Heart and Soul

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Loyalty. Character. Self-respect. The reasons for LaDainian Tomlinson's commitment to the Chargers can be traced to his Texas roots.

LaDainian Tomlinson has made a name for himself – a good name


September 9, 2004

LaDainian Tomlinson and Donald Chappel knew better. As youngsters growing up in Waco, Texas, they understood it was against house rules to play football in the living room. But on this particular afternoon they couldn't help themselves . . . until a lamp crashed to the floor and broke.

After a brief uh-oh stare at each other, Chappel shot out the front door, made a sharp left turn and sprinted around the corner to his house. He knew Tomlinson's mother – Aunt Loreane, as he calls her – would be furious. The next morning, LaDainian had the welts to prove it.

More than a decade later, Chappel recounts the story. He drops his chin and shakes his head. Then he marvels at the loyalty his close friend showed.

"I was the one who broke the lamp, but I took off because I couldn't handle it," Chappel said. "LaDainian got it bad for that one, but he never told on me. He never said a word."

Tomlinson Timeline

Prepping for college

1996: Rushes for 2,554 yards and 39 touchdowns as a senior at Waco University High in Waco, Texas. Was named District 25-4A Most Valuable Player and Super Centex Offensive Player of the Year.

No respect

1997: After not being heavily recruited by top-tier football programs, Tomlinson accepts a scholarship to Texas Christian.

Bad start ...

July 24, 1999: Tomlinson is arrested for possession of marijuana and evading police. "I take being a role model seriously," Tomlinson said after charges were dropped for lack of evidence. "I learned a lot. "

... great finish

1999: Leads nation with school-record 1,850 yards and 18 TDs as a junior. Establishes Division I-A record with a 406-yard effort against UTEP on Nov. 20, a game in which he also scores six TDs.

Leaving his mark

2000: Leads nation as a senior with 2,158 rushing yards, fourth-most in NCAA history. His 5,596 career yards is sixth on the all-time NCAA list. Wins Doak Walker Award as nation's top back and finishes fourth in Heisman Trophy voting.

With the fifth pick ...

April 21, 2001: Chargers select Tomlinson with the fifth overall pick in the NFL draft. "I knew what it took to rebuild TCU's program," Tomlinson says. "That's kind of the same situation here."

Spreading the wealth

Aug. 22, 2001: After a monthlong holdout, Tomlinson signs a six-year, $38 million deal, including a $10.5 million signing bonus, the highest awarded to a rookie running back. He buys new homes for his mother and sister.

Rookie by name only

2001: Finishes rookie season with 1,236 rushing yards and tacks on 367 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns. Is the runner-up to Chicago's Anthony Thomas in the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year voting.

Making a name for himself

2002: Finishes season with team-record 1,683 rushing yards and 2,172 total yards from scrimmage. Named to the AFC Pro Bowl team. "Barring injuries," Chargers coach Marty Schottenheimer says after the season, "he's got a chance to make his mark on this league for many, many years."

Who needs the Pro Bowl?

2003: Leads NFL with 2,370 total yards from scrimmage, second most in league history. Becomes the first NFL player to record 1,000 rushing yards and 100 catches in same season. Despite the gaudy numbers, he is left off the AFC Pro Bowl team.

Deal of a lifetime

Aug. 14, 2004: Signs richest running back contract in NFL history – a $60 million, eight-year deal that includes $21 million in guarantees. "He is undoubtedly," team president Dean Spanos says after the signing, "the best running back in the National Football League."
Even as an adult, Tomlinson still is willing to take one for the team. Despite playing for the NFL's losingest franchise over the past four seasons, a Chargers club that has not had a winning season or made the playoffs since 1995, he refuses to sell out his teammates, his coaches or himself. Instead of talking about leaving and playing for a winner, he talks about being part of a group that turns things around.

While San Diegans marvel at his maturity and levelheadedness, family and friends shrug it off as LaDainian being LaDainian. They contend that from a very early age, he demonstrated a keen sense of responsibility and maturity. That's why some of them call him an old soul in a young body, a description which makes the 25-year-old chuckle, not protest.

