How Bubba Discovered God--and the Media

The British Broadcasting Co. of London had come to San Francisco to find Paris. That’s Bubba Paris, a 49er offensive tackle who is about the size of the Eiffel Tower. So here was Paris, towering over the BBC reporter Tuesday at Candlestick Park. At 6 feet, 6 inches and 305 pounds, Paris towers over practically every reporter gathered here this week for the Super Bowl. But the man from the BBC is particularly short. Dudley Moore-short. Trying to be helpful, Paris dropped to one knee. “How about if I do this?” Paris said, affecting an English accent. He sounded as if he had seen a lot of James Bond movies. “That’s lovely,” the BBC man said. Paris then lifted the man off the ground and put him on his knee. That wasn’t lovely. “No, no, no,” the man said. Wriggling free, he brushed his hair back with his hand, straightened his tie and took a few deep breaths while regaining his composure. Giving the signal for the cameras to begin rolling, he said: “Now then, one of the things the British viewers, I think, would like to know is: What goes on--by that I mean the kind of conversation that goes on--between players? Are there any instances that we could repeat?” “To be truthful, on the left side of the 49ers’ line, there’s an awful lot of conversation,” Paris said. “What kind of conversation?” the man asked. “Have you been saved?” Paris said. The BBC man did a double-take. He wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. “Have I been saved?” he repeated. “Yes.” “Not recently,” the man said. “Have you been baptized in Jesus’ name and filled with the Holy Ghost?” “No,” the man said. “I’m afraid not.” “Are you living a sacred kind of life?” “No,” the man said. “I’m not.” “Do you believe God is good?” “Yes, I do,” the man said eagerly, relieved he could finally answer a question in the affirmative before Paris put him back on his knee. “Well, that’s the kind of conversations I have,” Paris said. The BBC man seemed disappointed. “But there are different sorts of conversations on a football field?” he asked. “There are, that’s true,” Paris said. “Well,” the BBC man said. “You see, I think the British audience might find it somewhat strange, being used to something like cricket, where . . . “ “Cricket?” Paris said. “Yes,” the man said. “At the break all the players go up and have tea together, and they have something like cucumber sandwiches, and then they come back on the field.” “Hey,” Paris said. “We ought to do that. In fact, we do. Before the New York Giants game, me and Butch Woolfolk went out and had chicken together.” “Oh,” the BBC man said. Meet Bubba Paris. He was the 49ers’ second-round draft choice in 1982, missed his rookie season with a knee injury but has started at left offensive tackle the last two seasons. He is from Louisville, Ky., where his father boxed as an amateur against Muhammad Ali. His father wanted Paris to be a boxer instead of a football player. But while they were playing a pickup basketball game the day before Paris’ 14th birthday, his father died of a heart attack. Paris later became a football player. At the University of Michigan, he majored in liberal arts with an emphasis on pre-law. He still intends to go to law school. Meantime, he is chief executive officer of Paris Enterprises, a San Francisco marketing firm that has eight employees. “Someday, it’s going to be a multibillion dollar company,” he said. He said that Wednesday at the Amfac Hotel in Burlingame, where the 49ers had come for the second day of interviews. Reporters who hadn’t been fortunate enough to catch Paris’ routine Tuesday heard about it from other reporters and made sure they had empty notebooks ready for him Wednesday. He filled all of them. Veteran Super Bowl reporters say no player has stopped the show like this since Hollywood Henderson. Paris would talk all day about his weight problems if he weren’t afraid he would miss lunch. Before the season, 49er Coach Bill Walsh told Paris to report to training camp at 285. Paris hasn’t weighed 285 since his junior year in high school. When Paris reported considerably heavier, Walsh told him to trim down to 300 before the regular season began and stay there. He also said he would fine Paris every day during the season that he weighed more than 300 pounds. Paris has weighed in consistently this season at 305. “I’ve probably been fined as much as some people make in a year,” Paris said. Mostly, though, Paris likes to talk about God. They met one night in 1982. Let Paris tell the story. “I had been to a bar here called Orphan Annie’s and picked up a woman,” Paris said. “We went back to her place and were making love when, all of a sudden, God said, ‘Bubba, you’re going to hell.’ ” “God called you Bubba?” a reporter asked. “Yeah,” Bubba said. “That’s what everybody’s called me since I was a junior in high school. I reminded people of Bubba Smith.” Paris said he leaped from the bed, called one of his more religious 49er teammates, Willie Harper, and asked him to find a minister. Paris wanted to be saved. Harper asked him if he knew it was 5 a.m. Bubba said he knew. An hour later, he was baptized. Now he’s a nondenominational minister. “I went from 20 to 30 women I could call at any time to no women,” Paris said. “When I was saved, I gave up fornication and illicit sex.” Three months after he was baptized, he was married. He and his wife are expecting a child any day now. He talks about his Christianity everywhere he goes, including on the football field. The last time he lined up against Miami defensive end Kim Bokamper, the man he will face Sunday, Paris said he scolded him for losing his temper and resorting to illegal tactics. “I told him the Lord wouldn’t want us to play like that,” Paris said. “He said later he was sorry. He’s a great guy.” During an exchange of words in the NFC championship game with Chicago’s Richard Dent, Paris said he quoted Scripture. “I had to ask him, ‘What does it count for a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?’ ” Paris said. Paris said Dent looked at him funny. “But he didn’t do any more cussin’ and fightin’,” Paris said. He said the only player who did not react favorably to one of his sermons was Washington’s Dexter Manley. “When he tried to intimidate me, I said that God loves him,” Paris said. “He got mad and kicked me.”