While the use of anabolic steroids was being discouraged in college athletics early in the 1980s, neither the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, of which Guilford College was then a member, nor the National Collegiate Athletic Association would move to ban them until 1990. Years before that, however, Guilford’s football coaches and athletic director wanted drug testing for athletes but were turned down by school administrators who cited privacy and other student rights.
Pernell’s coaches suspected that he was using steroids and questioned him about it on several occasions, but he always denied it.
“One of my coaches—I won’t tell you who—said to me one time, ‘Baby, I know you’re juicing,’” Pernell recalled. “He would say in so many words that I needed to stop. But it was kept a secret.”
“I asked,” said Tommy Saunders, who became close to his players. “But he never told me he did. You almost have to catch them with the damn stuff to stop it. I knew kids who had to be on it because they’d go away one size and come back another.”
Saunders had another reason to worry, as well. Playing high school football for his father back in Pennsylvania years earlier, he also had been an undersized defensive back and at one time had dabbled with steroids himself when they were just becoming popular, but they had made him feel irritable and he had stopped using them for that reason.
“The thing that caught your eye was how big Pernell had gotten,” recalled Head Coach Charlie Forbes, who would leave Guilford in 1991 to become the head football coach at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C. “I never did know he was on steroids. He worked hard. He was in the weight room all the time. You’d have a hard time getting fringe players to spend time in the weight room, but Pernell was always there.”
Pernell was not just an expert at lifting weights, he had become equally adept at stacking and cycling steroids. He was on intimate terms with a pharmacy index of performance and muscle enhancers including oral Methandrostendone, called D-balls, and Methylttesterone stacked with such injectables as Testosterone Cypionate, Testosterone Propionate and Deca-Curabolin, which he used in various combinations, all in massive doses.
His steroids of choice, he would boast to confidants, were Dianabol (the popular drug that inspired the weightlifters’ credo: Die young, die strong, Dianabol), Anadrol 50 and Testosterone Cypionate. But over time, he also used several steroids designed specifically for the treatment of horses. These he would “stack” with the Dianabol, Anadrol 50 and Testosterone Cypionate.
He became proficient at the art of “cycling,” with each cycle running from eight to ten weeks depending upon how much additional strength he thought he needed. Beginning with his injury in spring practice in 1983, Pernell committed himself to one long, dangerous cycle that lasted more than six months. And it gave him exactly what he wanted. He’d never felt stronger, never played better.
As a college football star, he would never again have to worry about losing his place in the starting lineup.
At the same time, though, he was becoming more and more violent, and Susan’s life was becoming more and more frightening.
Lamar saw the changes in Pernell’s once friendly and easygoing personality, and it worried him. Pernell was far more easily annoyed and more aggressive than ever. He sometimes picked fights with teammates, including one during practice against running back Mike Reardon that was quickly broken up by coaches and teammates.
“I remember it well,” Reardon said years later. “I ran out on a pass pattern and Pernell tackled me without the ball. He was strong, really strong. And when Pernell hit you, he could hurt you. I didn’t even get the pass and he still tackled me and we started pushing and shoving, regular practice field stuff. But I had to run sprints after the game and I’m not sure he did.”
Pernell provoked confrontations in nightspots, once starting a fight with the son of college football oddsmaker Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, also a student at Guilford, merely because Pernell felt that young Snyder acted as though “he was better than everyone else.”
Lamar often had to rescue Pernell from such scrapes before he got into trouble, and he tried to reason with his friend about the dangers he saw in his personality changes. But Lamar had no idea exactly how dark and violent Pernell’s moods could be. Only Susan knew that.
“He beat me every week,” she recalled. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to leave him.
“I really loved Pernell, probably more than anybody I ever dated. Pernell had become a monster. But it wasn’t Pernell alone. I had become as crazy as he was.”
Indeed, during a visit to his dorm room, Susan once attacked Pernell, leaping on his back, gouging and kicking, but exacting no damage.
