back bedroom window. I went to the door and looked through the peephole. It was the resident assistant, a former football player, who identified himself and told me to open the door.
“I’ve called the police!” the RA shouted.
Maybe leaving is a good plan after all.
I hopped out the same window Tony had and nearly fell into the arms of the RA. It was dark out, and my size was intimidating enough that he didn’t say a word, so I just turned and walked away. That night I stayed at my brother’s apartment to establish an alibi. I knew I would need it when I faced Coach Saban.
The following day all three of us were called to his office. Unfortunately for us, after he had been awakened in the middle of the night and told what had happened, he came over to the scene of the crime and saw the damage with his own two eyes. He was furious.
Tony, Jim, and I each looked Coach Saban dead in the eye and lied. I spoke first. “It wasn’t us, Coach. Somebody else got into our apartment when we weren’t there and destroyed it. I was in Fort Lauderdale last night.” Tony and Jim each said they had been with their respective girlfriends.
I doubt there’s any way Coach Saban believed us, but he also couldn’t completely prove we were responsible for the damage, either. Only four games into the season, I’m sure he was reluctant to suspend three of his starters.
That should have been the end of it. We should have been on our best behavior from that point on, grateful to still be on the team after getting away with all we’d done.
But that wasn’t the case.
A week later, the team traveled to Atlanta to play Georgia Tech. It was Friday, October 13, 1978, and we had checked into the Peachtree Hotel downtown.
I was dressed and ready to go to the team meeting when Tony doused me with a bucket of ice water. I was infuriated. Lacking a change of clothes, I decided to skip the meeting and seek revenge. I went to the front desk, pretended to be Tony, said I had misplaced my key, and got a duplicate key to his room. Once inside, I went crazy, spraying shaving cream on the walls and the bed linens and throwing water everywhere. It wasn’t nearly as destructive as the apartment incident, but it was still a big mess. The next day the team lost to Georgia Tech 24�
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First thing on Monday morning, Tony and I were summoned to Coach Saban’s office. “What is wrong with you?” he yelled. “First the apartment, now this? There is no excuse for this kind of behavior, especially on the road. You’ve embarrassed all of us.”
Coach seemed to be putting all the blame on Tony, and as soon as he started mentioning a suspension, I jumped in, explaining how things had happened. I thought maybe he’d admire me for standing up and taking the fall. But his reaction was the exact opposite.
“You’re off the team!”
What? I couldn’t believe my ears. I don’t deserve such a severe punishment.
It was a hard thing to swallow. Coach was using me to send a message to the rest of the team: this is unacceptable behavior for a Miami athlete, no matter how talented you are.
When we left his office, Coach Saban called my mom to let her know that I had been kicked off the team, but not out of school. He hoped I would improve my grades and start behaving like a civilized young man.
All I could think of was what had been taken away from me. I couldn’t eat with the rest of the players anymore; I was relegated to eating in the student cafeteria. And I was prohibited from using the athletes’ training room to work out with my friends. I was already so far behind in my classes that school seemed like a waste of time. So I impulsively marched into the registrar’s office that same day and promptly withdrew from the university.
I called my mom to let her know I had been kicked off the team, but I didn’t tell her I had withdrawn from school. I wasn’t really in the mood to see my parents just yet, so I called Barry.
“Can I stay at your place?” I asked. Thankfully, my brother said I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted.
Of course, my parents found out the whole story soon enough. When the registrar’s office notified Coach Saban of what I had done, he had a staff member call my parents in hopes of tracking me down and reasoning with me.
A newspaper reporter had discovered my whereabouts and did a phone interview with me about what had transpired. If I hadn’t been such a highly touted player for the Hurricanes, it probably wouldn’t have been a big story. But my star had been rising, so this was juicy news. I didn’t hold back. I blasted Coach Saban and the entire Hurricanes program in the newspaper, effectively killing any chance I might have had of ever returning to Miami.
In a matter of minutes, I’d slammed the door on my collegiate football career.
When one door closes, you head to the next available one. For me, it was literally a door.
Because of the league’s rules, I wouldn’t be eligible for the NFL Draft for two years, so in the meantime I needed to find a job. Ideally, I wanted something that didn’t interfere with my daily workouts at Gold’s Gym. The Gold’s Gym franchise really was the mecca for physical fitness in the late 1970s, the place where everyone came to see and be seen. This was the era when bodybuilding became more mainstream, fueled by Pumping Iron, the docudrama starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno. I loved the movie when it came out and read subsequent books like Arnold’s Bodybuilding for Men.
When I was a student at Miami, I had picked up extra money as a part-time greeter at a local club. I had enjoyed being part of the nightclub scene—it had been fast cash and usually problem free. But you had to be ready for the unexpected every night—it was part of the job description.
I ended up working at two of the most popular clubs in Fort Lauderdale: Pete and Lenny’s and Mr. Pip’s. The managers were impressed that I came with experience from a high-end Miami club, one that Joe Namath frequented, so they both hired me. I began working every night, alternating between the two locations. I appreciated that the hours fit nicely into my schedule of dedicated time at the gym, which I continued in hopes of that NFL berth.
