Kerberos
07-23-2006, 07:36 AM
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/football/nfl/kansas_city_chiefs/15101020.htm
Pretty Damn Sad. I always liked Joe Phillips when he played for the Chiefs!
A costly fumble by ex-Chief
A troubled Joe Phillips wasn’t ready for the life after football he had helped others prepare for.
By RANDY COVITZ
The Kansas City Star
JOE LEDFORD | THE KANSAS CITY STAR
On Jan. 4, 1998, Joe Phillips was photographed in his last game with the Kansas City Chiefs, a bitter 14-10 loss to the Denver Broncos in a playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium. Phillips was so distraught that he drove home in full pads and uniform. He spent 1998 with the St. Louis Rams and 1999 with the Minnesota Vikings before his career ended.
When he played for the Kansas City Chiefs, Joe Phillips appeared to be setting up his family and himself for life.
He was making good money in the NFL as a defensive tackle. In his spare time, he worked for a local law firm, participated in community causes, and even was co-host of a radio show with his wife, Cynthia. They had beautiful, blond children.
It was an idyllic life Phillips thought he’d never touch.
“If you talked about preparing for life after football,” said Lamonte Winston, the Chiefs’ director of player development, “Joe had it lined up.”
But today Joe Phillips is a wanted man.
Phillips’ smiling visage, the one that flashed across Kansas City television screens in the 1990s, has morphed into a police mug shot — his once-reddish goatee turned to scraggly gray stubble. His face has been posted on a law enforcement Web site under the heading “Have you seen this individual?”
Phillips, 43, is a fugitive from justice in Oregon. He has been arrested twice on charges of driving under the influence during the past two years and once for an outstanding bench warrant for failure to comply with the terms of probation stemming from the first DUI in January 2005 in Clackamas County, Ore.
He was on the lam — or “on abscond” — from November 2005 until May 2006, when he was arrested in Portland, Ore. He was transferred from a jail in Portland to Clackamas County, but was set free because of jail overcrowding. Two days before his June 20 arraignment, Phillips was picked up on another DUI charge while driving a motorcycle in Lincoln City, Ore.
Phillips was released pending a hearing and was to appear in court June 30 in Clackamas County. He never showed. And he’s been missing ever since.
But how does a man who stands 6 feet 5 inches and weighs 315 pounds disappear? He has no known job, permanent address or phone number.
“He’s traveling,” said his father, Joe, who lives in Oregon City, Ore. “I hear from him every once in a while. It’s up to him to call me. He might call tonight, he might call in a week.”
“I haven’t seen him in a while,” said one of his three sisters, Elizabeth, who lives in Portland. “I couldn’t tell you his day-to-day activities. He eats and sleeps and moves around. That’s about as accurate as I can give you.”
•••
Joe Phillips joined the Chiefs as a free agent in 1992 after playing the previous five seasons with the Chargers. It was a fresh start, for he had found trouble in San Diego, where he joined the club as a replacement player during the 1987 strike.
On Sept. 26, 1990, he was attacked by three men as he and an unidentified female friend were walking to his car after leaving a Mission Beach, Calif., restaurant and bar. A witness told police that someone in a car made a remark about the woman. The comment led to an exchange of words between Phillips and the men, and it quickly escalated into a brawl.
Phillips nearly died in the fight. He suffered a skull fracture, a broken nose, three broken ribs, and a broken facial bone near an eye. A police officer testified Phillips had a blood alcohol level of about 0.23 — nearly three times the legal limit of .08 for drivers in California at the time.
Phillips entered the Betty Ford Center and completed a 28-day treatment plan for alcohol dependency. In December 1990, Phillips told reporters he had the “possible existence of a genetic predisposition to alcohol dependency.”
The Chiefs were aware of Phillips’ history with alcohol when they signed him, but because of his stay at Betty Ford, he was subject to random testing. The Chiefs and Cynthia Phillips said he remained clean during his six years in Kansas City.
“I’ve never seen Joe take a drink,” said former Chiefs center and teammate Tim Grunhard. “I had him over at the house for family parties, and he seemed like he was always under control.”
During the mid-1990s, Joe and Cynthia were as visible as any husband and wife in Kansas City.
He was on the board of directors of The Don Bosco Centers, honorary chairman for Court Appointed Special Advocates, and with Children’s Mercy Hospital’s Hands & Hearts. Cynthia was on the board of directors for Hope House and CASA of Jackson County. Cynthia, a former aspiring actress, was a co-host of the “Tailgate” pregame shows on Channel 9 and on a radio talk show with her husband. Both had law degrees.
