Authors: Jeff Benedict,Don Yaeger
“When these guys are used up and can no longer run and get the yardage or throw the passes or do the things that they’re paid to do, does the NFL care about them?” Sumrow asked rhetorically. “I can show you a lot of former NFL players who are in pretty sad shape. And I don’t see the NFL coming around and helping them after they’re out of the league. It’s a business. Call it what you want.”
Editor’s note: Bam Morris was signed to a one-year contract by the Chicago Bears on August 4, as this book was going to press. The news came just one day after the Kansas City Chiefs announced that, for undisclosed reasons, they had lost interest in Morris, who had worked out briefly for the team.
The Maverick
Jim O’Connor had never written a letter to anyone in the NFL before. He certainly had never written a letter like the one he penned on April 25, 1996. But when O’Connor, a career educator and high school athletic director, read the story in the
Boston Globe
about an NFL owner who took a stand, he couldn’t help himself.
“Congratulations on your decision regarding Christian Peter,” O’Connor’s letter began. “Your decision will have an impact on our efforts to teach citizenship, responsibility and accountability to our high school student-athletes. Thank you very much.”
S
itting in his office overlooking Foxboro Stadium, New England Patriots Owner Robert Kraft read the letter and smiled one of those awkward smiles. If O’Connor and the dozens of other coaches and athletic directors around the country who wrote similar letters were correct and Kraft’s decision to cut Christian Peter sent a message to young athletes, the cost to his team would have been worth it. “Only time will tell,” the dapper owner said, nestled in an overstuffed chair in his office. “Only time will tell.”
The controversy began with an otherwise nondescript selection during the latter half of the 1996 NFL draft. Most reporters were focused on the team’s first-round debate, where coach Bill Parcells had demanded the team draft defensive help. But Kraft wanted to take the immensely talented receiver Terry Glenn out of Ohio State. In the end, the owner won. Parcells was so upset over losing control of the choice, that he began making disparaging references to Glenn—he deliberately referred to him as a “she” in one widely publicized incident—once the receiver was chosen.
With the soap-opera-like debate over Glenn grabbing all the headlines, it was a couple of days before attention turned to the team’s fifth-round pick, defensive lineman Christian Peter from Nebraska.
But when the attention turned, it did so in a big way. Boston area media reported that while at Nebraska, Peter’s off-field behavior could, at best, be described as boorish. During his college career, Peter was arrested eight times and convicted four times for a variety of offenses. His rap sheet included a May 1994 conviction for assault of a former Miss Nebraska (during which he twice grabbed her between her legs), and a charge in another assault against a twenty-one-year-old woman (he lifted her from the ground with his hands around her neck). Peter was sentenced to eighteen months’ probation in the first assault and ten days in jail and a $300 fine for disturbing the peace in the second. Additionally, he was arrested on charges of refusing to comply with the order of a police officer and third-degree assault for threatening to kill a parking attendant. Finally, the University of Nebraska settled a civil lawsuit in which a former Nebraska student alleged Peter twice raped her.
Yet at his workout for NFL scouts at Nebraska’s Cook Pavilion, the six-foot, 300-pound lineman flashed his biceps—complete with a Peterbilt truck logo—and wowed onlookers with his speed and agility. Though Peter’s bad-boy status was well known to the stopwatch-toting scouts, the attention paid to him and his criminal record paled in comparison to that of college teammate Lawrence Phillips. That is, until the Patriots drafted him.
When Kraft picked up his morning paper a couple of days after the draft, he learned for the first time what most everyone in the NFL had known much earlier—that they had committed his team to hiring a convicted sex offender.
Kraft didn’t hesitate. He called Player Personnel Director Bobby Grier and College Scouting Director Charlie Armey into his office, asked a few questions, and within twenty-four hours took the extraordinary step of cutting Peter loose before even offering him a contract. NFL insiders said they had never before heard of an owner doing such a thing. Especially when Kraft made it known he had done so
on principle!
