Wright’s pro football career still a bit iffy

“If you can meet Triumph and Disaster and treat those impostors just the same …”

A line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “IF”, hung at the player entrance at Wimbledon.

WINDSOR

In the winter of 2014, actually it was just over a week, Scooby Wright and Triumph were doing their dance. Oh my, yes they were. Triumph was leading, Wright was following. How could he not? Not many get to dance like this.

The University of Arizona had a plane just for Scooby, the head football coach at the university and his wife, and the linebacker coach at UA and his wife. In one week the five of them flew to North Carolina, Texas and Florida. A linebacker at Arizona, Scooby received three awards: the nation’s best linebacker, the nation’s best defensive player and the best college football player regardless of position.

Might have been only five people and three trophies, but that private plane carried a heavy load. Hosannas fill a lot of space. Especially when those awards had this emotional cache attached to them: Charles Woodson, Aaron Donald, Warren Sapp, Luke Kuechly, Orlando Pace - all Hall of Famers now or eventually - had been previous winners. No, this wasn’t a $2 Scratcher he had won.

Triumph didn’t leave after the plane back in Tucson. There was more dancing to be done. Wright, the former two-time All-Stater for Cardinal Newman, was named the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year - the first sophomore ever to do so. He was a consensus All-American and finished ninth in the Heisman balloting, the highest finish for a defensive player.

An NFL scout had rated Wright as the third best linebacker in the college draft if he was to declare. And that almost seemed like an insult. He led the nation in tackles, tackles for a loss and fumbles forced.

Scooby? “I didn’t think anything of it. I was concentrating on our bowl game.” Not that he wasn’t appreciative. He just never had The Limo Attitude. His teammates weren’t his servants, his fans weren’t his subjects, his coaches not his vassals.

“Football is what I do,” he said recently at a Windsor coffee shop. “It is not who I am.”

And thus, as Kipling advised and as so often happens, Triumph gave way to Disaster. A little over four years after being the toast of college football, Wright now finds a life without any chartered planes. To say the least.

Wright is football-unemployed. He is working for his dad’s construction company and working out twice-a-day, six days a week. “Better to be ready than to get ready” if a team comes a-callin’.

Disaster has presented itself as a cold slap in the face. Wright has played 13 games in the NFL. He has been credited with one tackle. Doesn’t remember who he brought down or, for that matter, who was the opponent. He has been cut once by the Cleveland Browns, three times by the Arizona Cardinals. He tried out with the New Orleans Saints but wasn’t signed to a contract. Two weeks ago, the Alliance of American Football folded after eight games and Wright, a linebacker for the Arizona Hotshots, was among those suddenly dispossessed.

“Have you ever read Rudyard Kipling’s ‘IF’ ?” Wright asked.

This is how Wright answered the simple question: “How ya doin’?” The question was asked with some hesitancy. After all, this is not where Wright expected to be at the age of 24, listening to that question.

Then again, I never expected the answer to contain the name of a British Nobel Laureate or a tome every athlete should read. Better put, that everyone should read for his message eternal and, given the current emotional climate, never more relevant.

“You can be a great football player but a terrible person,” said Wright, implying he’d much prefer to be the opposite. Truth to tell, given the temptation of stardom and riches, too many athletes would sacrifice character for the spotlight.

“Kipling said it straight, to realize what is important and what is not,” Wright said. Early on Wright understood how important social media is. To him, it is not.

“It’s noise,” Wright said. “It’s like someone in his underwear in the basement with a bottle of beer talking noise.”

I’m not in my underwear, not in my basement, not with a beer, and so I know this is not noise - Wright has a grip on the right things. His parents, Phil and Annette, showed him that grip. Triumph and Disaster are impostors. They create a false sense of worth or lack of it. Do not be tempted to go sit on either as a life choice.

“It’s like what Jim Harbaugh told Paul Cronin and what Cronin told me,” said Wright of the former 49ers coach and his Newman coach. “The moment you think you’re too good is when you’ll get kicked in the teeth.”

Not that he needs a reminder of where he is today, but he gets it every time he works out in the weight room at Cardinal Newman. When he first worked out there as a prep, Wright saw the jersey of Jerry Robinson hanging there and was impressed. Robinson played at Newman and went on to play 14 years in the NFL.

“Today I work out there and I see my jersey hanging up there, too,” Wright said. His voice quieted, sensing the sobriety of that statement. The impact of that jersey might be lessening. More than 30 players in the AAF already have signed with NFL teams. Wright now waits until after this weekend’s NFL draft, when rosters expand to 90 as teams address needs the draft did not fill.

Wright is waiting and hoping, but he is not sitting in a darkened room crying and whining. He has 20 units left to get his general studies degree from Arizona. He is thinking about being a football broadcaster of the Pac-12 Network. He is not blind about about his future. There were 30-year old men in the AAF still hoping for a shot at the NFL.

“That won’t be me,” Wright said.

He also won’t be the guy at the bar who after a couple pops blurts out he played 13 games in the NFL as a linebacker. Wright is quite sure living in the past is not living at all.

“If I did say something like that,” Wright said, “who did I help?”

His ego? Yes, he has one but it is not attached to insecurity. Scooby Wright is attached to more stable ground, one that Mister Kipling would find well-represented in his verse.

“If you can dream - and not make your dreams your master. …”

To comment write to bobpadecky@gmail.com.