Joe Phillips, who also had a stockbroker’s license, worked in the legal department at Sprint, and later for the law firm McDowell, Rice, Smith & Buchanan.
“During the offseason, he would work out early in the morning and then put on a suit and tie and go to work at the law firm,” said Chiefs president Carl Peterson. “It looked like this was a very stable, fine, outstanding citizen who also happened to play football. And he was a very good player who helped us win a lot of games.”
Indeed, the Chiefs went to the playoffs in five of the six years Phillips started at defensive tackle. He and fellow tackle Dan Saleaumua did the dirty work of taking on double-team blocks that freed outside pass rushers Derrick Thomas and Neil Smith to get to the quarterback.
Phillips set an example in the Chiefs’ locker room for how to plan for life after football. He helped Winston develop leaguewide programs to help families cope with life in the NFL and encourage young players to find offseason internships that would lead to post-football careers. He appeared in the first video for the league’s player development program.
“If it wasn’t for Joe Phillips really stepping forward with the league in saying, ‘We need these programs,’ we probably wouldn’t have them,” said Winston, whose wife, Claire, attended law school with Phillips at the University of San Diego. “Joe was instrumental in making sure the internship programs were real internship programs.
“He was a model guy and a pioneer in terms of players putting it together and overcoming adversity in his life and making it right. He could have been NFL Man of the Year. He was that kind of guy.”
Phillips also showed promise as a young lawyer during his stint with McDowell, Rice, Smith & Buchanan, said senior partner Pete Smith.
“He was a general lawyer and did a little bit of everything,” Smith said. “He would have been a good lawyer. He had quite a physical presence. He was a pretty smart guy and a good lawyer. He didn’t seem to have any bad habits or wildness or anything.”
•••
Joe Phillips played his last game with the Chiefs on Jan. 4, 1998, a bitter 14-10 loss to the Denver Broncos in an AFC playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium. Phillips was so distraught that he drove home in full pads and uniform.
He spent 1998 with the St. Louis Rams and 1999 with the Minnesota Vikings before calling it a career. And then, despite all the years of preparation, Phillips’ life plan began to change.
He wanted to move somewhere warm, and he took the family to Vero Beach, Fla., even though his wife and children preferred settling in Kansas City.
“We bought a house on the beach, we had saved all our money, and I thought we were pretty set,” Cynthia said. “The only mistake we made was going there without a purpose. Now what do we do? It totally fell apart from the day we moved in. … Something inside of him snapped.”
The couple had talked about doing broadcast work, but instead he wandered aimlessly, leaving the house for days at a time. She suggested they open a law practice, but she said her husband didn’t want to do anything.
Adjusting to life after football — without its glamour and game day excitement — only added to the pressure cooker.
“Even though you think you’re ready for it, no one is ready for the end of your career,” said former Chiefs offensive tackle Glenn Parker, another teammate. “For a guy who has played 10, 12 years, where it’s been his life, it’s been his family’s life, that pressure is a trigger point.”
Phillips’ peak earnings were between $1 million and $1.24 million during the 1995 and 1996 seasons. The money didn’t last long.
“All he did was spend,” Cynthia said. “I want to say 90 percent of what we saved was spent. That compulsive behavior goes hand in hand. He bought and wrecked a boat. He was constantly looking for the thrill to replace that high you get from playing. He wasn’t finding it in the constructive places.”
She said their home became a volatile place.
“Not having to be subjected to drug testing, he relapsed,” Cynthia said. “We didn’t know where he was. We had just had our fourth child, and a couple of months into the retirement he said, ‘I don’t want to work, you go work and I’ll take care of the kids.’ But at that point I was too afraid to leave the children with him. I tried to get him some help, and he chose not to go that route.”
Phillips did check into a treatment center, but in August 2001 he walked out and filed for divorce.
“I was shocked,” Cynthia said. “I figured he could beat this thing again. I don’t know what his reasons were.”
•••
Cynthia and the children — daughters Ashley and Marian, sons Joseph and John — moved to New York City for two years. Oldest daughter Ashley, who hopes to become an actress, graduated from the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in 2004. Two years ago they moved to Cynthia’s hometown of Washington, Pa., outside Pittsburgh. She does some substitute teaching and raises the little ones, with a support group of family and friends.