As a youngster, he and DC – Donald Chappel – might be hanging out together, having fun, when out of the blue Tomlinson would say they needed to go meet Stephanie, DC's cousin. She worked a night shift at a fast-food joint, and Tomlinson knew it wasn't safe for her to walk home alone.

When Chappel's mom would slip LaDainian spending money, he would split it with his younger brother, LaVar, because he felt it was the right thing to do. His take-charge attitude wasn't limited to the playing field. It showed itself in the home, too, when he would do other kids' chores just to keep the peace.

But no one should misconstrue his personable ways for being a pushover. Tomlinson will stand up for himself when necessary. He is big on principle, believing in the adage that if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Of all his possessions, none is more important than his good name, a fact that former Texas Christian University coach Dennis Franchione learned shortly after arriving at the school.

Tomlinson had been arrested and accused of being in possession of marijuana in July 1999, and when he met with Franchione after being released, he kept protesting his innocence. But it was not good enough for Franchione to say he believed Tomlinson. The player demanded to be tested. The results came back negative.

"He was adamant that he wanted to prove he wasn't involved," Franchione said recently. "I always thought he was a really good person, but that was just kind of a verification of what I thought, that he is what he seemed to me."

Instead of being angry at having to prove his innocence, Tomlinson was understanding.

"Coach Fran didn't know me," Tomlinson said. "This was at a time that he had just come in, and he didn't know the person."

Loyalty is equally important to Tomlinson, which is why he phoned Chargers club president Dean Spanos and set up a face-to-face meeting last month after talks on a longterm extension appeared to hit a wall. The sides were

$2 million apart, and rather than let the negotiators continue to haggle, Tomlinson requested a one-on-one meeting with Spanos.

The running back had said for some time he wanted to be a Charger for life, and now he wanted to see if Spanos felt equally strong. Tomlinson stated his demands, then watched and listened as Spanos jotted down the numbers and said it looked doable.

That was huge for Tomlinson, because he was willing to cancel the contract talks if Spanos had not stepped up. It was a matter of principle to him. He wanted to be the highest-paid running back in the NFL because he considers himself the best running back in the game. And he wanted guaranteed money that exceeded what any rookie had ever received, his contention being that he deserved more than someone who had never played a down in the NFL.

Tomlinson got both.

Tomlinson met his wife, LaTorsha, when they were students at TCU. On their first date, he took her to a pancake house. They spent about two hours there, and for roughly two hours he talked about his mother.

Although there were hints that he was different from other guys she had met, LaTorsha wondered whether the star football player might be running a game on her.

"I kept waiting for him to do something stupid so I could say, 'Oh, you're just like the rest of them,' " she said. "But that big blunder I was waiting for never happened. He was always honest with me. He's definitely a man of his word. He just makes you believe in him. He seems so sincere and then you come to realize that it's because he is sincere."

Tomlinson was a softie with LaTorsha, holding her hand in public, leaving Hallmark cards when she wasn't expecting them and regularly revealing the things most important to him. Rarely, if ever, did he mention football.

"I believe the main reason he's so mature is that his whole goal in life

isn't playing football," LaTorsha said. "It's having a family and being able to support his family. He talked about that all the time when we were dating.

"When you're 20 years old and that's your goal, it forces you to be mature. Most 20-year-olds are like, 'Man . . . I'm going to drink and go to the club and get up on some honeys.' But he's like, 'I can't wait to have a family and a wife and kids.' That's all he ever talked about, how that was going to be his greatest achievement. You don't meet people that age with that type of attitude. He always saw the bigger picture."

Part of it had to do with his desire to be a positive role model for LaVar, who would go on to play defensive tackle at Sam Houston State. To this day, he thinks before he speaks. The goal is to control his image, as well as his words.

Tomlinson doesn't think he has all the answers, which is why he studied star athletes as a boy and young adult. He wanted to know why people reacted to them in certain ways. Why was it that two athletes could do the same thing, yet the media would react to them in opposite ways?

A semi-regular at Los Angeles Lakers games, he is more interested in talking business philosophies with Magic Johnson than no-look passes. Jim Brown is one of the greatest running backs to play football, but Tomlinson is more fascinated with how Brown was able to bring together the Bloods and Crips, rival L.A. gangs, than how he was able to dominate defenses in the NFL.

