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Tribal Warfare
10-12-2008, 12:18 AM
Big brother helped mold Chiefs’ Albert into an NFL player (http://www.kansascity.com/sports/story/837264.html)
BY KENT BABB | THE KANSAS CITY STAR

The round-faced 15-year-old planted his feet on gravel 360 miles south of where he’d left, and already he wanted to go back.

He missed the depressed city that had held back more than a few of his relatives, some with as much of a future as he had.

Branden Albert walked into his brother’s house and set down his bags. Then he walked into the den and picked up a phone book.

“What are you doing?” Ashley Sims asked his younger brother.

Thanksgiving was coming. Branden wanted to call an airline and find out the cost of a plane ticket to Rochester, N.Y. His mother lived there. That’s where Branden had played basketball, skipped school and failed ninth grade twice. It was where his life was pointed toward a frightening direction.

Sims had picked up Branden on a Friday in the fall of 2000 and drove him to Edgewood, Md., where he’d live with Sims, learn some discipline and be introduced to the game that had changed Sims’ life.

“Just seeing about going home,” Branden said.

Sims walked over to Branden and slammed the phone book on his younger brother’s fingers. Through angry eyes, Sims looked hard at Branden.

“Brother,” Sims said, “there ain’t no more home. This is home.”

• • •

Branden Albert wants more. It is a Tuesday during football season, and Albert is sitting in a crowded Kansas City lunch spot, spending the Chiefs’ day off negotiating with a waitress over the size of his prime rib.

The 316-pound offensive tackle leans back and stares at her. Can’t she tell this is a hungry man? Can’t she tell that 14 ounces won’t do?

“I can go up to 20,” she says, her best offer.

Albert waits a moment, studying her face to see if she can do better.

“I’ll take it,” he says, smiling and proud as if he just closed a real-estate deal. He’ll take as much as they’ll offer. He can afford it now.

Until the food arrives, now’s as good a time as any to hear the story of how Branden Albert went from troubled kid to first-round draft pick. About how his brother turned a portly, lazy teenager with a rocky past and a hatred of football into a man with a limitless future and an NFL contract worth millions.

It took time, and it took work. Now, Albert is taking advantage of the rewards. He says you’d be surprised if you knew all he went through to get here: the failed classes, the early mornings and the long days — all the pain he never chose, but instead chose him.

Albert says he wouldn’t be sitting here if not for his brother. Heck, he’d probably be dodging trouble back in Rochester like some of his other family members.

But instead he’s here, waiting on a slice of meat that weighs nearly a pound and a half, waiting to open his mouth and fold in slabs the size of a baby’s fist.

Until then, there’s some time. And this is where he starts:

“You can’t fault people for where they come from,” he says. “Or where they live. It’s not their fault. Sometimes you’ve just got to make the situation better.”

• • •

Branden was a football player. His brother saw it. Ashley watched the plump 3-year-old spiral a football from one side of their house to the other. Ashley was in high school then, 12 years older than Susan Albert’s baby, and already there were signs that Branden would be perfect for the game.

Years later, football pulled Ashley out of Rochester on a scholarship to the University of Maryland. While he was there, he watched his brother deteriorate, following the lead of cousins that came before them. One of them had a football scholarship in Pennsylvania but dropped out after a week. Another never made it to the University of Cincinnati. Yet another cousin was said to have more talent than Branden, but he never made it out of Rochester.

If they ever left, they came back, some of them turning to crime and others settling into jobs at Rochester’s Kodak and Xerox plants, companies that filled the city with life until the layoffs came.

“I always said to myself,” Ashley says now, “ ‘Once I go to college and get my degree, I will break the cycle of my family history. I’m taking the footsteps now, and then Branden is going to supersede my footsteps.’ ”

Ashley and Branden’s father, Nonnus Albert, introduced the youngster to sports. That was another family tradition. Nonnus, a swimmer and cricket player from Saint Lucia, wanted his younger boy to try the games he’d learned on the islands. But, as Branden told Ashley: He wanted only to play basketball.

Branden tried football, sure. Pulled his socks high one day, slid on a pair of cleats and ran around on the field trying to shake off the taunts of the other kids and some of the coaches, the ones pointing out that those socks and those cleats, the ones Branden’s dad wore during cricket matches, looked like something out of a Star Trek movie.

