by Jim Trotter
“He was so interested in how I grew up—was I raised in a Christian home? How many brothers and sisters did I have?” she said. “They were questions that a man who’s 21 years old and egocentric and self-centered wouldn’t ask. I told him I grew up in a real conservative home, went to church every Sunday, Sunday school and catechism classes. It was something he could relate to.
“He said, ‘Oh, do you remember this little song from Sunday school?’ and he’d start singing it. It was the same songs I knew, but he sang them in Samoan from his Samoan church. I thought, How sweet is this guy? That was a good connection for me. I thought, This guy comes from the same [faith-based] background as me, just a different culture.”
They began spending more time together, and he won her heart with his kindness. For instance, he regularly tried to be available for dinner with her, but during one predraft stretch he was busy in Oceanside for three straight days and didn’t see her. On the fourth day he called her office and apologized, even though she said it wasn’t necessary. He wanted to make it up to her, and so unbeknownst to her he booked dinner reservations and purchased a card and flowers.
“I thought, Wow, what did I do to deserve this?’’ she said. “It made it very easy for me to fall for him and to trust him and to feel secure and safe with him. He worked very hard to be a good boyfriend.”
She tried to keep from falling too quickly, but she saw something different in Junior. He was a big-time athlete who wasn’t full of himself. There was an almost childlike quality about him. He was an imposing mass of muscled humanity, but with a vulnerable, sensitive, innocent spirit. She likened him to Ferdinand the Bull, the physically imposing children’s book figure who prefers smelling flowers to participating in bullfights. He was the type who hurt when she hurt, cried when she cried, laughed when she laughed. It was all fantastic except for one thing: Junior still was seeing Melissa Waldrop—and had yet to tell either of them that he was involved with the other.
This may have been an early example of Junior’s willingness to lie and to manipulate situations. He would tell different things to different people, letting them know only what he wanted them to know. So even as he was wooing Gina in Palm Desert, making her feel as if she was the only woman in his life, he was calling Melissa and saying how much he missed her and Tyler and couldn’t wait to get home.
Waldrop hadn’t known anything about Junior when she transferred to Oceanside High from El Camino six weeks into her sophomore year. He spotted her one day on campus and immediately was smitten, telling a mutual friend that he thought she was pretty. After one football game they were part of a small group that went out together. The two quickly hit it off and were together from that point on. He even gave her a promise ring on their one-year anniversary. He was her first love, and she was his—or so she thought.
Her first indication that Junior might be cheating on her came after high school and college. In fact, it was on Tyler’s first birthday. She and Junior had joined two other couples for a trip to Magic Mountain, an amusement park roughly three hours north of Oceanside. When they returned to the Newport Beach condo where Junior was staying, the phone rang. Junior allowed the answering machine to pick up. The only problem was that the volume was up, and Gina DeBoer was on the other end, saying she needed to speak to him before going to work the next morning.
Waldrop immediately questioned him about it. He gave her an explanation that calmed the situation but didn’t allay her suspicions. The tension carried over to July 4, when she and Junior spent the day hanging out on the beach in Oceanside with friends and other couples. He had become distant, and an argument ensued. Finally, she broke off the relationship. “I hope your football keeps you warm at night,” she said.
One month later Junior and Gina moved in together. The following spring he took her to a sunset dinner in La Jolla and ordered their favorite item on the menu: beef Wellington. She had barely taken two bites when he started asking if she was done. “Let’s hurry up and get to dessert,” he said.
If DeBoer thought Junior was acting strange, she found out why when the dessert menu arrived. On it, Junior had written: “Gina, I love you. Will you marry me?” She said yes through tears of joy, but the evening of bliss would quickly be followed by turmoil. Many of Junior’s family members believed that Gina looked down on them and had no interest in being a part of an unrefined family. She had grown up in Danville, California, a well-to-do area that Forbes magazine listed as having a population of 52,078 in 2012, with an average home price of nearly $700,000. She went to a private Christian high school, grew up around mostly wealthy Caucasian kids, and attended San Diego State. Said another way, her upbringing was everything that Junior’s was not, both financially and culturally.
