by Jim Trotter
Junior was ecstatic with the selection. He knew the chances of winning a championship increased significantly with a franchise quarterback, and as much as he respected guys like Stan Humphries, Jim Harbaugh, Erik Kramer, Jim Everett, Craig Whelihan, Todd Philcox, Sean Salisbury, and Gale Gilbert—quarterbacks who had taken snaps for the team over the previous three seasons—Leaf had the arm, bravado, youth, and college résumé to be a difference-maker.
But Junior had been the dominant face of the franchise for nearly all of his career. People immediately wondered: how would he take to a teammate stealing some of the shine from his star? The question went from a whisper to talk-radio shouting two months later when Junior skipped the start of a voluntary team minicamp, something he had never done before. In fact, the move had more to do with money than jealousy.
The contract that Junior had signed eight months earlier had essentially become obsolete because of a sharp increase in the salary cap, which created space for bigger contracts than the one he had signed. Junior wondered if the team knew the cap was going to jump and purposely signed him before it did so.
“Junior’s got something that he feels strongly about, and he’s gonna deal with that in his own way,” said middle linebacker Kurt Gouveia. “If you felt strongly about a situation or something that bothered you, and the only way to express that is by doing what he’s doing, I don’t blame you. Obviously he’s one of our leaders and we want him to be here. But sometimes you have to step back and say, ‘Man, he really feels strong about something that he’s upset with.’”
Gouveia may have been understanding, but Junior’s absence seemed to catch everyone else off guard. Gilbride said he was “shocked”that the team’s leader wasn’t present, and Beathard called the move “selfish.”
“One of the great qualities of leadership is not being selfish,” Beathard said. “Football is a team game, and it takes every single part to keep making progress to get to where we want to go. These kinds of things slow down progress and set things back. We’re not at a stage where we can afford to do that.”
The characterization that he was selfish stung Junior deeply. He had always considered himself a team player. He was there for anyone who needed him, and he never spoke out against the organization at times when nearly everyone outside the franchise was doing so. Now his character was being attacked by the same people he felt he had protected?
He allowed the Chargers to control the narrative for a full day, then hired a PR firm to perform damage control. The agency issued a statement from Junior in which he reminded everyone that the minicamp had been voluntary. He also stated: “Due to a rigorous travel schedule, I will be away from home for most of the month of June. This is my only opportunity to enjoy a short family vacation.”
The fallout was so severe, however, that he returned to San Diego for the final two days of the camp. He claimed that he was fine with his contract, but it was clear during an uncomfortable media session that he had issues with his coach and general manager.
“I love Bobby,” he told the media. “Bobby and I, we’re boyfriend-girlfriend. That’s my girlfriend, and I’ll apologize to her and we’ll get back together. It’s quite all right. My head coach? That’s my other girlfriend. They get kind of temperamental, you know? . . . We’ll come to a point where we understand each other.”
“I don’t even understand that, much less [feel] able to answer it,” Gilbride said when asked about the comments. “Sometimes when you don’t have a lot to say, you say some things that don’t make a lot of sense . . . When you’re 4–12, you’ve got to be here. You’ve got to be willing to pay the price.”
Privately, Junior seethed at the “pay the price” comment. What did that mean? For nearly a decade he had given the organization everything he had, physically and emotionally. He didn’t rip management for forcing out the lone coach to take them to a Super Bowl so it could replace him with a purported offensive guru (Gilbride) who oversaw a passing game that produced a league-low 12 aerial touchdowns in his first season in San Diego. Pay the price? In Junior’s mind he had done that 10 times over.
He wanted to lash out even more than he did in that awkward press conference, but he knew he couldn’t. It would feed the perception that he was selfish and might cause the public to turn on him, as it did his rookie year when he held out. It also would have forced him to answer to his father. So Junior turned inward. He leaned more heavily on Gina and passed on nearly every interview request.
His silence didn’t help matters, though, particularly after he laid a vicious block on Leaf during training camp. The rookie QB had thrown the first of what would be numerous interceptions in his career, and as the defense returned the ball down the field during the morning practice at UC San Diego, Junior intentionally leveled Leaf.
Onlookers gasped at the force of the hit. It’s widely known that quarterbacks are not to be touched in practice. They typically wear red jerseys to remind teammates they’re not to be hit. That awareness is raised tenfold when the quarterback has just received a franchise-record $11.25 million signing bonus and is considered a key to the season. What was Junior thinking? How could he risk injuring Leaf?
In Junior’s mind it wasn’t about jealousy; it was about respect and protocol. There’s a code among players that issues between teammates are handled within the locker room, with management and coaches never being brought into the equation. Leaf infuriated teammates when he whined to management that a group of veterans had used his credit card to pay a $2,800 dinner tab and place a $1,500 bid in his name on a Qualcomm Stadium skybox.
In the players’ minds, it was part of the rookie initiation process. Nearly every other high draft pick had been treated in a similar fashion during their first training camp. But by complaining to Beathard, Leaf had broken the code and needed to be reprimanded.
“When the guys found out Ryan had gone to Beathard, they were so pissed,” said Billy Devaney, the team’s director of player personnel at the time. “Junior wanted to send a message. He hunted Leaf down and de-cleated him. The whole defense came over and high-fived him right away.”
