The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (66 page)

“We all have friends who gangbang,” said Sanders, the leader of the group. “Football is a big outlet. It separates you. You easily could make the wrong decision and be in the streets. But thank God for our fathers that they kept us going in the right path.”

All four players limited their time to school and football. They almost never went out. “Basically, from Thursday to Saturday night I don’t go anywhere unless it’s to a USC game or church,” said Sanders. “The rest of the time I’m either at practice or working out or staying inside.”

“I’m afraid of going out,” added Brandon Beaver. “I was at a party and shots were fired. People were running everywhere. I don’t go out anymore.”

Donerson’s players didn’t have tattoos either. Beaver explained, “All of my friends have tattoos all over their neck and face,” he said. “They are in jail. They smoke. It’s easy to be like everyone else. Being different is hard.”

Three of the four players—Beaver, Westbrook and Sanders—came from two-parent homes. Cornerback Alphonso Marsh was the exception. He was fatherless. “Coach Donerson is a father figure,” said Marsh. “If it wasn’t for Coach, I wouldn’t have stayed with football. And if not for football, I’d be on the street, gangbangin’, or I’d be in jail. I owe a lot to him.”

The comment got Donerson choked up. “Basically, it boils down to family,” Donerson said, placing his hands on his players’ shoulders as they sat side by side in the weight room. “I teach these boys that a man provides for his family. He’s a friend. He stands up when he’s wrong. A real man takes responsibility for himself.”

All four players would eventually end up with college football scholarships in 2012. But the story of Alphonso Marsh’s recruiting process was an odyssey that reveals just how much is at stake when a prestigious institution of higher learning decides to offer a football scholarship to a boy from a faraway, dangerous place.

Curley Rachal was born and raised in Compton. Her parents—part Indian and part Haitian—were from Louisiana and spoke Creole. They named her Curley after the black curly hair she had at birth.

Wiry thin with a soft, meek voice, Curley had four children of her own. Alphonso was the baby in the bunch. His father abandoned him when Alphonso was five. He kept his father’s last name—Marsh—but his mother became the apple of his eye. “Him and me are like paper and glue,” Rachal said. “We are always with each other.”

From the time Marsh was little, Rachal hoped and prayed her baby would make it out of Compton alive and have the opportunity to get a college degree. But paying for college was something she couldn’t fathom. Rachal has been disabled for years. She raised her Alphonso on a fixed income. By the time he was twelve, she had started thinking her dream could come true when Marsh began displaying unusual athletic abilities. By then she had amended her dream to hoping he’d grow up to be a pro athlete.

But the pull of street gangs threatened to put all those dreams at risk. Then, one day, Rachal met Keith Donerson. First he talked Marsh into playing high school football. Then he started driving him home after practices and picking him up on game days. It was like having the father that Alphonso never had.

In the summer between Alphonso’s junior and senior years of high school, Donerson drove him to a Nike 7-on-7 camp in Las Vegas. He also paid the expenses. “Camps help kids get recruited,” Donerson said. “And I like my kids to get an offer right away, preferably from a Pac-12 school. So I pitch in a little bit.”

After the 7-on-7 event Marsh’s ranking on the scouting Web sites shot up, and offers started flowing in. Within days after the camp ended, Donerson got calls from Arizona, Washington, Boise State and New Mexico about Marsh. One of those schools called Marsh directly on his cell phone, offering him a scholarship. A couple schools sent coaches to Dominguez to communicate their interest in Marsh directly to Donerson.

By the start of his senior season in September 2011, Marsh was ready to commit. Donerson discouraged him.

“A four-year commitment is like a marriage,” Donerson said. “It might look good. It might smell good. But it might not
be
good. It’s better to figure that out before getting the phone call in the middle of his freshman year because he didn’t get used to that type of environment.”

One day midway through the fall of 2011, Utah’s defensive coach Chad Kauha’aha’a (pronounced cow-ha-a-ha-a) showed up at Dominguez. Coach Chad, as his players and fellow coaches referred to him, had seen film on Marsh. His primary interest, however, was Marsh’s best friend and fellow cornerback, Brandon Beaver. But when Coach Chad encountered Marsh in Donerson’s office, he was surprised at his size—six feet two inches and 183 pounds, with an unusually long wingspan.

“That’s when Utah really came in on Alphonso,” Donerson said. “Sometimes you like a kid on film, and then you actually see him and you are like, ‘Oh, he’s a lot bigger than I thought he was.’ ”

Before long, Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham made a home visit and met Curley Rachal. The crowded living room of her one-story home showed signs of a cousin, niece and nephew who lived there with Alphonso and his mother—pacifiers on the end table, a makeshift coatrack lined with children’s clothes in the corner, a boom box and a circular fan to circulate the hot air. “He grew up in some very humble circumstances,” Whittingham said. “It was a credit to him that he was in a position to further his education. We place a lot of pride on character with the kids we bring into our program. Alphonso is a good kid. We thought he was a good fit for us.”

Rachal felt honored to have Whittingham in her home. But she was a little overwhelmed. “I didn’t know too much about the process,” Rachal said.