Before proposing, Junior had a meeting to clear the air with his family at First Samoan Congregational Christian Church of Oceanside. The tension in the room was as thick as a San Francisco fog. Some siblings said they flat out were against the marriage; others merely expressed reservations. One cousin bluntly told him that he would not attend the ceremony if the marriage took place.
“Everyone has skeletons in their closet,” Junior said, exasperated. “If you love me as much as you say you love me, you’ll let the closet remain closed.”
Despite Junior and Gina marrying in March 1992, the door to the closet never closed completely. It remained cracked throughout their marriage.
5
Dream Turned Nightmare
JUNIOR WANTED to play for the Chargers from the moment he turned pro. They had the fifth pick in the draft, and it had been his dream to suit up for the hometown team since he first began playing football as a seventh grader. At night he would lie on a bed and fantasize about wearing a helmet with lightning bolts on the side of it. Once, during his senior year in high school, the Pirates qualified for the CIF (California Interscholastic Federation)–San Diego championship football game, which would be played in the former San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, home of the Chargers. On the eve of the game, the teams were granted a walk-through practice in the stadium.
During a lull, Junior walked up a long, narrow tunnel and down a short path to the Chargers’ locker room. He entered with trepidation and excitement and stood in awe of the helmets and jerseys hanging in the dressing stalls. Chargers equipment manager Sid Brooks finally spotted the young man-child and asked what he was doing. Seau explained who he was and told Brooks that quarterback Dan Fouts was his idol. Then he asked if he could touch Fouts’s helmet. Brooks agreed, leaving the youngster speechless for one of the few times in his life.
Four years later, Junior couldn’t help but reflect on that moment and envision a jersey with his name hanging in the Chargers’ locker room. But would he still be available when the Chargers were on the clock to make their selection?
With the first pick . . .
There was no suspense with this selection. The Indianapolis Colts acquired it from the Atlanta Falcons two days before the draft, then negotiated all night to come to terms with Illinois quarterback Jeff George on a six-year, $15 million deal that included a $3.5 million roster bonus. The Dallas Cowboys initially owned the pick; however, they had relinquished it the previous year when they selected quarterback Steve Walsh in the first round of the supplemental draft. With the number 1 pick out of the way, the real intrigue in the 1990 draft began.
With the second pick . . .
The New York Jets were on the clock and needed a pass rusher after finishing last in the league with 28 sacks. Rookie end/tackle Dennis Byrd led them with seven sacks as a situational player, but no one else had more than four and a half. If they needed confirmation of the value of a dynamic edge rusher, they could look to the New York Giants, a team with whom they shared the market.
In 1981 the Giants defense had gone from being the league’s second-worst to its third-best because of rookie outside linebacker Lawrence Taylor, a ferocious, relentless talent who could take over games by himself. At the time there were a lot of
similarities between Taylor and Junior in terms of size—Taylor was six-three and 237 pounds; Junior was six-three and 245 pounds—and also in terms of competitiveness. But the Jets elected to take Penn State running back Blair Thomas (who turned out to be a flop).
With the third pick . . .
The Seattle Seahawks, who acquired the selection in a trade with the New England Patriots, also needed pass rush help after finishing the previous season with 32 sacks, seventh-fewest in the league, but they felt good about their people on the edge. Linebacker Rufus Porter was coming off 10.5 sacks in only his second season, while starting just three games, and end Jacob Green had at least nine sacks in six straight seasons, including 10 or more in four of them.
The real concern for the Seahawks was on the interior. They were switching from a 3-4 scheme (three linemen, four linebackers) to a 4-3 scheme (four linemen, three linebackers) and didn’t have a guy on the inside who could dominate. So they selected Miami defensive tackle Cortez Kennedy (who went on to become a Hall of Famer).
With the fourth pick . . .