Junior was old school—from the R&B tunes he often blared from a stereo system in the locker room to his respect for authority, to his attitude about the game. Issues involving players were meant to be handled by the players. When some veterans gave him the cold shoulder when he was a rookie, refusing to huddle for him after he failed to participate in training camp because of the contract dispute, he didn’t run to Beathard. He kept working until he had their respect.
But now, for the first time since his rookie season, Junior found his character being attacked. Making matters worse was that he was dealing with a significant drama in his personal life. Gina had noticed irregularities with the phone records earlier that spring. She tried to ignore them, but when she began finding handwritten messages for him at the restaurant—from women she didn’t know—her gut told her something wasn’t right. She bluntly questioned him about it.
“A woman always knows if something’s not right,” Gina said. “You know the patterns and behavior. I confronted him. I told him, ‘I don’t know the extent of how much you’re cheating, but if you want to continue this behavior, that’s fine. You will not have me at your side to do it, though.’ I was very direct. I said, ‘I love you, but I think you’re making poor choices. I’m not going to stand for it.’ I threw all my cards on the table, everything that I had. I asked him, ‘What’s going on? Do you want to be with us, or do you want to be a bachelor? Just tell me.’
“He felt terrible and owned up to some stuff. A friend of his was caught cheating by his wife, and the next night I was going to visit his friend’s wife, and he thought by me doing that I was going to learn everything he [Junior] was doing. The night before I went over there to visit her, I came home and he was waiting up for me at 11 or 12 that night. He was like a deer in headlights.”
When he finally admitted to cheating, Gina’s voice wasn’t the only voice th
at sent him to a dark place. His father’s did as well. He could hear the words from his childhood about the importance of honoring the family name. Junior felt ashamed that he hadn’t been the man others believed him to be—and the man he wanted to be. He promised to change—to part company with destructive friends, spend more time at home, and attend counseling sessions. He also reconnected with the religious roots he’d established while growing up in the church.
The change in him was noticeable to everyone at the training facility. The meter on his larger-than-life personality had been turned down from 10 to 5, and his toothy smile had been replaced by a soft grin. He was respectful but distant toward the media, turning down nearly every interview request until Thanksgiving week, when he told a reporter that he was working hard to become a better teammate, husband, and father.
“I can’t say he’s a man of God now, as if he wasn’t before,” Gina said at the time. “I just think he’s walking the walk better, not just talking the talk. He’s a living testimony now of just being a good man, you know what I mean? There’s a difference between saying it and doing it. Actions are so much more powerful than words, and his actions have stood up to his testimony of what he wants to do and what he wants to be.”
Junior also directed more energy toward his foundation after hiring Bette Hoffman. The two met on a lark. Junior was having a luncheon to raise money for his foundation’s “SACKS for San Diego” program, which asked donors to contribute up to $100 for each sack the Chargers recorded during the season. The money would fund programs to help kids avoid drugs and violence. Hoffman wasn’t supposed to attend the event; she had had a previous meeting scheduled that afternoon. But when her appointment was canceled, the phone rang. A friend had a last-minute cancellation and wondered if she’d like to join her at Junior’s luncheon. Already dressed for a business meeting, she said yes.
Hoffman didn’t know Junior personally, but she was aware of him because he and Gina were members of the United Way Tocqueville Society, a charitable program that focuses on volunteerism as a vehicle to create life opportunities within at-risk communities. Hoffman had previously crossed paths with Junior while doing work for the United Way, but those encounters had usually consisted of nothing more than “Hello” or “How are you?” This time they had a substantive conversation after the event ended.
Junior asked what she thought of the luncheon. Her first thought was that it wasn’t well organized. She was doing consultant work for nonprofits and told Junior she’d be happy to work on his fundraising committee, not realizing that there was no such committee. The next week Junior called and asked if they could meet. He wanted her to assist with his foundation.
Hoffman initially declined because she was busy with other projects, but Junior persisted. “‘Nobody can say no to Junior,’ he said. After about two or three meetings, I said, ‘Okay, I’ll give you one day a week.’ Pretty soon I was overseeing the foundation and the restaurant and everything else that he had going on.”
The foundation was operating far from peak efficiency at the time. Junior and Gina started it in a home office, and while their hearts were in the right place, neither had the business acumen to help it reach its full potential—despite Junior being named the NFL “Man of the Year” in 1994 for his community work. For instance, his big fundraiser each year was a weekend golf tournament that drew only 23 foursomes, half of what a tourney should attract at peak efficiency. Hoffman explained to him that the first order of business was moving the tournament from June to March; that way it wouldn’t be on the tail end of the NFL fundraiser season. In two years the tourney doubled the number of participants and maxed out, at 56 foursomes.
Hoffman and Junior were a formidable team because one was strong where the other was weak. Junior had the star power and charisma to attract donors; Hoffman had the organizational and planning skills to stage quality events. However, it didn’t take long for her to realize that Junior was a sponge when it came to business: he quickly absorbed all facets of fundraising. “I’d have a budget and projection formula that I work with for money coming in and how to manage it, and he got it immediately,” she said. “I had worked with a lot of CEOs, and sometimes they’d have trouble understanding that part of it because they all had CFOs. Not Junior.”
