CRIME WHEN ATHLETES GO BAD

This summer’s arrests of the Carter Cowboys-turned-outlaws raised troubling questions: why would football heroes like Derric Evans and Gary Edwards, with full scholarships at major colleges and unlimited potential for prosperity, put their lives in the “wasted” file by committing armed robbery?

But before you count them out (of college and NFL football), consider the case of Charles Washington. A graduate of Spruce High, he was rated by scouts as the best high school football prospect in Dallas in 1984, one of a brilliant blue chip crop that included eventual Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown and OU-Cincinnati Bengals great Rickey Dixon.

Then Washington, shortly before leaving for The University of Texas, was busted for hijacking a convenience store in Mesquite. At first he was fortunate. With hotshot lawyer Doug Mulder handling his defense, Washington was assessed a probated sentence and actually enrolled at Texas.

After a subsequent probation violation involving a gun, however, Washington was hustled off to jail, apparently having fumbled away his chance in the game of life.

So where do we find Charles Washington today? Selling pencils on the street? Nope. He’s playing defensive back with the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts. After being released from the slammer, Washington attended Cameron State College in Oklahoma and became the Colts’ seventh-round choice in the 1989 draft. Ron Meyer, one of the architects of the recruiting practices that eventually got SMU the NCAA “death penalty,” is Washington’s head coach at Indianapolis.

“Charles made some decisions earlier in his life that put him in a disadvantaged situation,” says Washington’s attorney and agent, Eugene Parker of Fort Wayne, Indiana. “I think that after he saw what Tim Brown and Rickey Dixon were accomplishing, it motivated him to try to turn his life around. He signed a good contract with the Colts.

“He can certainly relate to what the Carter High players are experiencing now,” says the agent. “Right now, they have the cards stacked against them. But I think that Charles Washington would suggest to them that this doesn’t have to be the end of the world. It’s up to them.”

Perhaps the moral of this story is that where college and pro athletics arc concerned, if a player is good enough, there is an endless supply of second chances.