This is where things got interesting. The Tampa Bay Bucs had made it fairly clear that they were going to select a linebacker, but would it be Junior Seau or Alabama All-America Keith McCants? New coach Ray Perkins had recruited McCants to Alabama and once said of him: “He plays like he is never out of the play. That is an intensity level I like.” Still, McCants was not as dynamic a pass rusher as Junior, finishing with only four sacks in his final season. Junior had nearly that many in one game.
“We told all the teams that Junior wanted to go to San Diego and if you draft us we won’t sign, so basically, go fuck off,” said Feldman, his agent. “When the Bucs were on the clock, I hopped on the phone with them and made it real clear: My guy is San Diego–born and –bred, and that’s where he wants to be.”
The irony is that Junior repeatedly had preached that he wanted to be the first linebacker selected. He even tried to prop himself up by putting McCants down. The perfect scenario for him would have been for the Bucs to draft any position but linebacker, thereby allowing him not only to be the first player selected at his position but also to join the Chargers. He got one of his two wishes: the Bucs selected McCants (who played for three teams over six seasons and finished his career with just 13.5 sacks).
With the fifth pick . . .
It was time to see if the Chargers felt as strongly about Junior as he felt about them. Feldman previously had received assurances from general manager Bobby Beathard that San Diego would select Junior if he was available, but Beathard never expected Junior to be there. In fact, he didn’t bring him in for a workout until late in the predraft process because he didn’t want to waste his time or Junior’s.
Billy Devaney, the team’s director of player personnel, was extremely close to Beathard, and he kept asking: “What if you’re wrong? What if Tampa Bay doesn’t take him?” Finally Beathard relented and gave the okay to arrange a workout.
“Bud-dee,” Junior said. “You’re the only team [at the top of the draft] I haven’t worked out for. I was wondering when you were going to get around to calling. What took you so long?”
The call actually may have been longer than the workout. Beathard, Devaney, coach Dan Henning, defensive coordinator Ron Lynn, and a few others took Junior to the practice field beyond the parking lot at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. It was a welcome diversion for the coaches after being cooped up in their offices for draft preparation.
The group asked Junior to run laterally over four or five bags, then do a couple of pass drops. Junior knew they had questions about his ability to drop into coverage because he rarely did it in his final season with the Trojans. Linebackers coach Mike Haluchak was chosen to run the pass route, acting as if he were a running back. Junior jammed Haluchak so hard that Haluchak flew sideways, nearly lost his balance, and pulled a hamstring. End of drill. End of workout.
“Everyone looked at each other and said, ‘What are we doing this for? This is stupid. June, that’s enough. We’ve seen enough,’” Devaney recalled. “Even then, we never expected Tampa Bay to take McCants. When Ray Perkins did pick him, we started high-fiving and loving Ray Perkins. Our card with Junior’s name on it went up to the podium so fast.”
Junior pumped his fist and let out a loud “Woooo!” when he reached the draft stage in New York City. He was late in making his way out to greet Commissioner Paul Tagliabue onstage because he was on the phone with his parents. He repeated to them what he had said to them when he accepted a scholarship to USC: “Dad and Mom, I try hard for the family,” his father recalled.
Junior was warmly welcomed by the community, but full acceptance by team members took time. Everyone knew he had been blessed with physical skills, but some viewed him as a hothead because of his on-field run-ins while at USC and his outburst in the Chargers’ locker room during a predraft visit.
On that day Junior was receiving a tour of the locker room when defensive end Burt Grossman, the eighth pick in the draft the previous year, said loud enough for everyone to hear: “What’s this guy doing here? Where’s Keith McCants?”
“What did you say?” Junior responded.
“Junior wanted to fight me, right there in front of everybody,” Grossman said. “It wasn’t like he was hiding or trying to play cool. He wanted to come over to my locker, and they’re pulling him away. I kept egging him on because I’m like, ‘Ah, this fucker ain’t getting drafted here. I’ll never see him again.’”