“She was nuts,” Pernell said. “And that wasn’t the only time she did that. She tried to beat me six or seven times, at least.”
Later, Susan would not disagree. “I had no life,” she said. “By the time I left school, I had no friends. People would avoid me. Pernell had them all.”
Though her family lived only 30 miles away, Susan’s trips home came less frequently. Finally, months began to pass between visits. It had become more difficult to go home with so many bruises to explain.
“I didn’t want Mom to know about the abuse,” she said later, “plus I didn’t want Dad to know that Pernell was black, and I loved him. I just felt he would lose it if he knew.”
Her mother had met Pernell, and had no objections to his race. But she didn’t like him and didn’t think he was right for Susan. Susan didn’t want her to know how deep the relationship had become. She also didn’t want her to know that she was spending most of the money her parents sent her on Pernell.
“I knew if I came home, my parents would want to know why I was not dressed very well,” Susan said. “I just didn’t wish to explain that to them.”
Also she now saw her father as a racist, a hypocrite who told her one thing but actually believed another.
“It hurt,” she said. “I was aware that I was not what my dad wanted me to be. I had done what he and my mother had said I ought to do—not judge people by the color of their skin—and he wasn’t there to back me up when things didn’t turn out well.”
Unwilling to talk with her parents, without friends and utterly dependent upon Pernell emotionally, Susan fell deeper and deeper into despair.
“It was like I was in prison,” she said. “I know what prisoners of war feel like.”
Hers was a classic case of battered mate syndrome, but she didn’t recognize it.
“I wound up thinking that Pernell was right, that everybody loved Pernell and nobody loved me and that that was just my lot in life and I couldn’t do anything about it. It wasn’t what I had planned for my life, but I had come to accept that that’s the way it would always be.”
She lived according to his wishes and his dictates.
“He was scary,” she recalled, trying to explain. “But he was not only scary, he would carry out his threats enough for you to know that he would do what he said he would do.”
Guilford’s football team didn’t live up to its players’ hopes during Pernell’s junior season, improving only marginally, winning five games, losing four and tying one. But Pernell was named to a district all-star team and his status on campus had grown. He had begun attracting attention from numerous women students, and he began dating a classmate named Ruth,* an exchange student from England.
Susan first learned of Pernell’s relationship with Ruth from classmates. She kept quiet about it for weeks, but her suppressed anger bubbled to the surface when she unexpectedly encountered Ruth between classes.
“Pernell’s my man,” she told Ruth, a bite in her voice.
Ruth exploded. “Who the hell do you think you are? You think you’re so special. I’ve got news for you, dearie. Pernell beats me the same way he beats you.”
Ruth turned in a huff and walked away. For a long time, Susan didn’t move. She was stunned.
“I always thought I
was alone in the world, that I was the only one who had ever been treated that way,” she said.
When she confronted Pernell about Ruth, he simply admitted it, and used the relationship to torment her even more, taunting her about it even in front of others. Still, Susan could not bring herself to do anything about her situation. Although she was helpless to understand it, her devotion to Pernell grew even more intense. But she did learn something that would save her some pain.
In one of Pernell’s rages, he grasped Susan by the upper arms, jerked her to his face and bit her nose. “It happened so fast,” Pernell remembered. “I couldn’t believe that it had happened. It took me about thirty seconds to calm down. I was upset, but I didn’t know I’d bit her.”
Later, he would recall this as perhaps the first time that he had become concerned about the effect steroids were having on him.
As blood trickled from the bridge of her nose, Susan saw Pernell undergoing a transformation that she later described as “from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll.” By the seconds, his mood softened. He became contrite, alarmed that he had hurt her. He seemed close to tears. She would never forget that reaction, nor would she ever want to for as long as she knew Pernell.