As was often the case, Rachal’s biggest concern boiled down to finances. “I’m on a set income, and I don’t have the money for his college,” Rachal said. “I was worried about how the scholarship would work and when it would start.”

Whittingham and his staff put all of her fears to rest. Alphonso’s scholarship, they explained, would kick in when Marsh enrolled in school. It would cover all of his expenses—tuition, books and food. He’d even have medical insurance. She had nothing to worry about. Everything would be taken care of.

A relationship of trust was formed. Rachal was at ease, which put her son at ease. He agreed to make an official visit to Salt Lake City.

On Friday morning, January 13, 2012, a black Lincoln Town Car pulled up in front of Alphonso Marsh’s home. It immediately drew attention; limos weren’t the norm in Marsh’s neighborhood. Kids on bicycles stopped to stare. Men walking past the liquor store next door whispered and pointed.

Marsh had been waiting on his front step with his bag. After a kiss for luck from his mother, he said good-bye and headed past the onlookers to the curb. Air travel scared him. He had never flown prior to the recruiting process. This marked just his second flight.

A burly limo driver wearing a cap and a black suit over a white shirt took his bag and put it in the trunk. Then he opened the rear door. Marsh waved good-bye to his mother one last time before ducking into the backseat. As the car drove away, he slipped on his headphones, pulled up his iTunes and selected the rapper Curren$y for the ride to Long Beach Airport.

His teammate Brandon Beaver met him at the gate. Despite already narrowing his choices down to Nebraska and Washington, Beaver had accepted Utah’s invitation for an official visit. A couple hours later he and Marsh touched down in Utah. There was snow on the ground. Neither of them had ever seen snow before.

Coach Chad picked them up. After taking them out for breakfast, he brought them to campus, where they met up with eight other recruits and toured the football facilities. They tried on jerseys in the locker room, checked out the Under Armour gear and met with different coaches. The
feeling of camaraderie had a big impression on Marsh. At one point the coaches took all the recruits tubing in Park City.

Before he flew back to Compton, Marsh had made up his mind: he was going to Utah.

But four days after he returned from Salt Lake City, some unexpected visitors showed up at Coach Donerson’s office: Washington State’s head coach, Mike Leach, and five of his assistants. Leach had barely hired his staff, and they were on a whirlwind recruiting swing through Southern California.

Leach asked Donerson about his two corners, Beaver and Marsh.

Beaver’s mind was made up, Donerson told him. He was going to Washington. Marsh, he said, was leaning heavily toward Utah.

Leach wanted to meet both kids.

Donerson pulled them out of class.

Marsh was caught off guard by the number of coaches from WSU. He didn’t know which one was the head coach until Leach introduced himself and made his pitch: defensive backs at WSU will practice every day against the best receivers. He stressed one in particular—Marquess Wilson.

“I really didn’t know that much about Leach,” Marsh said. “But he had a little vibe. I liked what he said.”

The next day Marsh was on a plane to Pullman for an official visit. There was even more snow there than he had encountered in Utah. When he landed, he met Marquess Wilson, who was assigned to be his host for the weekend. Wilson showed him around campus, talked up the new facilities that were under construction and even brought Marsh to watch WSU’s basketball team beat Cal 77–75 in a barn burner.

Marsh liked Wilson a lot. The idea of sticking a guy like him in practice every day had some appeal. He liked that WSU was a Nike school. And he especially liked Leach. By the time he left Pullman, he was confused. “I was lost over what I should do,” Marsh said. “Where should I go?”

Back in Compton, Marsh talked to the people he trusted, starting with his best friend, Beaver, who had already made up his own mind. Nebraska pulled out all the stops to get him, even arranging for him to have a one-on-one with the legendary coach Tom Osborne when Beaver made his official visit to Lincoln. But Osborne might as well have been Ozzy Osbourne. Beaver had never heard of the man who walked on water in Lincoln. More important, as much as he loved the electric atmosphere in Lincoln’s Memorial Stadium, he didn’t think he’d be comfortable on such a rural campus. “Too many cornfields,” he said. He chose UW because it had an urban
campus. Seattle wasn’t exactly L.A., but it felt much more like home than Nebraska.

Marsh took all that in. But Salt Lake City and Pullman both seemed foreign and distant to him. So he talked to another friend, Delshawn McClellon, a wide receiver from Long Beach. They were close, and McClellon, also a high school senior, had committed to Utah. That had Marsh leaning toward the Utes.

Then he asked Donerson for advice. The choice between Utah and WSU put Donerson in a tough spot. He liked both programs and both coaches a great deal. Plus, he wanted to maintain good relations with both programs in hopes that they’d continue to recruit his kids in the future. But he pointed out that WSU would have a powerhouse passing game under Leach, which meant lots of reps for DBs. That had Marsh leaning back toward WSU.

The truth was that he really wanted to go to school in the L.A. area. “I wanted to stay home,” Marsh said. “Through the whole recruiting process I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this. I’m not ready.’ ”