Chasing Space

by Leland Melvin

  But recent research takes this even further, suggesting that elite athletes simply feel pain less than nonathletes, allowing them to push their bodies to almost unfathomable extremes day after day in training situations. Without getting into a fruitless debate over what traits people are born with and what they learn, let’s just say NFL players arrive on the field with a certain ability and willingness to endure pain—including but not limited to exhaustion, trauma, and acute physical pain—that others just don’t have. Consider also the endless combinations of family, social, or even financial pressures that contribute to a player’s motivation to play, and you see how complicated the debate can get.

  In my case, I had always had a mastery of mind over matter and an ability to endure a pretty high degree of discomfort every day to reach a goal way out on the horizon. I figured I was just born this way, or that it happened pretty quickly after I arrived.

  But behind the stats and studies, there are stories. They tell us that success depends not just on individual skill but the strength and variety of the network supporting that individual. In my case, getting to the NFL resulted from the invaluable help of my parents, my neighbors, college teammates, professors, and coaches. They envisioned possibilities for me that I wasn’t always aware of myself. Each, in some way, trusted in me enough to give me a chance.

  During the second week of practice, I was running a route down the sideline accelerating to catch a pass when I felt it—a pull in my left hamstring. I winced and stumbled to the grass. In what would prove to be a stroke of luck, the trainer saw it and he pulled me out.

  That same trainer vouched for me later when Coach Darryl Rogers and his staff discussed which players were injured and which were dogging it. Torn hamstrings can take as long as a year to heal, but I had a few weeks at the most to take it easy. By the end of July, I was training again, and playing well despite being in considerable pain at times. Coach Rogers came into practice and we had a team meeting. “A lot of you guys are in here slacking, trying to make the team by getting on injured reserve,” he said. “If you don’t get on the field, we’re gonna cut you.”

  I was thinking, I’d better get out there. I was not fully healed enough to really be effective, but after hearing this charge from the coach, I felt I had to give it my all. Chuck Long, a rookie but a first-round draft choice, was at quarterback. I got in the game and ran a 15-yard hook. He threw me the ball and I caught it. I remember seeing the position coach and he was really excited. I caught two passes in the game against Philadelphia and another two against Seattle. There was another play when we were at our 40-yard line, man-to-man coverage. I was running down the sideline trying to lose my defender, but I just didn’t have the juice. I dove but the ball was way in front of me. The coach said, “Don’t ever do that again. You’re gonna hurt yourself.” It felt like I was moving in slow motion a little bit and I knew it: My leg was simply worn out.

  A few days after the fourth preseason game, on a Tuesday, someone knocked on my door. I recall it was about 6:45 a.m., and I knew what it meant. Everybody knew that this week would be the final round of cuts before the season started. For reasons beyond explanation, in the NFL the coaches always cut players on Tuesdays.

  My roommate at the time was Lyle Pickens, a rookie defensive back from the University of Colorado. Lyle had been picked up in the ninth round of the draft, and reaching the NFL had been his life’s goal. He heard the knock and, like me, he knew what was coming. “Hey, Coach wants to see you guys. Says to bring your playbook,” the guy barked through the door. I was on a plane home to Lynchburg that afternoon.

  My best friend on the team at the time was another rookie wide receiver, Allyn Griffin, drafted from the University of Wyoming in the eighth round of the 1986 draft. Allyn was released from the team around the same time as Lyle and me, and he recently told me about the conversation he had that summer with Coach Rogers. Allyn was summoned to meet with him in the small room at Rochester College that was the coach’s makeshift office during training camp. As the two men sat across the table, Allyn tried to stay composed. For about twenty minutes they talked about the team, the players, and how Allyn felt about the training, and then Rogers finally got around to the question he’d brought Allyn there for.

  “Do you think you belong in the NFL?” Rogers asked him. To which Allyn replied, “I don’t know.” When Allyn recounted this story nearly thirty years later, he seemed haunted by regret. “Why didn’t I just say yes?”

  It was different for me. I got word of my release from Joe Bushofsky, a man with a big heart. I could tell he felt almost as bad as some of the players he released. I guess I was lucky—he didn’t ask me to weigh in on it. “You always try to be as kind as you can,” Joe said, years later, long after he retired from scouting. “I would explain that the coaches feel the chances of them working with the team are not good. I would tell them right away, ‘You’re being released today.’”

  Most of the players took the news quietly, Joe told me. “They would nod or drop their heads, trying to grasp that their future was not going the way they had dreamed,” he said. “They would sign the release form and then leave, sometimes turning to thank me for the opportunity. For most of them it was not really a surprise, but that didn’t take the sting away. Others sat there in stunned disbelief and argued that they hadn’t been given a fair chance.” Joe recalled one player who thought for sure he’d made the team. “When I told him he was cut, he got very upset,” Joe recalled. “He began to cry. Then he pulled out a Bible and began to read from it.”

  For me, it was a blow, but I also knew that as an eleventh-round pick, and considering my injury, getting cut had always been a very real possibility.