The Patriots’ press release was short and simple. It read in part: “Based on information we obtained in the last 48 hours following a review of his past actions, we concluded this behavior is incompatible with our organization’s standards of acceptable conduct.”
Kraft lightheartedly said he made his decision to cut Peter because he “couldn’t explain hiring a man with his record to my wife.”
Imagine that becoming the NFL’s new standard. Imagine owners having to explain to the ones they love why they would want to surround themselves with men convicted of assaulting women.
Peter, who blamed his problems on too much alcohol and too little maturity, proved the latter by blasting the Patriots, telling reporters he “wouldn’t want to play for someone without enough guts to defend a player he selected, who then comes up with some cockamamie story he wants to give the public. I feel hurt and somewhat betrayed. I feel I was made an example of for every bad thing that men in athletics have done.”
As one might expect, Kraft’s office was flooded by letters of congratulations from high school and college coaches.
“I just felt that it was a great example of what a professional team could do to set the tone for, not only colleges, but also for the high school coaches and principals who are trying to set some standards for kids today,” said O’Connor, athletic director at Framingham High School in Framingham, Massachusetts. “Too often, the message to kids is that if you’re a good player, like Christian Peter, you can do anything you want and never suffer for it. What Mr. Kraft did said that’s not always true.”
Noticeably absent among the scores of letters: a single note of praise from anyone else in the NFL. Maybe that’s because so many of them were busy calling Peter’s agent, asking about his immediate availability.
“I wasn’t looking for that,” Kraft said when asked about the shortage of congratulations from his colleagues. “I’m not going to sit here and preach to them because there’s no one way of doing things. People have different standards.”
But, Kraft was asked, will a lack of standards one day come to haunt his colleagues?
“I don’t want to speak for or about them, I hope you’ll appreciate that,” he said. “But I worry about athletes being arrested, yes. I worry about us, I think we have a responsibility to support our athletes better. I’m not preaching to anyone else. I’m just doing what works for me and I’ve had good success. I know what’s gotten me into trouble, and it is usually not making the right decision.”
Kraft said he didn’t look at his move as “bold or brave.”
“I’m not saying that I’m a do-gooder and I admit that I have myself; while growing up, gone to the edge in doing things,” Kraft said. “But on the other hand you establish a certain set of standards that you want to work by.”
After his decision was made, Kraft was approached by several NFL teams about trading for Peter. Doing so would have allowed the Patriots to salvage something from the whole mess.
“I wasn’t interested in trading him,” Kraft said. “Our organization made the error. We needed to suffer for it, not profit from it. I wanted to send our organization a signal about how serious I was.”
Those within Kraft’s organization got the signal loud and clear. They also saw how different that was from the signal being sent by the team’s competitors. Within days, as many as six teams were bidding for Peter’s rights, according to sources within the league. Ultimately, the New York Giants won Peter’s services.
Peter’s agent, former NFL player Ralph Cindrich, said he was disappointed by the Patriots’ decision, but glad the controversy didn’t cost his client a career in the NFL. Through Cindrich, Peter declined to be interviewed on this subject.
“If I were on the outside, I would want him [Christian] lynched with everybody else,” Cindrich said. “I’m telling you, I know the facts. Christian is a much better guy than what you’ve read. First off, what actually happened and what were proven results and proven facts was never grasped fully by the media. There were a lot of allegations that were simply unsubstantiated, misstated, simply untrue. You’re not going to want to hear that. Nobody else is. I’m saying to you it’s a fact.
“I don’t believe these kinds of records should keep players from the opportunity to earn a living,” said Cindrich, long one of the most respected agents in the business. “If you think that banning players with police records is going to stop players from committing crimes, well, you probably believe the death penalty has a positive effect on eliminating or decreasing murders.”
For the record: Cindrich, a criminal defense attorney before he became a sports agent, doesn’t believe in the death penalty, either. “I’ve represented murderers and had tears in my eyes and pleaded for them not to die.”
