I also fear how public my life is and that it is so damn easy to find me, because everyone knows where I’m going to be on a Sunday. What are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to just live in fear? Are you supposed to put on a mask and act like nothing is bothering you? Are you supposed to hide behind bodyguards and build more and more walls? That’s not a life.
Whether I die tomorrow or in sixty years, if the only things about me that people talk about are the Pro Bowls and the Super Bowl appearances, I will have failed. I want my legacy to be what I did in the community and the positive changes this work might have created in people’s lives. I want people to know that I was a man of my word, someone who followed through; someone who didn’t just talk it but walked it. Records are made to be broken, but the legacy you leave can’t be broken because it’s the truth.
I’ve left a lot on that field. I don’t want my legacy to be a limp or a damaged mind. I’m going to have my say and use this platform while I can. It’s a brutal league, but the truth is that as soon as I leave, my platform will shrink.
I have got to speak while I still have the microphone: about the NFL, my life, injustice, organizing, and the most amazing locker room in sports. Some of the topics in this book may make you uncomfortable. I’m going to talk about white owners and Black players. I’m going to talk about the word “nigger.” I’m going to talk about my beautiful, scarred body. It might make you uncomfortable, but shit, a lot of what’s in here makes me uncomfortable. It makes me vulnerable. And if I’m uncomfortable, why should it just be me?
I hope this book makes you laugh and makes you think. I hope if it makes you throw it in the garbage, you fish it out five minutes later and keep reading. I hope that whatever you think of this book, in the words of my man Maximus, you will be entertained.
ROOTS
The triumph can’t be had without the struggle.
—Wilma Rudolph
When I was eleven, I lifted a tractor with my bare hands. My grandpa, Alfred Bennett, was underneath, fixing the tractor, and the thing was about to fall on him. I didn’t want to see him hurt, so I picked the tractor up and said, “Popo, get out from under there!” He scurried out and, true to the man, got right back to work farming. He didn’t miss a beat. My cousins froze and just looked at me. Then one of them shook his head and said, “You strong as fuck!”
I was. It was old-school strength, developed from the moment I could stand. I was the oldest son, and both my grandpas were farmers. That meant I worked in the Louisiana fields during the summers, which gave me my calluses. My job was picking okra and bell peppers and carrying buckets for whatever pay Popo would throw at me. That’s what I did when school wasn’t in session: farm chores and, when needed, lifting up a tractor. When it was time to have some fun, we body-slammed each other in the cow pastures, right into the mud, pretending to be the wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin, while the cows looked at us like we were crazy.
Those buckets also strengthened my hands. I’ve got hands that can crush walnuts. Maybe that is why I wear the tiniest shoulder pads in the NFL. I’ve never felt the need to enhance anything. As a kid I loved the story about Paul Bunyan, the all-natural muscle man, and I want to feel my muscles work, not just for strength but for speed and flexibility. I still do the same workout. I still lift rice buckets, pull weights, and make sure I’m not just gym-strong but farm-strong. It’s like I’m the Black Rocky, from Rocky IV, when he was training on that Russian farm. (Or maybe Rocky is the white me.)
But it was when I lifted that tractor and saw the looks on my cousin’s faces that I knew I might have a different path from working in the fields.
Louisiana is the foundation for my life. My town goes back to the 1800s. A lot of my family still lives on a street called Bennett Road—same schools, same community, same church. It’s where we settled after we were no longer enslaved people, and where the Bennetts have proudly made not just a home but a community. Like I said, both of my grandpas were farmers and worked in the fields. My Popo Alfred also was—and still is—a Southern Baptist preacher. He can preach with the best of them, as good as any of the television pastors in their three-thousand-dollar suits, but he worked with his hands to build his own church in his backyard and packed it every Sunday. Because the church was next to the house, he once caught us playing Nintendo instead of getting ready for services, so he stopped what he was doing, smashed our Nintendo, and got right back to preparing his sermon. He taught me about the Bible, how to hunt and fish, plant, and work a tractor. (I learned how to body-slam from pro wrestling.) One time he had me slaughter a goat, and I did it wrong. The goat bled out quickly, but I felt terrible to see a living creature die. Popo didn’t care. He just said, “Death is death, no matter what. When it dies, it’s dead.” That has never left me. No matter what it is, when something is gone it’s
