Tribal Warfare
12-22-2007, 12:56 AM
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/chiefs/story/414375.html
Bowes family tree growing in Chiefs locker room
By KENT BABB
The Kansas City Star
Every day is a family reunion in Dwayne Bowe’s world. Every day he slips into a room that stinks of soiled socks and sweaty pants, with red carpet stained with yellow Gatorade and soaks in a piece of home.
Every day, it seems, Bowe learns there is another member of his sprawling family who plays football, who is in the NFL, who has a stall along with Bowe in the Chiefs’ locker room.
Or maybe it is a lie. Maybe the familiar names and faces and hometowns are coincidence, the concoction of a 67-year-old woman with too much time and too much pride in her NFL rookie grandson that she wants to share the love and wants Bowe to share it, too.
No, there is precedent. Who could doubt the woman who tends the family tree? Who could doubt Bowe’s grandmother, Dorothy Williams, after she noticed a familiar name, Sippio, on the Chiefs’ roster this last summer and called around to the Sippios she knew in south Florida and got to talking and found out that, sure enough, Chiefs receiver Bobby Sippio and Bowe are cousins.
“She always thinks she’s right,” Bowe says with a smile. “Just one time, I want her to be wrong.”
Williams was right about Chicago Bears defensive tackle Tommie Harris, another distant cousin of Bowe’s. She was right about Jacksonville Jaguars tackle Stockar McDougle and Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Jerome McDougle. All are football players. All are from the Miami area. All, according to Williams, are family.
Today there is a new member. Today another Chiefs player will learn of Williams’ latest theory, the latest instance of Williams’ finger tracing the bloodline up and away from the Bowe branch, around and through the Mosleys and Brownlees, sliding her finger into another family until a 320-pound body stopped it.
Another member of Bowe’s family, Williams says, is Chiefs left tackle Damion McIntosh. Bowe and McIntosh have played 13 games together this season. They were raised in south Florida towns 20 miles apart. McIntosh’s locker sits to the left of Sippio’s and three down from Bowe’s.
Could it be? Could cosmic or divine forces have scrambled the families, dispatched them into the world and delivered three of them here, into the Arrowhead Stadium locker room?
Until Friday, McIntosh never had heard Williams’ theory. McIntosh, an eight-year veteran, was born in Jamaica, but his family moved to Hollywood, Fla., when he was 4 years old. He never suspected he might be related to Bowe, a Miami native and the Chiefs’ first-round pick out of LSU, because — well, why would he?
“Me?” McIntosh says, his eyes wide with surprise. “She wasn’t talking about Bobby? You’re serious? I need to talk to his grandma.”
Bowe says he is unconvinced his grandmother is correct about McIntosh, although he admits his grandmother was right about Harris and Sippio. Bowe fielded a phone call in August from Williams, who told her grandson he was related to Sippio, a former Arena Football League star whom the Chiefs invited to training camp.
Bowe noticed Sippio. He noticed his hustle and realized that if Bowe slipped, a worker such as Sippio would sneak in and put Bowe’s starting job in his back pocket. But there was something familiar about Sippio that Bowe could not identify — not until Williams called and explained the result of her latest genealogy experiment.
“I said, ‘Ma, I don’t know this cat,’ ” Bowe recalls telling Williams, who raised Bowe. “And I’m not going to be friendly with him because he’s a receiver; he’s trying to take my position.’ She’s like, ‘No, I’m telling you.’ ”
Williams called her cousin Thomas Sippio and traced the bloodline further and discovered that Bowe and Bobby Sippio were second cousins. Bowe approached Sippio during training camp and told him they might be related. Sippio spoke with Williams, and the family orchestrated a makeshift reunion on a three-way telephone call.
“They were talking like they knew each other for years,” Bowe says. “I thought, ‘Well, maybe so.’ ”
The Chiefs receivers had their confirmation and began to forge a relationship. Sippio made the team and moved into a spare bedroom of Bowe’s home in Lee’s Summit. They played video games and discussed football and lounged the way Sippio says a pair of young, unmarried cousins are supposed to lounge.