  Sometimes I find myself wondering about certain people in my life, like Allyn, who experienced disappointments and failures. He had a difficult time after his release from the Lions. He went home to Wyoming, where he sank into a depression and wandered for a time into substance abuse until finally turning it around. Today, he coaches high school football and mentors kids who face the same steep odds he did as a teenager. Maybe he would not be doing this important work if he had secured a career with the NFL. I like to think helping others realize their dreams is exactly where he’s supposed to be.

  There are times in our lives when we are told we’re not good enough. Consider that some astronauts applied to the Astronaut Corps more than a dozen times before finally making it into the program. What if they had given up after the first rejection? Growing up I had never seen myself as a professional football player, though once it was within my reach, I moved heaven and earth to achieve it. Now I was returning to my hometown with no immediate plan. What now? I had no idea.

  It turns out I wasn’t done with the NFL. The following morning, I was lying in bed in my childhood room thinking about my next move, when I got a call from my agent, Will Rackley. Will wasn’t really an agent. At least not yet. He just wanted to be, and I was his first client. He owned a business in Richmond, but football was his passion. He was a talker. So I figured he could talk up a deal for me.

  “The Dallas Cowboys want to check out your leg,” he said. “They want you in Dallas tomorrow.” I got on a flight that morning and by the afternoon I was catching passes from Pro Bowler Danny White. Still, I flew home on Thursday and packed my bags when Rackley said the Toronto Argonauts were interested in having me train with them for two weeks so they could evaluate my skills and assess my rehab. Canada? I didn’t know much about the Canadian Football League, but I had a friend on the team from the University of Richmond, Mark Seal. Without any word from Dallas, I had no other options, so I caught a flight to Toronto that Friday morning. Detroit, Dallas, and now Toronto—all in less than a week.

  A few days into the Argonauts’ practice, I got another call from Rackley. “Dallas wants to sign you,” he said, excitedly. The Cowboys wanted me as a free agent for the 1987 season. I was back in the NFL. Once again, I had been given a second chance.

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�� • •

  It was only September and the Cowboys’ minicamp didn’t start until March so I took a job working for Rackley, delivering packages from his office in Richmond. One afternoon I bumped into Dr. Raymond Dominey, the husband of one of my chemistry professors at the University of Virginia. “Why don’t you go talk to Glenn Stoner, at the UVA materials science engineering department?” he said.

  “Why would I do that?” I asked. I was biding my time before playing for the Cowboys.

  “Just go and see what he has to say,” he replied. I drove to Charlottesville the next day. Years later, Dr. Dominey told me he had a hunch materials science would resonate with me because it combined chemistry and engineering, and he was right. I would soon learn that Dr. Stoner was both a brilliant scientist and a football fan, so I think the idea of an NFL player on his staff was too much to resist. On that day, Dr. Stoner offered me a job as a research assistant until the start of minicamp, which sounded a lot better to me than delivering packages. It paid better too. I rented a room in an apartment on Fifteenth Street in Charlottesville and during my free time worked out with the school’s football team.

  I felt right at home. The materials science engineering department might sound like a nerd convention, but the students there were determined to have fun. They all seemed to love the work they did.

  Before long, Dr. Stoner encouraged me to apply to the graduate program even though I was leaving for the Cowboys’ minicamp in a few months. I was reluctant at first, knowing what that would require—long hours of studying on top of playing professional football. But I also had just learned the painful lesson that a coveted NFL career can end before it even starts. Having a backup plan couldn’t hurt. I was a free agent, which meant there was no commitment by the team, nothing close to a guarantee I would win a place on the Cowboys’ roster that fall. The NFL was a gamble. Getting a graduate degree allowed me to hedge my bets.

  I was accepted for the spring semester and started classes in mid-January just before the Cowboys’ camp was scheduled to start. Luckily for me, the engineering program had some classes that were broadcast for remote students. I was not able to attend the classes at the designated times, so the department videotaped my math for materials science and crystallography courses. I could call Dr. Stoner or any of my colleagues in the department whenever I needed help.

  Balancing the NFL and grad school proved to be the hardest thing I’d ever done. We spent ten or more hours a day conditioning in the gym and running drills on the field. Four of those hours we spent lifting weights. One day I was lifting with a lineman, a first- or second-year guy. As he was spotting me on the bench, he turned to Tony Dorsett, who was walking by. He said, “Tony, we’re going to have a good season.” Dorsett, a legendary running back, nodded without missing a beat. He was soon traded to Denver and lasted another year before torn knee ligaments ended his career. Herschel Walker was also there, and I remember him being one of the most positive and encouraging people on the team, always calling the new guys rookies and then laughing with his big southern Georgia smile.

  We would scrimmage in helmets, shoulder pads, and shorts. Technically, there was no tackling. Once I ran a 15-yard crossing pattern and collided with Bill Bates, one of the hardest hitters in the league. He laid the hammer down on me. He was very apologetic, picking me up and telling me he was sorry. Players who had gone to big colleges, like the University of Southern California or the University of Michigan, could come right into the league and make an impact right away. In that sense, the college powerhouses are like the NFL. Having competed in college against Virginia Tech and other big-time programs, I had already been introduced to the NFL’s speed of play.

