Football relieved a real kind of hunger
By Geoff Calkins February 1, 2004
HOUSTON -
Hunger. It is a word that has been diluted by sports, has lost its meaning.
Hungry for a win.
Hungry for a Super Bowl.
Are they hungry enough?
Which team is hungrier?
Kindal Moorehead can tell you about hunger. The kind that gnaws at your belly, that slips into your sleep, that forces you to do things you might not otherwise do.
Like, say, go to school.
"You made sure you went to Melrose every day," Moorehead said, "because that's two meals right there."
The Super Bowl has grown into the biggest, gaudiest, richest day in the life of America.
It is a celebration of excess, of money, of commerce.
Tickets cost $500 a pop. Thirty seconds of advertising cost $2.3 million.
The winning players get $68,000 each. The losing players get $36,500.
Moorehead ponders these numbers, these inconceivable, crazy numbers.
"My mother makes like $11,000 a year," he says. "How she paid the bills, I have no idea."
Moorehead is one of two Memphis kids on the Carolina Panthers, the one you hear less about.
Part of this is because Moorehead is a rookie, a backup defensive lineman on the best defensive line in the league.
Part of it is because Carolina cornerback Reggie Howard has the better, cleaner story.
Howard broke his neck at the University of Memphis. He came back. Presto, happy ending!
Moorehead's story is more complicated, more systemic, more numbingly common in Memphis.
He grew up poor. Inconceivably poor. For all the usual reasons.
His mother Claria, grew up in rural Mississippi, married at 18, and moved to Memphis when her husband left.
She bought a tiny house on Pendleton and worked cleaning other people's houses.
She walked to work. She did what she could. But how do you fight drugs, and pregnancy, and hopelessness?
All five of her elder children fell into drugs. Five for five.
It was perfectly horrible.
"It's a terrible addiction," Moorehead says. "We're a blunt family. We had our fights about it. We still do."
One sister had seven children. Another had two. Another had three.
Most crammed into the little house on Pendleton.
"I remember when 19 of us were living there," Moorehead says. "Nobody had their own bed. You just found a place to sleep, on the couch, on the floor, wherever.
"I don't think my mom has ever slept in a bed by herself. She'd usually have four or six of the little ones in her bed with her."
The small miracle is that Moorehead emerged from this, and it wasn't just because of football.
He was strong. Steeled by what he saw, maybe.
"I never did have no problem with him," Claria says. "He wouldn't complain. 'I ain't got no shoes, I ain't got no pants.' He knew I wasn't able to do anything else."
And then, before his ninth grade year, a friend dared Moorehead to play football.
He was in the band at the time. He liked the band.
"But they said I was scared to play," he says. "I had to prove I wasn't."
It didn't take long to figure out that Moorehead had a future in the game. Darryl Montgomery, his defensive coordinator at the time, remembers a play against Covington.
"He went into the backfield, took the ball out of the running back's hands and started running the other way," he says. "That was Kindal."
Football made life easier for Moorehead because, well, people help football players.
Claria remembers former Melrose coach Tim Thompson bringing boxes of food by the house.
Sometimes, he'd help with Christmas gifts.
Alabama offered a scholarship. Maybe Alabama offered more. Moorehead won't go into it.
But you imagine growing up the way Moorehead did, you imagine six to a bed, meals on store credit, crack cocaine not just on the streets, but in your house, your family.
The NCAA rule book must seem laughable.
"I didn't think about getting a scholarship growing up," Moorehead said. "I thought about getting money to buy some food. We'd go rake some leaves, pump some gas. Anything to get a little money."
Moorehead was a star at Alabama. Then he blew out his Achilles' tendon, then he messed up his knee, then he wrecked his shoulder.
He was a fifth-round draft pick. Not high enough to cash in big. He's tight with his money. He'd like to buy his mother a house someday.
He figures she's the hero in this story. She figures he is.
"I've had one of my babies make it," she says. "That makes me real happy."
Moorehead is still deeply entrenched in the family. He still sleeps in the house on Pendleton when he goes home.
The little kids love him. Of course, they ask him for stuff.
"When I get home, they come running and say, 'Give me a hug,' " he says.
Moorehead smiles. The man's not cheap where it counts.
"And I always give it to them."
Contact columnist Geoff Calkins at 529-2364 or send an e-mail. You can hear his radio show, "SportsTime with George Lapides and Geoff Calkins," from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday on WHBQ-AM (560).
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