Never again. That’s what Branden said that night after football practice. He was a basketball player, and that was final. Football was about anger and meanness and hate — and besides, look at Ashley, a linebacker whose shoulder popped out of its socket three times after he was injured at Maryland.

Branden had the body and the pedigree, but he didn’t have the nerve. With Ashley gone off to college, determined to be the first man in the family to play football and graduate, there was no one in Rochester with the time or energy to push Branden.

His mother was working 50-hour weeks, and his father was trying to jump out of his own skin. Something was uncomfortable in Rochester, and he had to find a way out. Albert says now that his father stopped working and stopped supporting the family, so his mother left him; tore apart the family for the greater good, shielding Branden’s eyes from a man that, Branden and Ashley say now, didn’t know how to be a good husband or father.

Once she divorced Nonnus, Susan Albert had to work longer hours at a health insurance office, and young Branden would leave school and spend afternoons in a lonely house. One of those days, he came home and the lights didn’t come on and didn’t for a month.

“You grow up fast,” Branden says.

Those years watching his mother and brother taught him this much: Sometimes you have to go off on your own to do the right thing.

• • •

Susan kept going to work, and Branden kept heading off to school or the basketball court. He applied and was accepted to School Without Walls, an alternative school that didn’t use a traditional class schedule. Students had breaks between classes, and they were on their own for much of their work. It was a college lifestyle for junior-high students. Some students flourished in the freedom, but some couldn’t carry the burden of autonomy.

Without the structured schedule, Branden just didn’t go to class. He sat home or played basketball, anything to pass the time until his mother came home and there was noise in the house again.

“Something went wrong,” he says now. “I don’t know what, but it went wrong.”

He failed ninth grade. His brother was out of college and worked for the state of Maryland. He offered to take Branden in, push him and discipline him — but one of the requirements was that Branden had to play football.

Branden refused. He kept playing basketball, kept skipping classes and kept getting bad grades. Then he failed ninth grade again.

Many of Branden’s friends were two years from graduation, and Branden was still in the first year of high school. That’s when Susan decided she was no longer the person to raise her son.

“I knew the streets would call him after a while if he didn’t get out of here,” she says. “It was time for him to leave.”

• • •

Branden stepped in and went to work. That was Ashley’s idea.

After moving in with his brother, Branden set down the phone book but still thought about home. It was easier there. Back in Rochester, he didn’t have to follow his brother and sister-in-law into school after school, meeting with counselors who laughed at Ashley when he declared he wanted his younger brother, two years behind in school, to graduate early.

In Rochester, Branden wouldn’t have to get up early during the summer, sit in classrooms for four hours, then go to night school to make up for the lost time. All that was Ashley’s idea, too.

Ashley watched his brother, pushed him, drove him to do better than the cousins back home. For three years, Branden spent 40 hours a week in classrooms until, sure enough, he graduated on time in 2004 from Maryland’s Glen Burnie High.

“I knew my brother wasn’t academically challenged,” Ashley says now. “He was just lazy.”

Football took even more work. It was a game whose terminology felt as foreign as Farsi, but Branden had to fake his way through more hours of hard labor, just to satisfy his brother’s requirements.

He was clumsy as a junior, his first year playing organized football. He was bigger than everyone else, but Branden looked out of place. He kept praying basketball season would hurry along.

Then Ashley sent Branden to the University of Maryland’s summer football camp. He played against some of the region’s top players. It was a strategy that Ashley now admits was meant to shame his brother, and that’s what it did.

“I got embarrassed up there,” Branden says now. “I was like, ‘Man, if you really want to do this, don’t be wasting your time.’ ”

Whatever he saw at that camp, it worked. Branden returned from the camp and decided he might never be a football player, but he’d at least try to get better. He ran two miles a day. Dropped 20 pounds. Added 65 pounds to his bench press — in one summer.

“I really put in the work,” Branden says now. “I became a beast.”

• • •

Branden started at defensive tackle and offensive tackle his senior year, finishing with 11 sacks, 65 tackles and 65 pancakes. But college recruiters weren’t calling. Not for football, anyway.

