Passion fish

Sporting News, The, Oct 23, 1995 by Paul Attner

"Regrets? You know what I've never gotten to a point where I say, `Damn, that was dumb and I wish I had never done that.' Whatever happened, I can Eve with. Like the drinking. I grew from the experience. The NFL didn't make me drink. That was my fault.

"When my mom and wife talked to me about the drinking, I cursed at them. I never cursed at my mom before. I went into a room and I cried. I knew I had a problem. I had to stop. It was a weakness on my part and it was something I should never have done. Instead of carrying everything inside, I should have let them share in my problems."

Cox, who speaks in a low, husky voice, is becoming agitated. He grows louder. He be. gins talking about the NFL. Oh, how he hates the league. He believes officials have singled him out "to make me seem like some kind of idiot." He calls Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and his underlings in New York 'a bunch of clowns ... who have never played this game. They don't know what it is to be in here putting on a jock strap every day. They don't understand the psyche of an athlete." (An NFL spokesman says the league would have no response.) Cox lambastes rules changes that attempt to remove violence from the game and protect his enemy - quarterbacks. ("They are trying to make things so nice, it is pathetic.")

He criticizes those who fight the idea that abortion decisions should be made "between the woman and her Maker." He complains that "minorities are catching hell in this country and people don't realize it. All we get is criticism; we could use a pat on the back sometimes, too."

Honesty, he says, gets him in trouble. "People think I am a real jerk sometimes. But I would rather say what I believe than have them wondering."

He soon is talking about his father. They were estranged when his dad died in 1992; Bryan was outraged that his father had started selling drugs again soon after being paroled from a prison term for dealing illegal substances. "I was so angry for so long," Cox says. "But now I am trying not to spit on his grave anymore. We weren't talking when he died, and I can't say anything to him and that is a shame. He had arthritis. Maybe dealing drugs was the only way he could support his family. But all I know is that I want to tell him I love him and he isn't here to hear me."

Cox really has never rid himself of the fingering scars from his years in East St. Louis. "Here," he once said, "if you are soft, you are dead." His brother, Tony, a born-again Christian, still has a bullet lodged in his hip, a memento from drug-dealing days. Bryan has faced a gun point-blank at his head. Fire bombs from a warring drug faction leveled a home next to his family house. A strong family environment kept Bryan out of gangs, but not out of constant scuffles. He left his hometown strong and tough and bitter about a world that didn't do a whole lot to better his life or improve the plight of his community.

Of course, others have been motivated by the kind of anger that pushes Cox, and others have been just as aggrieved by society. But they chose not to get into the fights and confrontations that have littered his career. His behavior has prevented us from getting a better-rounded view of what really is a thoughtful, engaging person who cares about the world around him. His opponents certainly wonder about him. He's a novelty to some, a wacko to others. "To be honest, I had an image about him," says defensive end Trace Armstrong, the former Bear in his first year with the Dolphins. "I wondered what it would be like playing with that nut. But you find he is different than you imagined. You see where his passion sometimes clouds his judgment. But he wants to win badly and his heart is in the right place."