“I found out that night that Pernell hates blood,” she said. Her survival instincts ignited. “From that day on, for as long as I was with Pernell, the only way I could get him to stop beating me once he started was to bleed. So, I learned to bleed. I’d learn to cut myself when he was beating me, or scratch myself so that there would be blood. At the sight of blood, he’d quit just about every time,”
Not long after this, Susan’s rival for Pernell’s attentions, Ruth, also had a memorable encounter with Pernell. She was driving her small Chevette when she saw him walking on campus and pulled over to chat.
“I didn’t see you yesterday,” Pernell said belligerently.
She tried to explain that her plans had changed at the last minute and she had been unable to notify him. He refused to accept the explanation and ordered her from the car. Fearfully, Ruth stepped out, but it was not she that he attacked. He turned instead upon her car, pounding the driver’s side window until it shattered in a heap onto the seat. He then grasped the top of the closed door and rocked the car until it turned on its side.
It was the end of Ruth’s relationship with Pernell. She didn’t file charges against him, but she soon sold the car, which wasn’t severely damaged, and returned to England.
In a sense, Susan had won. But her graduation in the spring of 1984 was without joy. She did not celebrate with her classmates, most of whom no longer bothered even to say hello. Her future looked dismal, for she could not imagine herself without Pernell.
“Pernell Jefferson made my college years the most miserable time of my life,” she said years later. “I hated my experience at Guilford because of him. And I will never forgive him for that.”
8.
The All-American
AS GUILFORD COLLEGE’S 1984 football team drilled in the oppressive heat of pre-season practice, Head Coach Charlie Forbes became depressed about what he was seeing.
Already, he had lost three outstanding defensive players to injuries in non-contact drills. And new quarterback Doug Kenworthy, who had waited two years for a chance to play, had not made the progress in pre-season practice that Forbes had hoped. Despite injuries to key defensive players, Forbes’ young offensive team could make no progress against the patched-together defense. Pernell, Lamar and linebacker Scott O’Kelley, all key players on the defensive unit, had been able to avoid the kinds of injuries that had sidelined teammates and still were performing well.
During the week prior to the opening game against Lenoir-Rhyne, a despondent Forbes met with athletic director Herb Appenzeller. The pre-season meeting was customary, but this one was different.
“Dr. A,” Forbes began somberly, “I’ve never misled you about our chances each year.”
“I know, and I appreciate that,” Appenzeller said.
“Well, you know we are injured on defense,” Forbes continued. “But what you don’t know is that our backs are so young and inexperienced that we haven’t scored a touchdown against our defense all summer.”
Forbes then told Appenzeller that the 1984 Quakers would not win a game and that, in his opinion, it was now time to consider discontinuing the football program, a possibility that had arisen on the campus from time to time for years. He would soon begin looking for a coaching job with another program for the 1985 season, he told Appenzeller.
“Have you said this to your coaches or to anyone else?” a startled Appenzeller asked.
“No, sir.”
“Don’t tell a soul,” he counseled. “Let’s keep it between us for now.”
As Appenzeller pondered what he’d heard, he decided to wait until later in the season to address Forbes’ concerns. Meanwhile, disappointed in his offense, Forbes chose two defensive players as co-captains for the season, breaking his own tradition of naming co-captains game-by-game.
For 1984, the honor would be shared by linebacker Scott O’Kelley of High Point, N.C., and Pernell Jefferson.
In the opening game of the year against Lenoir-Rhyne at Hickory, where quarterback Doug Kenworthy had grown up, one Guilford touchdown pass was wiped from the scoreboard because of an offensive penalty. But Kenworthy, playing better than he had practiced at any point during the late summer, rolled out of the pocket and threw another on the next play, giving the Quakers a surprising 14-7 half-time lead.
Pernell, who was now bigger and stronger than he’d ever been—205 pounds, much of it in rippling muscles—then broke two tackles on the kickoff that opened the second half and returned the ball 54 yards to the Lenoir-Rhyne 45. Suddenly, for a moment, the season seemed not so dismal to Forbes. Later, when Lamar intercepted a pass, juggled it briefly, and then returned it 39 yards for a touchdown, victory was assured. Guilford won 31-15.