Branden says he had more than 30 offers to play basketball, but once he started dominating in football, he started to enjoy it. He wanted a school to offer him a two-way scholarship, the kind that would allow him to play basketball and football.

His senior football season ended, and he had no takers. He took a handful of campus visits and tried to talk coaches into taking a chance on him. None were willing.

It was settled: Branden was going to Rutgers to play basketball. Football was fun, but his brother was wrong; Branden didn’t have a future in the game.

Branden was lifting weights when the phone rang at his brother’s house two days before national signing day in 2004. Branden came home, and Ashley told his brother that a man had called and needed to talk to Branden.

Ashley smiled as Branden looked at the phone and saw that University of Virginia coach Al Groh had called. Branden punched the numbers and heard the man’s voice.

“Branden?” Groh said.

“Yes, Coach?”

“We’re going to offer you a scholarship. How do you feel about that?”

Branden didn’t hesitate. He said he’d sign with Virginia.

But there was a caveat. Branden would have to give up basketball. Groh told him he hoped Branden’s high school team won the state championship, because that’d be the last time he’d play. That was his best offer.

“At that point,” Branden says, “basketball was an afterthought.”

Two days later, Branden went into the basement at Glen Burnie High, signed a scholarship contract and faxed it in. There were no reporters or coaches or teammates around when someone took a picture of Branden, because no one saw it coming.

No one except the other man with him in the school basement.

“I just always knew it was possible,” Ashley says.

• • •

Branden Albert walks around the Country Club Plaza and admires the fountains and admires the sunlight.

He’d be lying if he said life was simple after he went to Virginia. School was still a problem — he spent a year at a military school in order to raise his grades and qualify at Virginia — and he watched as his family back in Rochester continued its decline.

He listened to his mother talk about the cousins who had won scholarships but quit school. Now, Susan Albert says, she’s not sure some of them aren’t selling drugs.

Then during his second semester at Virginia, Susan called Branden and told him that his father was dead. A gas pipe had broken, leaking carbon monoxide into his house while he slept. Nonnus Albert never woke up.

Branden says he wasn’t on speaking terms with his father during his dad’s final years, and he regrets that. But he’d be lying, too, if he said he wasn’t still angry at how his dad abandoned the family and left them to navigate life without a father figure.

Maybe that made him stronger. Maybe that made him more willing to accept his brother’s tough love. Maybe that convinced Branden that sometimes it’s not what you want to be that drives you; instead, it’s what you don’t want to be.

Branden watched the NFL draft this past April at his brother’s house, where all this began. They watched together when the Chiefs took Branden with the No. 15 overall pick.

“I reflected on about 20 years, damn near 30, man, of so many family members that had the potential to go pro,” Ashley says now. “Here goes a guy who didn’t care about football, and he’s doing what he’s doing. That’s my little brother. It was just a straight happy day.”

Branden walks up 47th Street, peeking into windows and admiring cars as they swish past. A luxury SUV pulls into a parking spot 20 yards ahead.

Branden points toward the $60,000 vehicle and says he bought his brother one just like it. Branden says Ashley neither needs nor asks for Branden’s money. He’s 35 years old, has a family and is a probation officer in Maryland. His job is to make certain people take the right steps as they move forward, same as he did years ago for his brother.

“For all he did for me,” Branden says, “he was getting a new car.”

Branden keeps walking.

“If it wasn’t for him,” he says, “I’d probably be in the streets somewhere, being a deadbeat, in my mother’s basement, asking her where my lunch money’s at.”

Branden points again at the SUV idling ahead. He says his brother’s model isn’t quite as nice as that one, but it’ll do.

Then he stops, opens the door to the truck and climbs in. He smiles and settles into the front seat, getting that big body comfortable for wherever it is he wants to go.

Phobia
10-12-2008, 12:30 AM
He better get his brother a whole lot more than than an SUV.

Adept Havelock
10-12-2008, 09:38 AM
.

Cntrygal
10-12-2008, 10:13 AM
Good story!

Rain Man
10-12-2008, 11:02 AM
I kind of wish I hadn't read this story.

Phobia
10-12-2008, 01:31 PM
I kind of wish I hadn't read this story.

Cuz now you know he's a lazy pos who has his payday and now he'll revert.

blueballs
10-12-2008, 02:16 PM
giving up
it's a family tradition