0301240459
DETROIT FREE PRESS
030124
Friday, January 24, 2003
METRO FINAL
1D
MITCH ALBOM FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Copyright (c) 2003, Detroit Free Press
OVER THE HILL? NO, RAIDERS' RICE IS STILL ON THE WAY UP
SAN DIEGO -- Ahab had his whale, and Sisyphus had his rock. Jerry Rice has his
hill. It's 2 1/2 miles. He goes straight up. Running. Two-and-a-half miles.
And that's during the off-season.
"I've been doing that my whole career," Rice says. "Every day. You can't get
complacent. Guys come and try and train with me, but a lot of them, well, they
can't finish that hill."
Rice finishes. It kills him sometimes. His thighs burn. His knees hurt. His
breath beats like a sledgehammer in his chest. But he finishes. And how Jerry
Rice finishes has always been what defines him best.
When he was catching all those passes from Joe Montana and Steve Young -- it
wasn't the way he pulled the ball in, it was what he did with it afterward,
motoring across the middle and down the sideline to turn a 10-yard catch into
a 70-yard touchdown.
How he finished.
In the first 12 years of his career, it wasn't just how well he played, but
that he missed only four games total. Four games in 12 years? For a receiver?
How he finished.
And now, at age 40, the oldest man ever to play his position in a Super Bowl,
what matters to Jerry Rice isn't the rings he already has, it isn't the
records he has broken, it isn't his place in the San Francisco sports pantheon
or anything else that is behind him. What matters is the one game he still has
to go.
What matters is how he finishes.
"This is an opportunity of a lifetime," he says of the Super Bowl, which he
has won three times. "And maybe, when you know it's coming to an end, you
cherish it a little more.
"Some of my old teammates don't believe I'm still at it. They bump into me,
and the first thing they say is, 'The old man is looking pretty good.' Then
they say: 'Keep it going.'
"I'm not going to say I'm as good as I used to be, not skills-wise. But
knowledge makes up for everything. When I first came into the league, I felt
like I was going to live forever."
He stops. He smiles.
He doesn't say he won't.
There are really only two questions in Jerry Rice's career. How did he get
overlooked? And how did he get let go?
Rice was not picked until deep into the first round of the 1985 draft. He was
selected by San Francisco, a team that had just won the Super Bowl. Where, you
ask, were all the losing teams? How did they all pass on him? How could Bill
Walsh and his scouts spot something so obvious and so many others miss it?
No one has ever adequately answered that question -- except to say that Rice
attended Mississippi Valley State, a traditionally black university in the
Southwestern Athletic Conference, and some thought the level of competition
wasn't the same as that at some of the bigger name schools. Never mind that
Walter Payton came from a similar program. Some people are slow learners.
But just as perplexing as the 49ers' foresight in 1985 is their oversight 16
years later. They let Rice go. They could have kept him. He wanted to stay.
They let him go anyhow.
Why? Did they get tired of his excellence? Did they think he was done? Or was
it a question of age?
"You know, in this league, they believe that once you get in your 30s you're
over the hill," Rice says. "I never thought it would happen to me. I had
always wanted to play my whole career with one team. But I had to pinch myself
and wake up -- because I saw it happen to one of the best quarterbacks who
ever played the game, Joe Montana. After that, I knew anything was possible."
Typical of Rice, when the 49ers dumped him, he went back to the hill. He ran
up. He ran down. Day after day. He admits now, he didn't know if he were
running for his own exhaustion, but he ran anyhow. And the calls started
coming. And he considered the teams: Detroit, Seattle, Oakland.
In the end, he chose the team across the bay. He kept his family where it was.
He kept his commute pretty similar. The only thing that changed were his
statistical numbers.
They went up.
In his first season as a Raider, he started 15 games and caught 83 passes for
1,139 yards.
In his second season, this one, he started 16 games and caught 92 passes for
1,211 yards.
At this rate, he's liable to break his own records -- the day he qualifies for
Social Security.
Let's put this simply: There is Jerry Rice, and there is everybody else. Long
after he's gone -- and that might be next century -- his standards will
remain. Receivers will shoot at his marks: They will try to go to Super Bowls
in their 20s, 30s and 40s. They will try to amass the 21,000-plus yards and
the nearly 200 touchdown catches. They will try to stay in the kind of
maniacally flexible shape that Rice does.
That's the difference between Rice and the wanna-bes, like Keyshawn Johnson or
Terrell Owens. Rice understands the big picture. He always has had his eye on
it. He never spent much time in the self-promotion jungle, because making too
many commercials or doing too many talk shows keeps you away from your body,
your focus -- it keeps you away from the hill. And the hill, some hill, is
always in front of Jerry Rice.
There's one called the Super Bowl waiting Sunday. Rice, who is older than the
opposing coach, will pull up his socks and lace up his shoes and tug on his
helmet and go running, once more, for that uphill grade, taking with him the
hopes of every balding, paunchy football fan.
Nobody lives forever. The joy is in watching someone try.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. Catch "The Mitch
Albom Show" 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760).
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