Kraft did not shed any tears when he dumped Peter. Neither did New England fans, who flooded call-in shows and newspaper editorial pages with their words of support.
“I’m not in the legal profession,” Kraft said, making the distinction between his vantage point and Cindrich’s. “I look at myself as a custodian of a public asset. This team belongs to the fans in New England. I sat up there in Section 217 on the goal line when the stadium opened. I went through the highs and lows, a lot of lows with this team, and my dream was to own the team. I want to run this team the same way we run our other businesses and we have certain rules that we go by and these have always worked for me. To me this [the Peter decision] was good business. We have businesses all over the world, and the same rules work no matter what the culture, what the business. We hire people number one on integrity and character, number two on the work ethic, and number three on brains. And while there’s a definite thrill in trying to win a championship on the field, that thrill is greater if you didn’t have to compromise to do it, in my opinion.
“I don’t think fans want to see players or owners or coaches who are making a lot of money, who don’t sign autographs, who get into trouble, who do interviews that are smart-alec. On the other hand, I think that the people who live paycheck to paycheck and are looking to escape their problems, the team in your community is one avenue for doing that. So they all feel that they own a piece of this team and I want them to feel that. They don’t want members of the family doing things that are embarrassing to them. I think maybe in other regions of the country people might be more tolerant to family members doing incidents and welcoming them back. I think the standards are a little tougher here.”
Though it wasn’t his goal in the days following that draft, Kraft is hopeful that some part of the message might endure.
“Those coaches [who wrote me letters] are right. If teams show certain leadership, the power of sport allows you to do things in your community and set an example that other businesses don’t have. That’s a very powerful responsibility. We have to understand that.”
Kraft said he is sure that his staff understands. “I think people here now know that whoever might make a decision like that or allow us to bring someone in with that kind of background won’t be working here,” he said. “I was told it’s very hard to find defensive linemen and if you want to win you’ve got to have defensive linemen, that’s the shortest commodity. But that doesn’t mean that you sacrifice your business principles. I don’t care if it’s hard to get defensive linemen, it doesn’t really matter to me.”
Yet, it was pointed out to Kraft, seven months after cutting Peter, his team was in the Super Bowl. “Well you said that, I didn’t. But I’m glad you made that conclusion,” Kraft said. “I believe that football is the ultimate team sport. You saw it in the Super Bowl, where a special teams player can make a run back and be the game’s MVP. A team is like family. I really believe that off-field distractions can be very disturbing to a franchise and there’s enough things that can go wrong in this business because it’s not a business of production with machines, you’re dealing with human beings and coaches and players. You have seventy-five different human beings working there who all have families, who all have bad days, who have kids who are sick or maybe talking about getting a divorce. All the problems of this world are within this family and we have to contain them and support it as best we can. Why add a problem to all that? What do you really gain?
“I hate losing any game, but I don’t feel long-term this approach really costs you games,” Kraft said. “I don’t want to have to sell my soul to be in this business.”
Kraft said he was sorry that the incident had caused so much embarrassment for Peter and his family.
“I actually wrote the gentleman a letter and sort of apologized for our organization not handling itself in as professional a manner as I would like,” he said. “On the other hand I hoped that it would be a signal to him to maybe try to get some help and do things that would allow him to be productive.”
A
ll signs indicate Kraft’s hope may have come true. Peter joined the Giants under a restrictive agreement that delayed his playing days for a year while he attended counseling sessions with team psychologist Joel Goldberg. Nearly two years into the plan, Peter had made the team, made two tackles in seven games … and made no appearance on a police blotter.
“It was a good move for both the Giants and for Christian,” Goldberg told the authors. “We’re a very conservative organization. But we believed he was capable of getting his life under control.”
Goldberg said he made the recommendation that the Giants sign Peter after meeting with the player and understanding what made Peter tick. He compared his investigation to the work done by a good broker.