While comfortable in the spotlight, he squirms when people call him famous. It gets back to his belief that football defines what he does for a living, not who he is.

One of his boyhood idols was Emmitt Smith, the former Dallas Cowboys running back who saved the football each time he scored a touchdown. Unlike Smith, Tomlinson has no interest in personal keepsakes.

After running for a franchise-record 243 yards in last year's season finale against Oakland, Tomlinson gave his jersey to teammate Leon Johnson, who wanted it for his son. He even put his foot down with LaTorsha when she told him she wanted to decorate the game room in their new 10,000-square-foot Poway home by wrapping the custom bar and trophy case in pigskin.

"He was like, 'No. I don't want pigskins in my house,' " she said. "He has memorabilia of other stuff from other players, but he almost feels like it's being conceited to have people come to his house and there's stuff of himself everywhere. I have a friend who did a hand drawing of him running with the ball and I surprised him and had it framed, and he really didn't want to hang it on the wall because he didn't feel right about it.

"He always says football is not who I am, it's what I do. It was hard for me to grasp that sometimes."

Football came easily for Tomlinson as youngster in Waco. Opportunities did not.

He knew he had natural talent when his first carry in Pop Warner went for a long touchdown. That belief was reinforced as a high school freshman, when he was brought up to the varsity and matched against the star linebacker in a one-on-one drill.

The two of them stood alone. When the ball was handed to Tomlinson, he not only ran at the older, bigger defender, but through him.

"The coaches and the players went crazy," Tomlinson said. "From that point on, I knew I was going to be good."

But others were slow to come to the same conclusion. As an underclassman at Waco University High – then again as a freshman in college – Tomlinson agreed to play fullback when he knew he belonged at tailback. Once again, he took one for the team.

When his turn at tailback finally arrived as a high school senior, he ran for 2,554 yards and scored 39 touchdowns. Still, it was not enough to attract the elite college programs.

"I would have loved to have represented Texas by going to the ultimate school, which is the University of Texas," he said. "But they didn't take a look at me. (Texas) A&M did, but A&M didn't offer me (a scholarship). Kansas State? I went on a visit but they didn't offer me a scholarship. All these schools were just like I was a second-tier guy."

He took the snub and his suitcases to TCU, where he was intent on proving himself. He did as a freshman, splitting time with Basil Mitchell before winning the job outright in spring ball. But that's when Franchione, in his first season, asked Tomlinson about returning to fullback because the team was lacking at the position.

The cheetah was back in the cage – and this time he wondered if he would ever get out.

"Right before camp, Franchione came to me and sat me down," Tomlinson said. "He said, 'Our fullbacks are not playing the way we want them to play. I know you beat Basil out and you're the starter at tailback, but we need you to play fullback. In one-back situations, in one-back, shotgun situations, we'll move you back.' I said, 'That's fine coach. I'll play fullback since the fullbacks are not coming around.'

"Well, it didn't happen like that. He kept me at fullback and I never really got the chance to play tailback. By about the third game of the season, I just went and I said I can't do it. I can't play fullback no more. I'm a tailback. I can't do it. He switched me back, but Basil was still starting. He was two years ahead of me and that was his last year. It was definitely an experience that kept motivating me, no doubt."

There was no denying his place as a junior. Tomlinson made people take notice. He led the nation in rushing with 1,850 yards, then duplicated the feat as a senior by running for 2,158 yards. He set the Division I-A record by carrying for 406 yards in a game against Texas-El Paso as a junior and tagged the Miners for 305 more as a senior.

And yet his most memorable game was one of his worst. Running on a ginger ankle against North Texas, he gained only 75 yards on 21 carries. It didn't really matter, though, because in the stands was his father, Oliver, watching his son play collegiately for the first time.

Oliver Tomlinson moves slowly these days. Sixty-nine mostly tough years have taken their toll. He used to drive big rigs and transport mobile homes he helped construct, but he says he was forced to retire when he injured two discs in his back.