They become close enough that Sippio, who is three years older than Bowe, began critiquing Bowe’s performance. When Bowe dropped a pass, it elicited memories in Sippio that similar drops could have ended Sippio’s career, which had for years swung on spot performances and luck. The man whom Bowe had feared would steal the rookie’s job now was as protective of Bowe’s career as an older brother.
“I ride him like a dirty diaper,” says Sippio, who was with the Miami Dolphins in 2004 but did not appear in a game. “I’m his worst critic out there. I don’t think the newspaper can ride him any worse than I ride him. And I’m in his ear, so it’s even worse. He can’t brush me off. He can’t close the paper and not listen to what I say because I’m in his ear. And I’m watching everything he does.”
He might not have had the chance if Williams had not spent a summer night researching her family tree. She has continued to trace the roots and how the tree has extended beyond south Florida, into the NFL and into the Chiefs’ locker room.
Williams says she is certain McIntosh is a distant relative to Bowe and Sippio, even if he does not yet know it.
“My mother’s sister’s family married into the McIntosh family,” she says. “There are a lot of us. There are a lot of cousins and relatives out there. We’re all related, and now we’re trying to dig up our roots.”
Bowe stands at the locker and ponders the possibilities. He has his doubts his grandmother is correct. It would be too coincidental, too cosmic and too divine for Bowe to be placed on a team with two family members — men who had no idea that they were teammates first but relatives all along.
Bowe slides on a T-shirt and sneakers before he leaves the site of his latest family reunion, the one with the socks and the stains. There will be a formal reunion in March, one in a more appropriate setting, most likely south Florida. It will be then that Bowe scans the room, past the Williamses and the Mosleys, around the Brownlees and the Sippios, into the McIntosh family and learns whether each Chiefs practice and game is a family thing. He will look for Damion McIntosh, who as of Friday had no idea he might be related to two teammates.
“If he’s there, I guess that means he’s family,” Bowe says. “If you see me in March, and you say, ‘Did he make it?’ and I say, ‘He was there,’ I guess I’ve got two cousins now.”
@ Go to KansasCity.com for Adam Teicher’s vlog and video clips from the Chiefs beat.
Bowes family tree growing in Chiefs locker room
By KENT BABB
The Kansas City Star
Every day is a family reunion in Dwayne Bowe’s world. Every day he slips into a room that stinks of soiled socks and sweaty pants, with red carpet stained with yellow Gatorade and soaks in a piece of home.
Every day, it seems, Bowe learns there is another member of his sprawling family who plays football, who is in the NFL, who has a stall along with Bowe in the Chiefs’ locker room.
Or maybe it is a lie. Maybe the familiar names and faces and hometowns are coincidence, the concoction of a 67-year-old woman with too much time and too much pride in her NFL rookie grandson that she wants to share the love and wants Bowe to share it, too.
No, there is precedent. Who could doubt the woman who tends the family tree? Who could doubt Bowe’s grandmother, Dorothy Williams, after she noticed a familiar name, Sippio, on the Chiefs’ roster this last summer and called around to the Sippios she knew in south Florida and got to talking and found out that, sure enough, Chiefs receiver Bobby Sippio and Bowe are cousins.
“She always thinks she’s right,” Bowe says with a smile. “Just one time, I want her to be wrong.”
Williams was right about Chicago Bears defensive tackle Tommie Harris, another distant cousin of Bowe’s. She was right about Jacksonville Jaguars tackle Stockar McDougle and Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Jerome McDougle. All are football players. All are from the Miami area. All, according to Williams, are family.
Today there is a new member. Today another Chiefs player will learn of Williams’ latest theory, the latest instance of Williams’ finger tracing the bloodline up and away from the Bowe branch, around and through the Mosleys and Brownlees, sliding her finger into another family until a 320-pound body stopped it.
Another member of Bowe’s family, Williams says, is Chiefs left tackle Damion McIntosh. Bowe and McIntosh have played 13 games together this season. They were raised in south Florida towns 20 miles apart. McIntosh’s locker sits to the left of Sippio’s and three down from Bowe’s.
Could it be? Could cosmic or divine forces have scrambled the families, dispatched them into the world and delivered three of them here, into the Arrowhead Stadium locker room?