“Joseph is starting to ask questions,” Cynthia said of the 12-year-old, “like ‘What was it like when Dad played?’ because he was so young at the time, and I show him pictures. Last year was the first year he went out for football. He never showed an interest in it. I think he was fighting that. He enjoys it now.”
Ashley is the only one of the children who remembers the good times.
“I loved going to the games,” she said. “Sometimes he’d wave to us from the field. My fondest memories were going to autograph sessions with my dad. Just being able to sit with him while he signed autographs and how people walked up to him and said how much (the Chiefs) affected their lives and how much they looked up to him, because I looked up to him. It was nice to know so many people shared the feelings I did.”
Cynthia said Joe saw the children for six weeks in 2003 and 2004, and last January during Super Bowl week. The visits, according to 19-year-old Ashley, were “very difficult.”
Compounding the strained relationship with his family, Phillips owes $34,000 in back child support, according to court records.
“It was sad to see him go from such a great dad to drinking and letting himself go,” Ashley said. “It was difficult for me because I had to fill his role, watching the kids when my mom had to go to the store. It’s sad for me to see my youngest brother, John, because he never had a father figure around.”
•••
After the divorce, Phillips gravitated to where he grew up — working class and the son of a truck driver — in the Pacific Northwest. His family members blame the breakup for his troubles.
“He’s being rebellious,” said his father, trying to explain the DUI arrests and other issues with the court. “I’ve never seen him drink to excess.”
Phillips has some wherewithal to fund his wandering. In 2004 he received his NFL annuity worth more than $86,000, plus $130,000 in workers’ compensation, according to his former wife. He also receives a monthly NFL disability benefit of $3,840, though it is uncertain where the check is sent or how it is cashed. And he has an NFL pension worth about $250,000 due in two years — the last vestige of a perfectly planned post-football life.
Most of the rest is gone: the career, the community causes, the celebrity. All of it outside his reach.
For now, Joe Phillips drifts.
If he is caught, he could face up to one year in jail. The longer he is a fugitive, the more severe a sentence he will face, said his probation officer, David Rice.
“There are some people who just get scared and stop reporting in,” Rice said. “Alcoholism is its own beast. It will make people do things you probably wouldn’t normally think about doing. There are a lot of good people out there who make a lot of stupid decisions while they’re boozing. Their brains aren’t working right.”
Pretty Damn Sad. I always liked Joe Phillips when he played for the Chiefs!
A costly fumble by ex-Chief
A troubled Joe Phillips wasn’t ready for the life after football he had helped others prepare for.
By RANDY COVITZ
The Kansas City Star
JOE LEDFORD | THE KANSAS CITY STAR
On Jan. 4, 1998, Joe Phillips was photographed in his last game with the Kansas City Chiefs, a bitter 14-10 loss to the Denver Broncos in a playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium. Phillips was so distraught that he drove home in full pads and uniform. He spent 1998 with the St. Louis Rams and 1999 with the Minnesota Vikings before his career ended.
When he played for the Kansas City Chiefs, Joe Phillips appeared to be setting up his family and himself for life.
He was making good money in the NFL as a defensive tackle. In his spare time, he worked for a local law firm, participated in community causes, and even was co-host of a radio show with his wife, Cynthia. They had beautiful, blond children.
It was an idyllic life Phillips thought he’d never touch.
“If you talked about preparing for life after football,” said Lamonte Winston, the Chiefs’ director of player development, “Joe had it lined up.”
But today Joe Phillips is a wanted man.
Phillips’ smiling visage, the one that flashed across Kansas City television screens in the 1990s, has morphed into a police mug shot — his once-reddish goatee turned to scraggly gray stubble. His face has been posted on a law enforcement Web site under the heading “Have you seen this individual?”
Phillips, 43, is a fugitive from justice in Oregon. He has been arrested twice on charges of driving under the influence during the past two years and once for an outstanding bench warrant for failure to comply with the terms of probation stemming from the first DUI in January 2005 in Clackamas County, Ore.
He was on the lam — or “on abscond” — from November 2005 until May 2006, when he was arrested in Portland, Ore. He was transferred from a jail in Portland to Clackamas County, but was set free because of jail overcrowding. Two days before his June 20 arraignment, Phillips was picked up on another DUI charge while driving a motorcycle in Lincoln City, Ore.
Phillips was released pending a hearing and was to appear in court June 30 in Clackamas County. He never showed. And he’s been missing ever since.