"Sometimes I walk pretty good and sometimes I don't," he says from his home near Waco. "I've got a stick I use to help me get around."

He has lost some of his hearing from too many years around an air gun, nailing roofs onto mobile homes. But he has no problem understanding a caller when asked about his son. The tickle is apparent in his voice, which rises and accelerates.

Oliver lost contact with his son for the latter part of the 1990s, after getting divorced. At first he would come see the three children he had with Loreane every so often, then not at all. If LaDainian didn't make a point of going to see him, then there was virtually no contact.

"It was one of those things," Oliver said, his voice falling. "Family problems had a lot to do with it."

He was struggling to make a living and spent a lot of time on the road. The situation worsened when Loreane remarried and moved the family from Marlin back to Waco. On top of that, Oliver Tomlinson also was struggling to cope with the death of one of his sons from a previous marriage.

For the longest time, LaDainian wondered where his dad had gone. He wondered why he had to be the one to initiate contact. At one point he made the decision that he would no longer be the one making the effort to connect, that if they were to ever see each other again it would be the father's doing, not the son's.

When that didn't happen over the course of several years, it was LaDainian, then a sophomore at TCU, who phoned his dad and asked if could come see him.

"Was I happy?" Oliver said, repeating the question. "What you talking about? That was one happy day for me. He showed up and we sure did have a hug and a conversation for the longest. I hated to see him leave."

Said Tomlinson: "I didn't talk to my dad for three or four years in high school. I lived close to him, but at that time I felt like if I'm that close, he at least needed to make an effort to come see my brother and me and just check on us. I felt like he never gave the effort, so why should I try to give the effort to see him if he didn't care.

"I finally got over all that and I went to see him. He was living in Waco at the time with my older (half-)brother. He was married and had other kids. I remember sitting there and learning a lot about him. He kind of made me understand that it was hard for him to come around. He wanted to kind of establish himself and whatever he was doing, which I really didn't understand.

"I'm like, 'Dad, I'm your son. I don't care what it is that you're doing. I still would like to see you.' He tried to explain it but it really didn't make much sense to me. But I forgave him for all that."

The two talk regularly now, and Oliver was present when Tomlinson played in Dallas as a rookie with the Chargers. For a long time, LaDainian thought his father never saw him play in high school, but Oliver said he was there at times, high in a corner of the stands, yelling for his son to run.

"He's about as fast as I was," Oliver says. "I ran the 100 and 220 in school. Me and him is a lot alike. Still is. His legs are just like mine. Arms and everything."

If Tomlinson takes his build from his father, he takes his demeanor from his paternal grandfather.

At least that's the way Oliver sees it.

"LaDainian was about 3 years old when he died," Oliver said. "But LaDainian has his ways. He's got my dad's ways. Just a nice person. My dad never did nothing but go to church; he was a deacon. But he was always calm and together. That's the way LaDainian is.

"I was always looking for the best for him, and he proved to me that he is the best. I love everything that he does."

LaTorsha credits Tomlinson's mother with helping him become the man that he is. Loreane always wanted more for her children and would move the family to ensure they had greater opportunities. The family didn't have much money or possessions, but that didn't stop them from opening their doors to others even less fortunate.

"My mother always has had a good heart," Tomlinson said of Loreane, who could not be reached for this story. "I guess that's where I got mine from."

Loreane, whose image is tattooed on LaDainian's left shoulder, surrounded by the words 'My Inspiration – Loreane," taught her son not only about the love of family, but also the love of God. She ministered in the Waco church and regularly had her boys with her. It was not uncommon for Tomlinson to lead a prayer.

Perhaps that's where his attitudes about friendship, loyalty and commitment were molded. It didn't matter who he was or what he was doing, he had an ability to put others at ease, to make them believe he could be counted on.

"His family never had a whole lot growing up; they had your basic stuff, but they did not have a whole lot," said Pam Rogers, Donald Chappel's mother. "The money just was not there. But that kid never complained. LaDainian never said a word.

"We would give him stuff, my husband and I. And if we gave him money, he would split it with LaVar. He just has that in him. He was like, 'Whatever I have, I just need to share that with him.' That's LaDainian. Always giving. Always there for others."