Until Friday, McIntosh never had heard Williams’ theory. McIntosh, an eight-year veteran, was born in Jamaica, but his family moved to Hollywood, Fla., when he was 4 years old. He never suspected he might be related to Bowe, a Miami native and the Chiefs’ first-round pick out of LSU, because — well, why would he?
“Me?” McIntosh says, his eyes wide with surprise. “She wasn’t talking about Bobby? You’re serious? I need to talk to his grandma.”
Bowe says he is unconvinced his grandmother is correct about McIntosh, although he admits his grandmother was right about Harris and Sippio. Bowe fielded a phone call in August from Williams, who told her grandson he was related to Sippio, a former Arena Football League star whom the Chiefs invited to training camp.
Bowe noticed Sippio. He noticed his hustle and realized that if Bowe slipped, a worker such as Sippio would sneak in and put Bowe’s starting job in his back pocket. But there was something familiar about Sippio that Bowe could not identify — not until Williams called and explained the result of her latest genealogy experiment.
“I said, ‘Ma, I don’t know this cat,’ ” Bowe recalls telling Williams, who raised Bowe. “And I’m not going to be friendly with him because he’s a receiver; he’s trying to take my position.’ She’s like, ‘No, I’m telling you.’ ”
Williams called her cousin Thomas Sippio and traced the bloodline further and discovered that Bowe and Bobby Sippio were second cousins. Bowe approached Sippio during training camp and told him they might be related. Sippio spoke with Williams, and the family orchestrated a makeshift reunion on a three-way telephone call.
“They were talking like they knew each other for years,” Bowe says. “I thought, ‘Well, maybe so.’ ”
The Chiefs receivers had their confirmation and began to forge a relationship. Sippio made the team and moved into a spare bedroom of Bowe’s home in Lee’s Summit. They played video games and discussed football and lounged the way Sippio says a pair of young, unmarried cousins are supposed to lounge.
They become close enough that Sippio, who is three years older than Bowe, began critiquing Bowe’s performance. When Bowe dropped a pass, it elicited memories in Sippio that similar drops could have ended Sippio’s career, which had for years swung on spot performances and luck. The man whom Bowe had feared would steal the rookie’s job now was as protective of Bowe’s career as an older brother.
“I ride him like a dirty diaper,” says Sippio, who was with the Miami Dolphins in 2004 but did not appear in a game. “I’m his worst critic out there. I don’t think the newspaper can ride him any worse than I ride him. And I’m in his ear, so it’s even worse. He can’t brush me off. He can’t close the paper and not listen to what I say because I’m in his ear. And I’m watching everything he does.”
He might not have had the chance if Williams had not spent a summer night researching her family tree. She has continued to trace the roots and how the tree has extended beyond south Florida, into the NFL and into the Chiefs’ locker room.
Williams says she is certain McIntosh is a distant relative to Bowe and Sippio, even if he does not yet know it.
“My mother’s sister’s family married into the McIntosh family,” she says. “There are a lot of us. There are a lot of cousins and relatives out there. We’re all related, and now we’re trying to dig up our roots.”
Bowe stands at the locker and ponders the possibilities. He has his doubts his grandmother is correct. It would be too coincidental, too cosmic and too divine for Bowe to be placed on a team with two family members — men who had no idea that they were teammates first but relatives all along.
Bowe slides on a T-shirt and sneakers before he leaves the site of his latest family reunion, the one with the socks and the stains. There will be a formal reunion in March, one in a more appropriate setting, most likely south Florida. It will be then that Bowe scans the room, past the Williamses and the Mosleys, around the Brownlees and the Sippios, into the McIntosh family and learns whether each Chiefs practice and game is a family thing. He will look for Damion McIntosh, who as of Friday had no idea he might be related to two teammates.
“If he’s there, I guess that means he’s family,” Bowe says. “If you see me in March, and you say, ‘Did he make it?’ and I say, ‘He was there,’ I guess I’ve got two cousins now.”
@ Go to KansasCity.com for Adam Teicher’s vlog and video clips from the Chiefs beat.