Typical of Junior, he wasn’t satisfied with the foundation being good. He wanted it to be great, and in Hoffman he had someone who shared his vision for making it a game-changer and life-changer for kids and young adults. In no time the foundation was awarding 17 $1,000 scholarships, each renewable annually for four years. It also provided tutoring and mentoring for at-risk youth, including Pina Tinoisamoa, a talented but troubled athlete from the Oceanside area who was facing what amounted to a third strike after being locked up as a teenager.
The Junior Seau Foundation was sponsoring a “Gang Busters” program at the time, and two of its organizers spoke to the court on Tinoisamoa’s behalf to secure his release. The program then worked with him to improve his grades. Ultimately he earned a football scholarship to Hawaii, and in 2003 the linebacker was drafted in the second round by the St. Louis Rams.
“The Gang Busters program helped set me straight,” said Tinoisamoa. “With it being right in the community, it was something that saved my life. That was Junior. He knew how important something like that program was. He went through it with his brother Tony. He knew how prevalent gangs were, and he wanted to do what he could to give us alternatives, positive alternatives. He had people surround me and help set me straight so I could live my dream. They would pick me up from school and take me to their after-school program.”
Over time the foundation would distribute some $4 million to various programs. It also would shut down Junior’s restaurant each Thanksgiving to feed families of domestic violence and military personnel who couldn’t be with their families. At Christmas it would hold “Shop with a Jock,” one of Junior’s favorite events. He’d bus kids from Oceanside to San Diego, where they’d receive $100 gift cards to purchase gifts for family members from the department store sponsoring the event.
The foundation helped distract him from the issues surrounding Leaf, whose poor work ethic and lack of accountability made him an outsider in his own locker room. Signs of trouble for the former Washington State star were there from the start. In addition to the negative scouting reporters, Leaf had persuaded owner Dean Spanos to fly him to Las Vegas the night he was drafted so he could attend a friend’s birthday party. When he flew to San Diego the next morning for the introductory press conference, Leaf appeared hungover. Later, he skipped the final day of a mandatory rookie symposium and was fined $10,000 by the league office.
For Leaf, it was one misstep after another, the most memorable coming the morning after a week 2 loss at Kansas City. Upset that a reporter had written about his boorish behavior toward a cameraman following the defeat, Leaf erupted when the reporter spoke to him the next day. “Don’t talk to me!” he yelled while standing over the reporter in a threatening manner.
At that moment, Junior could have allowed Leaf to dig an even deeper hole, but the perennial Pro Bowler silently stepped in and grabbed Leaf’s arm before leading him away. He also didn’t publicly attack Leaf six days later after Leaf threw four interceptions in the first three quarters and was benched in a home loss to the New York Giants. Instead, he said the team had to get better.
By then it was apparent that the season was not going to end well for Leaf or the Chargers. Leaf was in over his head, Gilbride was on the way to being fired just six games into the season, and the Chargers were headed for their third straight nonwinning year (they finished 5–11). Junior refused to let the team completely unravel, though. Despite being hindered by an offense that routinely compromised the defense by committing an astounding 51 turnovers—22 above the league average—San Diego led all clubs in total defense and rushing defense. The tougher times got, the harder Junior worked.
“I once asked him why he practiced so hard,” sai
d Harrison, his teammate in San Diego and New England. “He said, ‘Rodney, I get paid to practice. I play the game for free. Anybody can go out in front of 70,000 and get excited and play a game. But it takes a special person—not a special player, a special person—to practice at game speed.’”
When quarterbacks coach June Jones was promoted to interim coach following the firing of Gilbride, he sought to put his own stamp on the team. Jones was a morning guy, so he switched the practices from their customary afternoon slot to 8:00 AM. His expectation was that guys would show up at 7:30, get taped, get dressed, go to the morning meeting, hit the field, then do their weight training in the afternoon. However, when Jones arrived for his first full day on the new job at 4:30 AM, one player was already there. It was Junior.
Shortly after, Junior started what came to be known as the Breakfast Club. It was early-morning weight-training sessions that took place before players were required to report for work. There was no formal announcement. News of the sessions spread by word of mouth. If you were interested, you knew to be there by 6:15.
Junior was always the first to arrive, except one morning when Harrison got there at 6:10. That didn’t sit well with Junior, who viewed it as someone outworking him. When Harrison showed up at 6:10 for the next session, Junior was waiting for him.
“Good afternoon, Rodney,” he said.
Harrison was as competitive as Junior, so he arrived for the next workout at 6:00, five minutes ahead of Junior. Predictably, Junior showed up at 5:50 the next time, well ahead of Harrison.
“Finally I said to him, ‘Junior, this has to stop before we’re both getting there at four o’clock in the morning,’” Harrison said. “That’s the type of guy he was. Always challenging people, always pushing people. With young guys, he would say, ‘I can tell you everything you want to know, but rather than tell you I’m going to show you. Anything else is just lip service. They’re just words coming out of my mouth.’”