I worked the front door at both clubs. The owners liked the fact that I looked imposing and yet was articulate. As with any business, first impressions at a nightclub mean a lot, and I was the first person a customer would see. No one could mistake me for a thug. There were times when all of us—me working the door and the bouncers inside the club—had to muscle a few rowdies, but more often we could reason with people and prevent trouble before it started. We let guests know that if they had any plans of causing a problem, our club wasn’t the place to do it. Night after night, there were people lined up for blocks trying to get inside.
I liked being the greeter/doorman because it fit my personality. After a few months, I decided to work only at Pete and Lenny’s; it was more upscale than Mr. Pip’s, with live bands and a plush atmosphere. I was the manager’s right-hand man and the owner’s bodyguard at the front door.
The drug trade was flourishing in South Florida in the late ’70s to early ’80s, and the club scene attracted some of the biggest local dealers. Everybody knew them. They were all ethnicities and colors: Cuban, Hispanic, Black, Caucasian. The dealers flaunted their wealth and pulled up in Lamborghinis, Ferraris, or stretch limousines. It was like a red-carpet scene every night, as the men strutted into the club wearing flashy leisure suits or sports jackets with lapels big enough to land a plane on. Their shirts were usually unbuttoned to mid-chest to show off a Fort Knox of gold jewelry. On their arms were stunning women with big hair who shimmered in their sequins and iridescent miniskirts, ready to dance in four-inch platform shoes with eight-inch spike heels. Walking was a little precarious for many; invariably someone would fall down inside the doorway, so I started automatically saying, “Watch your step, please.”
As you might expect, the drug dealers never wanted to wait in line. They’d make their way up to the front with their entourages. They’d greet me with “How ya doin’ tonight?” and coolly slip me a hundred dollar bill in a handshake. Either on the way in or on the way out, I was paid for giving them preferential treatment.
It wasn’t unusual for me to pocket up to a thousand dollars a night. At the end of my shift, I’d divide my front-door take with the other bouncers working inside. That was the club policy, and I agreed with it. They had to endure the smoke and the pounding music, both of which gave me a headache.
Being the greeter at the most popular club in Fort Lauderdale does attract an interesting group of friends. The drug dealers weren’t the only distinctive regulars at the club. It was also a late-night hangout for members of the Mafia. All of us at the club knew that these guys were high up in some of the most powerful Mob families in the country. No one mentioned what families they were part of or what their titles were within the organizations. Everything was handled discreetly. Quite honestly, I figured it was probably best to not know much about them. What they did outside of the club didn’t concern me. My job was to treat them with respect while they were there.
Just like the drug dealers, the mafiosi arrived in high style. They didn’t dress quite as ostentatiously, but their attire was expensive and impeccably tailored. Each night at the door, we’d exchange pleasantries. They seemed concerned about my well-being and always asked if I needed anything. I felt their interest was genuine and kept thinking that it was nice to know that there were people outside my family who really cared about me.
As we got to know each other, they started inviting me out to eat when the club closed at 4 a.m. We’d go to a local twenty-four-hour diner to unwind, one that served up great home fries and vanilla milk shakes.
One of the guys took a special liking to me. One night, he asked me if I’d be interested in house-sitting at his place while he was in New York. He came to Florida for only a few days each month.
“I need someone I can trust to keep an eye on the house,” he said. “I’ll leave the keys to the Lamborghini and the Ferrari and the cigarette boat. You can bring your friends over if you want to. Essentially, my house is yours. You just need to make sure the cleaning staff is doing what I’m paying them to do. Other than that, my colleagues and I would like you to meet us at the airport when I get back in town. How does a grand a week sound?”
Hang o
ut at his ritzy house for a grand a week? A lot of NFL players weren’t making that kind of money back then.
It was extremely tempting. From our conversations in the diner, they all knew I was crashing at both my parents’ home and my brother’s apartment to save money. The other two men at the table sat quietly, undoubtedly taking mental notes of my reaction to this generous proposition.
I seriously considered the offer before getting back to him a few days later with my answer.
“Thank you, sir, for the offer. I’m flattered that you thought I could do the job. But as tempting as it is, my future plan is to play professional football, and I need to be ready for that.”
“No problem. You’re right. You need to stay on track for your career. I admire that in a person.”
I was being truthful about my future goals, but I was also relieved at his response. Even though I refused the offer, we remained friends and continued our early-morning breakfasts.
Six weeks after starting at the club, I received a phone call from a University of Miami alum who knew some coaches and scouts for the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. I didn’t know this man or how he got my number, but what he had to say got my attention.
“I know that you want to play in the NFL, but you still have two years before they can even look at you. I’ve heard that you’re keeping yourself in top shape, but that’s not the same as actually getting out there on the field. I’ve been talking with the Alouettes about you. They know what happened at Miami, but that doesn’t matter to them. They are very interested in bringing you in.”
I had played only five games at Miami, and yet a professional team was interested?
“I’d love to hear what they have in mind.”
The emissary did his job. The Alouettes mailed me a contract without ever laying eyes on me in person. They offered me a two-year deal: $30,000 the first year and $36,000 the second year, plus a signing bonus of a couple of grand.
