Climb out of the depths of addiction takes Anthony Hargrove to Super Bowl high
As the final seconds ticked off the scoreboard on Super Bowl XLIV, with New Orleans winning over Indianapolis 31-17, Saints defensive tackle Anthony Hargrove lay on the grass of Sun Life Stadium. He breathed deeply and said, “Thank you, God.”
For any football player, a Super Bowl win is a monumental occasion, the culmination of a life’s work. For Hargrove, it marked a larger triumph. He had overcome a homeless childhood, flunking out of Georgia Tech and alcohol and drug addiction.
Less than a year earlier, Hargrove had been in treatment at a Miami halfway house after being suspended for a year by the NFL. The Transitions Recovery Program sits only a few miles from where Hargrove was celebrating with his teammates.
“I could never lie down in my bed and dream this up,” Hargrove said. “I couldn’t have written a better story myself. I don’t know if anybody could. … How does something like this happen?”
Hargrove’s journey began in Brooklyn, where he grew up with his single mother, Rosa, and two half siblings. He hardly can remember his father, who wasn’t around.
When Hargrove was 6, the tenement where the family lived burned down. His mother died of AIDS three years later.
He bounced between foster care and the streets until 1993, when an aunt adopted him. Hargrove moved in with her in Florida and threw himself into football. He was a prodigious talent as a quarterback and safety at Port Charlotte High in Punta Gorda and also twice was MVP of the school’s basketball squad.
Former Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Ted Roof recruited Hargrove as a linebacker and thought he was skilled enough to help the Yellow Jackets right away as a defensive end.
Hargrove had flashes of brilliance from the start. In 2001, against the Citadel, he dominated with four tackles, two for loss, one sack and a fumble recovery. Against North Carolina State that same season, he had six tackles, one sack, two forced fumbles and a defensive touchdown.
But with so many unresolved emotional issues, Hargrove wasn’t prepared to handle all of the success and made some bad decisions. He “had a great time at Georgia Tech, maybe too much fun.” After his sophomore season, he flunked out.
“It was another learning block for me,” Hargrove said. “And I was learning the hard way.”
By that point, the then 19-year-old Hargrove had two children of his own. He bumped from one job to another, eventually working as a ramp agent for Delta at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Still, he held onto his goal of making the NFL.
“I could’ve quit, but I kept going. Delta was a great job,” Hargrove said. “It wasn’t too hard loading luggage. Lifting all day for a football player isn’t bad. Being in that Georgia heat, that’s a monster.”
Through a former Georgia Tech teammate, Hargrove met Phil Williams, a former Florida State football player who’d become an agent. Williams was just the latest person to see Hargrove’s abundance of talent, and he began preparing him for the 2004 NFL draft.
After working out with Williams, Hargrove ran the 40-yard dash in 4.6 seconds — blazing for a 300-pound defensive lineman. Despite Hargrove’s checkered past, his talent was enough for the St. Louis Rams to select him in the third round.
Only 20 years old, Hargrove jumped right in, starting at defensive end and notching six and a half sacks. But, again, the added attention — and now millions of dollars — did nothing to fill the void he felt in his life.
The casual drug and alcohol use that had begun in high school and continued at Tech grew into habitual use. Hargrove said he was depressed and trying to self medicate. He began disappearing for days on cocaine binges.
During the 2006 season, the Rams traded Hargrove to the Buffalo Bills. The trouble followed him, and he was arrested after a nightclub fight and suspended for four games in the 2007 season for violating the league’s drug policy.
He failed yet another test later that year, earning an automatic suspension for the entire 2008 season. The drug use continued as Hargrove descended as far as he could spiral.
“They call it a bottom,” he said. “I was out at a friend’s house. I remember walking past a mirror and not really recognizing myself. For a minute I sobered up, and life flashed real quick, past and present. A future picture went by. ‘Man, I need to stop. I need to get help.’”
He was convinced he wouldn’t die, but he saw himself homeless again, back on the streets where he spent his youth.
“I was repeating my past,” he said. “I just remember my mom saying she didn’t want that for me.”
