Facing the demons: After years of battling drug addiction, ex-NFL star Manley ready to start anew
Dexter Manley and drugs. From the high of the Super Bowl to living and using on the streets of Houston. Haven't we heard this story before?
A life that was once filled with limos, adoring fans and other trappings of celebrity has been stripped to concrete-and-barbed wire basics as Manley serves the final six weeks of a two-year sentence for cocaine possession.
If any of the other 2,000 inmates at Lychner State Jail in Humble are aware that he was once one of the NFL's best players, they don't bother him for details.
An outgoing person by nature, inmate 1090194 has stayed mostly to himself as he prepares for his scheduled release March 5. He says he will not watch Super Bowl XXXVIII.
He reads voraciously. He has subscriptions to Newsweek and People and pores over a stack of self-help books. He's taking classes on parenting and cognitive intervention.
He is blunt about the mess he has made of his life.
"I let cocaine rule me," he said. "I've done a lot of destructive things. I've hurt my loved ones. I've hurt myself. I have a lot of amends to make."
Don't get me wrong. I harbor no ill will toward Manley, and I certainly do not wish to see him fail. To me, though, this is just another fallen athlete story- sad, but no different from the issues that assail thousands of the not-so-famous every year. So where is their press coverage? I find it tiresome that athletes who fall from grace are accorded media attention and fawned over as if they had just fallen from Mt. Olympus. Are athletes somehow more deserving of a second chance because of their athletic prowess than those of us mere mortals who don't pull down seven digits? Please, don't get me started on that one....
Again, I wish Manley nothing but success, but why is his struggle any more newsworthy than a non-athlete? Of course, falling from the pedestal an adoring public has placed them on means they have farther to fall, but they are still merely flesh and blood. Pardon me, then, if I fail to properly fawn over Dexter Manley. He made a mistake (in his case, several mistakes), and he is paying the price. Such is the nature of our criminal justice system. So whether it's Michael Irvin or Rae Carruth or Joe Namath or Dexter Manley...ad nauseum, ad infinitum...I'm just not terribly interested in their travails. You do the crime, you do the time; regardless of your 40-yard-dash time or your vertical jump.