Already the team had won one more game than its coach had predicted.
In the second game against Davidson College, Pernell made three dramatic, important plays. When Davidson punter Jay Poag went back to kick, Pernell sensed a fake play and instead of dropping deep to return the kick, he rushed toward the line of scrimmage and cut Poag down for a three-yard loss, setting up a touchdown that gave Guilford a 17-0 lead at halftime. But Davidson struck for a touchdown on its first possession of the second half and seemed to be on the verge of a comeback until Pernell returned the ensuing kickoff 74 yards, a play followed by a field goal. Once again Davidson came back, however, scoring a touchdown on its first possession of the final period. Trying for two points on the conversion attempt with a pass play, Davidson was hoping to draw to within six points, but Pernell made a sensational diving end-zone catch for an interception. Later in the period, Brent Tart, a junior who also had played at South Johnston High School and who had come to Guilford at Pernell’s urging, scored on a 70-yard run in the final period giving the Quakers their second victory in two games, this one 27-12.
Tart and Pernell were the heroes of the game, and their pictures were carried side-by-side in Greensboro’s News & Record the next day. Pernell was enrolled in a cooperative German class across town at Bennett College that semester, and when the class met on Monday following the Davidson game, the professor noted that a sports hero was present.
“I saw your picture in the paper, Mister Jefferson,” said the professor. “Congratulations on a fine game. But that picture sure doesn’t look like you.”
“It wasn’t,” the student said. “The paper got the wrong picture.”
In Guilford’s third game of the season with Fayetteville State University, Pernell was once again the team’s undisputed hero. Twice he intercepted passes as Fayetteville State was threatening to score. And with his team trailing 7-3 at halftime, he returned the second half kickoff 74 yards, making it possible for Johnny Hines to score two plays later, giving Guilford a lead it wouldn’t lose.
A week later, Guilford defeated
Emory & Henry, 13-0, and the team that was not expected to win a game all season was still undefeated after four weeks. When the weekly NAIA national rankings were published the following Monday, Guilford was listed at No. 8. Neighboring Elon College, with two national championships already tucked in the school’s trophy case, was ranked No. 2. Only five days later the two longtime rivals would meet once again.
A decade later, Pernell still could recall the fine details of that day.
“As we came out of the dressing room to warm up, I remember we had to walk right past where Elon’s wide receivers were warming up, and their receivers coach (Hornsby Howell Jr.) spoke to Lamar and me. He said, ‘Well, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Boykin, I hope you will take it easy on our little ol’ receivers today.’
“That’s when I knew they had focused on me and Lamar in practice. I said, ‘Coach, I’m afraid your guys are in for a long day.”’
But for a time, it would seem to be a long day for the Quakers instead. Guilford’s jittery offense fumbled the ball twice deep in its own territory early in the game, and twice the Quaker defense held Elon to field goals for an early 6-0 lead by Elon.
Later, Guilford coach Charlie Forbes would say, “I never thought we’d be able to sustain a long touchdown drive against them.” But in the second quarter, quarterback Doug Kenworthy marched the Quakers 57 yards to a touchdown that would give Guilford a surprising 7-6 lead at the half.
There had been two big plays in the drive. The first was a 30-yard run by tailback Terry Jones that moved the ball deep into Elon territory. There, Elon began to stiffen, pushing the Quakers back on two successive downs so that Guilford faced a crucial third-and-12 at the Elon 18. Kenworthy went for the touchdown. Dropping back to pass, he found receiver Doug Rine all alone in the end zone for the score.
With Pernell and Lamar playing well in the defensive secondary, the game settled into a defensive struggle. But Elon regained the lead late in the third period when fullback Gary Pierce carried several would-be Guilford tacklers with him five yards into the end zone. In a play that would become very important, Elon went for two points on the conversion attempt and failed. The score stood 12-7 in Elon’s favor.
Deadly Goals Page 6