A wave of relief came over Hargrove, though he knew a fight stretched out ahead of him. He contacted Williams and arranged to enter a 90-day treatment center in South Carolina. “I surrendered. I told God, ‘If you’re real, you have 90 days.’”
Hargrove stayed sober through those three months and then moved on to Transitions in Miami. He remembered going in and scoffing at the inspirational posters that covered the walls. They had sappy messages like “Humility” and “Take it one day at a time.”
The counselors pushed Hargrove to talk about his past. Eventually they asked him to write a letter to his parents, and he said a torrent of love and anger rushed onto the page. He said it finally allowed him to let go of his parents.
While at Transitions, Hargrove had a roommate who decided to leave the program.
“He was a diabetic with only 10 percent of one lung,” he said. “An addict. He chose to leave. He came back to my apartment one night just loaded. He needed some money. I had a few bucks, and I gave it to him. I remember watching him drive off, and I couldn’t do [drugs]. I couldn’t do it no more.”
After 10 months, Hargrove had completed the program. He’d been cut by the Bills and didn’t know if he’d get yet another chance. Williams helped him film a video that they sent to every NFL team. Only the Saints asked him in for an interview.
The team offered a one-year deal worth the veteran minimum of $620,000. Owner Tom Benson charged Hargrove with making the most of the opportunity. To avoid distraction, Hargrove stays in a spartan apartment near the Saints’ practice building. He lives with his brother and attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
As the 2009 season progressed, Hargrove’s role increased, and the Saints won game after game. Finally, in the NFC championship game against Minnesota, Hargrove delivered some of the most crushing blows to Vikings quarterback Brett Favre.
After that victory, Hargrove felt the spotlight once again shining his way. He was featured in the New York Times and on ESPN with stories highlighting his troubled past. He began hearing about the well-known stories of Barret Robbins and Eugene Robinson, players who found trouble in the pre-Super Bowl excitement.
To avoid their footsteps, Hargrove went in with a plan. He had to schedule his day so he would know where he would be and with whom. He said he needed to organize life so he didn’t feel like he had to run.
“I’m the kind of person who needs a little help,” Hargrove said. “Very easily something could happen, and I’m in the middle of a bad situation. And if something does happen, I have to have the right response instead of flipping the whole ship.”
A central piece of Hargrove’s plan was to return to Transitions. He said he started laughing the second he stepped inside the door. All of the slogans on the posters that he’d once derided had become integral parts of his daily life, mantras to his sobriety.
“You start working humility, and you’re honest,” he said. “And you don’t even realize it because it’s part of you. You think you can never do it. But it shows you how strong the mind is. It shows you that it works when you don’t even realize that you’re doing it. Those things stay with you.”
Most of the people he’d known at Transitions were gone. Some had graduated, some had relapsed and some had died.
“You have to know how to deal with it in this program,” Hargrove said. “It’s not an easy feeling, especially when it’s people you know. You get to know people at the utmost levels, who they are on the inside.”
The program’s directors had asked him to speak to current residents, and he said he began by giving them a simple choice: life or death.
“‘Are you going to choose life, or are you going to choose death? If you choose life, there are endless possibilities. If you choose death, there’s only one fate to that, and it’s 6 feet under. That’s the reality,’” he told them. “They looked at me when I said it like, ‘How can you say that?’”
Rehab taught Hargrove there’s nothing easy about the road back. It is exhausting emotionally and physically. But, he stressed, it is worth the fight, as his life shows.
“Our job as those who have recovered is to go back and tell,” he said. “You’ve got to be a strength to them. You weren’t the first one, and you damn sure aren’t going to be the last one. It’s a family, and it’s a blessing to be a part of this, just to give some hope. And it’s going to empower me to keep going.
“There was nothing heartbreaking about going back. Unfortunately, a lot of times you go back it’s to get more help. I was going back to see happy faces.”
It was a full-circle moment for Hargrove, but he still had a game to play. The Saints, like Hargrove, struggled early before improbably coming back against the favored Colts in the Super Bowl.
