Simeon, begin again

Sporting News, The, Sept 4, 1995 by Terry Frei

The waiter in the Champaign, Ill., steakhouse finally stops asking Simeon Rice if he wants more orange juice and begins dropping off a new 32-ounce glass about every three minutes. Rice slugs down the O.J. as if it were Gatorade and this is a practice in 99-degree weather.

No notebooks are out, no tape recorders are on the table. When he's not drinking, Rice -- the 6-foot-5, 252-pound Illinois outside linebacker who has a long-shot chance at winning the Heisman Trophy and is the early favorite to be the No. 1 overall NFL draft pick next spring -- is talking about everything from his recruiting trips to student life.

The spotlight is getting brighter, I think, but Simeon doesn't seem to have changed much in the past year.

In March 1994, I was in Champaign, working on a story for THE SPORTING NEWS College Football Yearbook on Illinois senior inside linebackers Dana Howard, who eventually would win the Butkus Award as college football's top linebacker, and John Holecek. The Yearbook also rated Illinois' four-man linebacking unit as the best in the country. But in Champaign, as I watched tapes of Illini games, this point was driven home: The junior outside linebackers, Simeon Rice and Kevin Hardy, were better pro prospects than Howard and Holecek. Hardy was a solid, big and fast linebacker in the NFL mold. When Rice went after the passer, he seemed unblockable. Tight ends, tackles, double-teams. Nothing seemed to work.

I ended up writing a short accompanying story on Rice for the Yearbook, and when I talked with him, he was engaging and mischievous, telling stories on himself, many of them about his roguish days at Chicago's Mount Carmel High School.

Now we move ahead a year. When TSN editors asked for college football ideas for this fall, I mentioned Rice. The two NFL scouting combines, National Football Scouting and Blesto, have him at the top of their preseason rankings of 1995 seniors. NFL teams have yet to think much about the '96 draft, but entering the season, Rice is the hottest pro prospect in the college game.

So I visited Champaign and Rice again. We talked about, among other things, why he returned to Illinois for his senior season, even though he probably would have been a midfirst-round draft choice last April and would be driving a Lamborghini about now.

THE DRAFT DECISION

It is last January, and Rice and Illinois Coach Lou Tepper are in Tepper's office. While they wait to make a speaker-phone connection with the Carolina Panthers, Simeon -- who has just completed his junior season -- is confused, and he hopes this phone call helps him make up his mind about whether to declare himself eligible for the '95 NFL draft.

His parents, who have lived in the same five-bedroom house in the Rosedale section of Chicago's South Side since the early '70s and have watched the neighborhood go from tough to perilous, want him to return for his senior season.

His mother, Evelyn, says shel'll back him whatever he decides but strongly votes for Simeon to stay in school and get his degree.

His father, Henry, a 26-year veteran of the Chicago assembly line at the Ford Motor Company, is proud that he and Simeon not only "talk about everything; there are no secrets," but that Simeon listens, too. "I raised him the right way," Henry says. "I brought him up in Christ." Over the years, Henry has taken Simeon to the Adventist Church and watched him get involved in the Pathfinders, the church's equivalent of the Boy Scouts. If you even hint that Simeon has a mischievous side, Henry's voice takes on an indignance. Simeon's a gentleman, Henry says. Never been a problem.

So when the draft issue comes up, Henry and Simeon talk it through, too. Get the diploma first, Henry says.

But there is a new complication, tossed in by dart-thrower Mel Kiper Jr.: What if Simeon could be assured of going No. 1 in the draft? Kiper is saying that Rice could be the top overall pick in the '95 draft if he declares himself eligible. Ahead of Ki-Jana Carter. That kind of top-of-the-board financial certainty is difficult to turn down, and even Tepper has decided he will shake Simeon's hand and say good luck in the NFL if he's destined to be the first player taken.

Exact draft position aside, Simeon has heard all the suggestions that returning for one more season could expose him to possible injury, to slippage in the draft. Get the money now, Sim; isn't college all about career positioning? Does leaving college mean you can't go back for a degree? And no matter what your parents are saying, Sim, think about it. Your dad has been working those eight-hour shifts at Ford five days a week, and if you turn pro, you might be able to help him become a man of relative leisure. Your mother has been a career teacher, often working with troubled youths. You can pay your parents back, Sim. Now. If you wait until next year, Sim, who knows.

All of this is still swirling around Rice as the voice of Panthers General Manager Bill Polian bursts out of the speaker phone.

Simeon, Polian says, you're a great player, and next year you have a very good chance to be the No. 1 player taken.