  When we weren’t training, we ate. We ate a lot. But while most of the guys would do little else besides working out and consuming food, I would also do hours of schoolwork every night. I would get back to the apartment I shared with Fran McDermott, to watch videos of the materials science classes I had missed, and then catch a few hours of sleep before getting up the next day to head straight to the gym. I took my exams proctored by a professor at nearby Southern Methodist University.

  By the time I headed home for a short visit before the team moved training to southern California, I had completely transformed my body. I had bulked up so dramatically that when I pulled up to the house and got out of my car, my parents hardly recognized me. My mother was visibly upset that I had changed so profoundly in only four months. At the University of Richmond I had been in top physical condition, but in the pros I had reached a new level, that of a perfectly tuned machine.

  Back at the apartment, I was faced with a dilemma. How could I learn the Cowboys’ plays when I needed to spend every spare minute studying? The Cowboys’ playbook was a sophisticated three-inch-thick document, with every page containing diagrams and detailed descriptions of plays. I had learned some programming at a minority introduction to engineering program I participated in during high school. So, relying on my knowledge of Fortran 77 and equipped with a new Zenith laptop computer, I programmed electronic flashcards of the major plays. It was a crude system—nothing I would ever be able to sell to Microsoft—but it got the job done. One of the linebackers heard about my flashcards and asked, “Hey, man, can you do that for me? I’m having trouble.”

  I wanted to help him, but with the demands of school and an NFL training camp, I didn’t have the time to do all the work needed to develop a new set of flashcards. I told him I could give him the code so that he could do his own programming, but nothing came of it.

  • • •

  I had been stretching on the Cowboys’ practice field when Danny White called over to me. “Hey, Rookie, let’s throw some,” he said. It was April, nearly five months before the first game. We were in Valley Ranch at the Cowboys’ training facility. Danny knew that a chronic hamstring injury had sidelined my career with Detroit, and we agreed I would run at half speed during the exercises to help me get loose. The play we decided to run was a 15-yard out downfield before angling back toward the sideline.

  All that changed when Tom Landry walked onto the field. Anytime a quarterback has an opportunity to impress the head coach, he’s going to take it. Danny changed the play, did an audible, and sent me deep. I knew Landry was watching, and I thought, If he sees me running half-speed and not go after the ball, he’s going to see me as an unmotivated rookie. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. So, I kicked it into gear, giving it everything I had. I never made it to the end zone. I felt this stinging pain in my upper left hamstring. I came to a stop, holding my wounded muscle. Danny ran over and told me he was sorry. Landry didn’t say a word.

  My decision to go for it put me back in the same spot as in Detroit—another injured rookie trying to make the team. I went to the trainer. The first thing they do is put you on the table, look at the muscle, and put ice on it to minimize swelling and inflammation. Typical treatment for hamstring injuries involves rest, ice, compression, and elevation. The Cowboys’ trainers were always looking for new ways to get guys back on the field, so they sent me to an acupuncturist in Dallas. I also worked with a physical therapist and a trainer as intensely as I’d been working on the field. I was determined. The acupuncturist inserted a needle directly into my nerve bundle, relieving tension and stimulating my muscle until it twitched like a frog leg in a biology experiment. I had ten sessions over a two- to three-week period. The program worked brilliantly, enabling me to fully recover. Soon I would be back to the team’s hardcore practice schedule, in plenty of time for the start of preseason.

  During my recuperation, I visited my professors at the University of Virginia and my parents in Lynchburg before heading to Cowboys’ training camp. At camp, I looked forward to getting started when Coach Landry summoned me to a conference room. “And bring your playbook,” I was told. I took that as a good sign this time. The only time you’re asked to bring your playbook is when you’re getting cut or switching positions, and I knew Landry
wouldn’t cut me before evaluating my leg. He hadn’t seen me on the field much since I had recovered and gained my strength back. I was in top shape. I guessed he had decided to move me from wide receiver to defensive back, which did not seem unreasonable.

  With rookies Landry was very distant. Maybe it was different for first-round draft choices and other top players, but when you’re a free agent you’re like a walk-on. I think he may have nodded his head and grunted at me one time. The real communication and interaction typically came through position coaches. I walked into a classroom carrying my playbook and saw Landry sitting at a long table. For once, he was looking squarely at me. “Leland, I’m releasing you from the team,” he said. And with those few words, my NFL career was over.

  I can’t say I wasn’t angry. I felt betrayed. I hadn’t been given a legitimate chance. That afternoon, I packed my things and moved to my uncle’s apartment in Los Angeles, where I spent a few days sitting on the beach, contemplating what had just happened. My first thought was to keep fighting, to find myself a spot somewhere else in the NFL. I had come this far. But my instincts told me otherwise. And so just as I had done at every other turning point in my life, I asked God for direction.

  Soon it became clear that it was time to turn the page and start a new chapter in my life. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and it was slowly becoming clear to me what I was supposed to do next. I took a flight to Lynchburg and moved into an apartment on Jefferson Park Avenue in Charlottesville for the fall semester in the university’s graduate school of materials science and engineering. I got there just in time for the start of classes.