Junior was a long way from his childhood, but the instinct to lash out when frustrated was still a major part of his personality. During one of his initial practices with the team, he and defensive end/outside linebacker Leslie O’Neal squared off because O’Neal did not huddle on his command.
“Junior had a chip on his shoulder when he first arrived because he had had the one breakout year at USC, but prior to that he hadn’t really done anything,” Grossman said. “He was insecure in the beginning, like he feared he wasn’t good enough. You’d say something and he’d want to fight. It didn’t matter who it was.”
Because of that insecurity, he had trouble trusting people. When veteran linebackers Gary Plummer and Billy Ray Smith took him to lunch during an off-season minicamp, Junior thought it might be part of the rookie hazing he had heard so much about. He was wrong. Both Plummer and Smith had a mischievous side, but in this instance their intent was to make Junior feel like he was one of the guys after he made a favorable impression on them during workouts.
“The Super Samoan” is how Plummer referred to him in the San Diego Evening Tribune. “You can put two S’s on his chest. Even if he screws up, he has so much speed he’s going to make up for his mistake. To me, the most incredible thing is his catch-up speed. If he’s beaten 1-on-1, he’s got the kind of catch-up speed you see in someone like [Washington Redskins cornerback] Darrell Green but never in a linebacker. I’ve played next to a lot of guys, and that’s all they were—guys. There’s just no comparison. You don’t expect to see that kind of athlete at that position.”
Still, everyone knew it was critical for Junior to be signed and at training camp on day 1 because he had so much to learn. At USC, because he played outside linebacker—and defensive end in some passing situations—everything came at him from one side. That made it easier for him to read the offense and play with abandon. But the Chargers planned to use him at inside linebacker, where things would be coming at him from the left and the right. He had to be able to process information quickly; otherwise, he’d lose the half step or full step that often is the difference between making a big play and giving up a big play.
Beathard was scheduled to open contract talks with Feldman on the final day of the minicamp, which was held in May. “I’ve come here to be a football player,” Junior said to the media at the end of the camp. “If the business part comes to a point where I have to sit out and lose experience, that would be distasteful. It’s a big jump for me now, and I don’t want to slip backwa
rd. If I come in late and I’m not in top shape, I shouldn’t be the one to blame.”
His words were foreboding. The prospect of a contract stalemate first materialized a week before training camp when McCants, selected one spot ahead of Junior, signed what was reported to be a five-year, $7.4 million contract that made him the highest-paid linebacker in football, with an average salary of $1.48 million a year. (The deal turned out to be for $1.2 million a year, just under what Taylor was making with the Giants.)
Feldman already had publicly stated that Junior wouldn’t sign for less than McCants, and Beathard had privately let it be known that, based on the league’s slotted salary scale for rookies, he was not going to pay the fifth pick more than the fourth pick. More troubling, Feldman disclosed that the sides were separated by an average of $1.1 million a year, a staggering figure with training camp so close to starting. Junior was seeking $1.8 million a year on a three-year deal, and the Chargers were offering $700,000 a year.
Beathard became irked when Feldman took the negotiations public. The agent argued that Junior deserved more than McCants because the two of them conspired to have Junior fall to the Chargers. He also argued that Junior was at least the second- or third-best player in the draft and would have gone higher if they hadn’t scared off teams by saying that he’d refuse to sign with them if they drafted him.
Beathard wasn’t moved, and he let it be known internally and publicly that he was not going to be bullied. He had the résumé to stand up to a popular first-round pick because he had been successful everywhere he had been, first as a scout or personnel man with the Chiefs and Dolphins, then as general manager of the Washington Redskins, who in the 1980s won two Super Bowls in three appearances under his direction. It’s not often that the hiring of a general manager excites a fan base, but Beathard’s arrival in 1990 marked the first time in six years that the Chargers’ season-ticket sales increased. Fans trusted Beathard and believed in him. There was no chance of him being bullied, regardless of the fact that the Chargers had not been in the playoffs since 1982 and had finished last in the AFC West in three of the previous six years.