But how does a man who stands 6 feet 5 inches and weighs 315 pounds disappear? He has no known job, permanent address or phone number.
“He’s traveling,” said his father, Joe, who lives in Oregon City, Ore. “I hear from him every once in a while. It’s up to him to call me. He might call tonight, he might call in a week.”
“I haven’t seen him in a while,” said one of his three sisters, Elizabeth, who lives in Portland. “I couldn’t tell you his day-to-day activities. He eats and sleeps and moves around. That’s about as accurate as I can give you.”
•••
Joe Phillips joined the Chiefs as a free agent in 1992 after playing the previous five seasons with the Chargers. It was a fresh start, for he had found trouble in San Diego, where he joined the club as a replacement player during the 1987 strike.
On Sept. 26, 1990, he was attacked by three men as he and an unidentified female friend were walking to his car after leaving a Mission Beach, Calif., restaurant and bar. A witness told police that someone in a car made a remark about the woman. The comment led to an exchange of words between Phillips and the men, and it quickly escalated into a brawl.
Phillips nearly died in the fight. He suffered a skull fracture, a broken nose, three broken ribs, and a broken facial bone near an eye. A police officer testified Phillips had a blood alcohol level of about 0.23 — nearly three times the legal limit of .08 for drivers in California at the time.
Phillips entered the Betty Ford Center and completed a 28-day treatment plan for alcohol dependency. In December 1990, Phillips told reporters he had the “possible existence of a genetic predisposition to alcohol dependency.”
The Chiefs were aware of Phillips’ history with alcohol when they signed him, but because of his stay at Betty Ford, he was subject to random testing. The Chiefs and Cynthia Phillips said he remained clean during his six years in Kansas City.
“I’ve never seen Joe take a drink,” said former Chiefs center and teammate Tim Grunhard. “I had him over at the house for family parties, and he seemed like he was always under control.”
During the mid-1990s, Joe and Cynthia were as visible as any husband and wife in Kansas City.
He was on the board of directors of The Don Bosco Centers, honorary chairman for Court Appointed Special Advocates, and with Children’s Mercy Hospital’s Hands & Hearts. Cynthia was on the board of directors for Hope House and CASA of Jackson County. Cynthia, a former aspiring actress, was a co-host of the “Tailgate” pregame shows on Channel 9 and on a radio talk show with her husband. Both had law degrees.
Joe Phillips, who also had a stockbroker’s license, worked in the legal department at Sprint, and later for the law firm McDowell, Rice, Smith & Buchanan.
“During the offseason, he would work out early in the morning and then put on a suit and tie and go to work at the law firm,” said Chiefs president Carl Peterson. “It looked like this was a very stable, fine, outstanding citizen who also happened to play football. And he was a very good player who helped us win a lot of games.”
Indeed, the Chiefs went to the playoffs in five of the six years Phillips started at defensive tackle. He and fellow tackle Dan Saleaumua did the dirty work of taking on double-team blocks that freed outside pass rushers Derrick Thomas and Neil Smith to get to the quarterback.
Phillips set an example in the Chiefs’ locker room for how to plan for life after football. He helped Winston develop leaguewide programs to help families cope with life in the NFL and encourage young players to find offseason internships that would lead to post-football careers. He appeared in the first video for the league’s player development program.
“If it wasn’t for Joe Phillips really stepping forward with the league in saying, ‘We need these programs,’ we probably wouldn’t have them,” said Winston, whose wife, Claire, attended law school with Phillips at the University of San Diego. “Joe was instrumental in making sure the internship programs were real internship programs.
“He was a model guy and a pioneer in terms of players putting it together and overcoming adversity in his life and making it right. He could have been NFL Man of the Year. He was that kind of guy.”
Phillips also showed promise as a young lawyer during his stint with McDowell, Rice, Smith & Buchanan, said senior partner Pete Smith.
“He was a general lawyer and did a little bit of everything,” Smith said. “He would have been a good lawyer. He had quite a physical presence. He was a pretty smart guy and a good lawyer. He didn’t seem to have any bad habits or wildness or anything.”
•••
Joe Phillips played his last game with the Chiefs on Jan. 4, 1998, a bitter 14-10 loss to the Denver Broncos in an AFC playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium. Phillips was so distraught that he drove home in full pads and uniform.
He spent 1998 with the St. Louis Rams and 1999 with the Minnesota Vikings before calling it a career. And then, despite all the years of preparation, Phillips’ life plan began to change.
