Peeling back the layers: family life can be complex. So can football. But the clear vision of Michigan State's Charles Rogers makes success on and off the field simple for the nation's-best player

Sporting News, The, Sept 23, 2002 by Steve Greenberg

Devote yourself in full every day to your job or your schoolwork, then get your rear end back to this house and devote yourself in full to your family. Adults will be respected here; children will be supervised. You want to play football? It better not get in the way of your chores. You want to run around at night? Then you'd better be a man and handle your business.

Inside the home of Benjamin Rogers--son of a minister, grandson of a minister, himself a laborer for General Motors in the hard-edged, industrial town of Saginaw, Mich.--the old saws whirred. Despite that, and because of it, here a superstar was born.

Ask one of the people who raised him, ask his high school coach, ask his current coaches and teammates at Michigan State in nearby East Lansing--they'll all say Charles Rogers is as humble and level-headed as a kid from Saginaw with the keys to wealth and fame possibly could be. Rogers is the best player in college football, and next year or the year after--bet on the former--he'll be one of the first players selected in the NFL draft. "And it won't change him," says his uncle Ronnie Rogers. "He'll handle it well because he knows how to face whatever challenge arises. He's already faced a lot of them."

As a wide receiver with great size (6-4, 205) and speed (4.25 seconds in the 40-yard dash), excellent hands and an unmatched ability to adjust to a ball in the air, Rogers is too much to handle for any defender he'll face all year. Not counting his performance in last season's Silicon Valley Bowl--which he dominated with 10 catches for 270 yards and two scores--Rogers has caught at least one touch-down pass in 11 straight games. With one this Saturday against Notre Dame--which MSU has beaten five years running---he'll tie the NCAA Division I-A record shared by former Michigan player Desmond Howard and former Marshall star Randy Moss. One won a Heisman Trophy for the Wolverines, the Spartans' sworn enemies. The other merely is the most gifted wide receiver alive.

Years ago, Charlie Rogers was a boy in need of male guidance. High school would be starting soon, and his single mother, Cathy, who worked nights, didn't want her only child to be alone at home. So she sent him a mile or so down the road to live with her father, Benjamin. He and son Ronnie, an industrial `electrician who always had looked out for Charlie, now had their mitts on him every day. They would teach him to be a Rogers man, which means, in Ronnie's plain speech, "We're homebodies who take care of our responsibilities in every aspect of life."

But Charlie didn't come straight home from school every afternoon. By his junior year, he was a record-setting receiver and a state sprint champion. But he also was a father (to Charnae; his second child, Charvez, came two years later). In his first year Michigan State, the kid who had been wanted by Michigan, Florida State, Tennessee and UCLA was practicing with the scout unit of a team that would go 5-6; he was an academic non-qualifier.

Fortunately, this is not where his story ends. Saginaw can treat its offspring harshly. As Don Durrett, Rogers' coach at Saginaw High and now the school's principal, says, "It's a rough, rough town. You can easily get into trouble. Most of our top athletes don't make it out of here."

Rogers' fellow starting receiver in high school, Daniel Smothers, was murdered four nights after he was offered a college scholarship. Saginaw hasn't had a football player make it big since Terry McDaniel, who's now out of the NFL after a solid career. But along with rising NBA star Jason Richardson, Rogers gives the city's youth hope.

When Ronnie Rogers repeats, "We take care of our responsibilities. Do you know what I mean by that?" he's talking about fathers looking after their children. His nephew's children are back in Saginaw with their mother, but their father is very much in their lives. "It's private, man," is what Charles Rogers says when asked to describe their relationship, but he does offer this: "What motivated me when I had to sit out as a freshman, and what motivates me now, is that I have a family of my own. It's all about sacrificing. We've got an understanding. We look at the bigger picture, and it's going to be pretty to paint."

As he nears the day when he can do wondrous good for the people who need him most, Rogers carries along MSU, a talent-rich program that has yet to turn the corner under, third-year coach Bobby Williams. Quarterback Jeff Smoker, who came in with Chuck (that's what his teammates call him) and has been an inseparable friend ever since, is a terrific player and a strong pro prospect. He and Rogers have distinctly different backgrounds--"I can't even imagine what it's like to have kids," Smoker says, "but I know how much he loves them"--and yet are so compatible on the field it's as if they grew up on the same sandlot.

The Spartans' offensive game plan, like Rogers, is multilayered but simple. Longtime offensive coordinator Morris Watts likes to power run, and he uses his receivers in more ways than anyone in the Big Ten except for Purdue offensive mastermind Joe Tiller. Eventually, though, it comes down to the quarterback and the featured receiver.