Colts quarterback Peyton Manning was marching down to what looked like a tying touchdown in the fourth quarter when Hargrove felt his leg seize up with cramps. He had to be assisted off the field.
From the sideline, Hargrove watched as Manning dropped back and looked left. He saw Saints corner Tracy Porter shuffle inside, lunge for the interception, clinch the ball and blaze across the field. All that was left was for time to run out.
“Man, hats off to our coaches,” Hargrove said. “The plan of attack and the way [Saints head coach] Sean [Payton] kept us fresh and relaxed, it was incredible. The game itself was a reflection of the coaching staff. When the plays were there to be made, we had to make them.”
Looking back, Hargrove said he couldn’t put into words the emotional release of realizing he was a world champion. He called out favorite memories rapid-fire, as if struggling to pick a favorite.
“I remember [Jeremy] Shockey’s slant touchdown,” he said. “I remember our locker room at halftime, just so poised and calm. Everybody looking at each other like, ‘We’re about to do this.’ Oh, man, the confetti at the end. I remember me and Bobby [McCray] at the front of the line, waiting for the Lombardi trophy to come by.”
Hargrove also knew that, as much as the victory was more than just a game for him, it was also more than a game for New Orleans, a beleaguered city that still struggles to recover from Hurricane Katrina.
He looked to the stands and imagined the celebrations breaking out in New Orleans.
“You could see the smiles, and everybody’s eyes lit up. What had just happened was far more than two football teams playing,” he said. “It was a city that was breathing, that was following us. A large amount of love erupted. Everybody that was part of that got a lot more than they realized.”
About playing for a team that was the only one to give him another chance, Hargrove said, “I was just happy I could repay the favor. All I can do is smile about it. I don’t have all the words to describe how it feels. This is not going to be forgotten.”
That would mark a fitting conclusion to Hargrove’s redemptive journey. But he’s quick to point out that, with a new lease on life, his journey is just beginning.
Instead of following the cliched post-Super Bowl pattern of touring Disney World, he opted instead to visit Swaziland, Africa, which has the world’s highest per capita rate of AIDS.
His plan, he said, was to visit children and spread “joy and hope, to bring a blessing however we could.” He was sure that, as an NFL star and Super Bowl champ, he would have much to offer.
“And then you get there and figure out you have it all wrong,” he said. “In the midst of AIDS and poverty, these people are very happy people. They sing, they dance; their faith is unbelievable.
“The human spirit rises above everything. They don’t have running water, electricity, any of the stuff we have. I realized I’m blessed. I came back, and I have no reason to ever complain about anything ever again. It was 10 of the best days of my life.”
The people there hardly knew of the NFL, much less Hargrove’s career. He said he could just be himself and pour himself into the people. The experience reinforced the importance of life beyond football. It made him think about Georgia Tech, and how big of an accomplishment it would be for him to return and earn his degree.
And it gave him another singular, if not simple, goal.
“You might laugh at me when I say this, but I want to change the world,” he said. “The last few years of my life, and then going to Africa, I see we have it all wrong. We all have selfish wants, and I have my own. Shoes — I love Jordans. I don’t mind a fresh white T-shirt or some nice jeans. But that’s not what it’s about.
“We all hurt, we all laugh. We feel pain. We’re forced when we fall off the horse to get back up. We’re more connected than we think, and we need to start acting like it.”
Accomplishing that is as simple as changing one’s attitude, Hargrove said.
“We feed on the nastiness of others. We judge people way too fast. We’re more about discrediting a person than crediting him,” he said. “We’re on this earth to better each other. We can make this one hell of a place, where people aren’t dying because they can’t get a medication or we blow up a country because of a priceless metal.
“There are young children who will never be able to throw a pitch or read a Dr. Seuss book, who won’t be able to be another Michael Jordan or a Bill Gates. I think that if we can grow together as human beings and really unite, the sky is the limit. Eighteen hours away there are kids dying of AIDS, and it’s not their fault. Who are we to stand by and do nothing because we’re just a few hours away?”
For now, Hargrove is spreading the message to one person at a time.
“We can start one little ripple. Where that ripple goes, we’ll see.”
Twitter