He wanted to move somewhere warm, and he took the family to Vero Beach, Fla., even though his wife and children preferred settling in Kansas City.
“We bought a house on the beach, we had saved all our money, and I thought we were pretty set,” Cynthia said. “The only mistake we made was going there without a purpose. Now what do we do? It totally fell apart from the day we moved in. … Something inside of him snapped.”
The couple had talked about doing broadcast work, but instead he wandered aimlessly, leaving the house for days at a time. She suggested they open a law practice, but she said her husband didn’t want to do anything.
Adjusting to life after football — without its glamour and game day excitement — only added to the pressure cooker.
“Even though you think you’re ready for it, no one is ready for the end of your career,” said former Chiefs offensive tackle Glenn Parker, another teammate. “For a guy who has played 10, 12 years, where it’s been his life, it’s been his family’s life, that pressure is a trigger point.”
Phillips’ peak earnings were between $1 million and $1.24 million during the 1995 and 1996 seasons. The money didn’t last long.
“All he did was spend,” Cynthia said. “I want to say 90 percent of what we saved was spent. That compulsive behavior goes hand in hand. He bought and wrecked a boat. He was constantly looking for the thrill to replace that high you get from playing. He wasn’t finding it in the constructive places.”
She said their home became a volatile place.
“Not having to be subjected to drug testing, he relapsed,” Cynthia said. “We didn’t know where he was. We had just had our fourth child, and a couple of months into the retirement he said, ‘I don’t want to work, you go work and I’ll take care of the kids.’ But at that point I was too afraid to leave the children with him. I tried to get him some help, and he chose not to go that route.”
Phillips did check into a treatment center, but in August 2001 he walked out and filed for divorce.
“I was shocked,” Cynthia said. “I figured he could beat this thing again. I don’t know what his reasons were.”
•••
Cynthia and the children — daughters Ashley and Marian, sons Joseph and John — moved to New York City for two years. Oldest daughter Ashley, who hopes to become an actress, graduated from the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in 2004. Two years ago they moved to Cynthia’s hometown of Washington, Pa., outside Pittsburgh. She does some substitute teaching and raises the little ones, with a support group of family and friends.
“Joseph is starting to ask questions,” Cynthia said of the 12-year-old, “like ‘What was it like when Dad played?’ because he was so young at the time, and I show him pictures. Last year was the first year he went out for football. He never showed an interest in it. I think he was fighting that. He enjoys it now.”
Ashley is the only one of the children who remembers the good times.
“I loved going to the games,” she said. “Sometimes he’d wave to us from the field. My fondest memories were going to autograph sessions with my dad. Just being able to sit with him while he signed autographs and how people walked up to him and said how much (the Chiefs) affected their lives and how much they looked up to him, because I looked up to him. It was nice to know so many people shared the feelings I did.”
Cynthia said Joe saw the children for six weeks in 2003 and 2004, and last January during Super Bowl week. The visits, according to 19-year-old Ashley, were “very difficult.”
Compounding the strained relationship with his family, Phillips owes $34,000 in back child support, according to court records.
“It was sad to see him go from such a great dad to drinking and letting himself go,” Ashley said. “It was difficult for me because I had to fill his role, watching the kids when my mom had to go to the store. It’s sad for me to see my youngest brother, John, because he never had a father figure around.”
•••
After the divorce, Phillips gravitated to where he grew up — working class and the son of a truck driver — in the Pacific Northwest. His family members blame the breakup for his troubles.
“He’s being rebellious,” said his father, trying to explain the DUI arrests and other issues with the court. “I’ve never seen him drink to excess.”
Phillips has some wherewithal to fund his wandering. In 2004 he received his NFL annuity worth more than $86,000, plus $130,000 in workers’ compensation, according to his former wife. He also receives a monthly NFL disability benefit of $3,840, though it is uncertain where the check is sent or how it is cashed. And he has an NFL pension worth about $250,000 due in two years — the last vestige of a perfectly planned post-football life.
Most of the rest is gone: the career, the community causes, the celebrity. All of it outside his reach.
For now, Joe Phillips drifts.
If he is caught, he could face up to one year in jail. The longer he is a fugitive, the more severe a sentence he will face, said his probation officer, David Rice.
“There are some people who just get scared and stop reporting in,” Rice said. “Alcoholism is its own beast. It will make people do things you probably wouldn’t normally think about doing. There are a lot of good people out there who make a lot of stupid decisions while they’re boozing. Their brains aren’t working right.”