Shades of Greatness : ANDRE TIPPETT : Karate Kid Grows Up, Has Patriot Opponents on His Chopping Block

In the genteel sport of tournament karate, you bow to your worthy opponent, flash your kicks and chops, then finish off with another humble bow.

That’s what you do, unless you are Andre Tippett, a man who respects the Eastern traditions of karate but just can’t bring himself to be a cool loser.

Tippett is a second-degree black belt in karate. He is also the New England Patriots’ hit man, the most feared linebacker in the AFC, possibly the most feared linebacker in all of football and maybe even the most feared linebacker in all of his home state of New Jersey.

And, damn, he hates to lose. In one karate tournament last summer, Tippett advanced to the final and lost a close match. He stormed off the mat in a fury and slammed his fist into a wall. After another big tournament loss he kicked a chair and refused to shake his opponent’s hand.

Spectators and officials cringed.

But that’s Tippett. Composure in combat isn’t what allowed Andre Tippett to rise up out of one of the nation’s grimiest ghettos to stardom in the NFL. The man has a bit of a fire burning inside.

In junior high school back in Newark, the neighborhood bully constantly tried to shake down Andre for his lunch money.

“He and his friends tried to get me to bring my dollar to school every day,” Tippett recalls. “One day, I had just gotten a new watch. He saw it and said, ‘Let me have that watch.’ I took off running. He didn’t get it, but everyone was afraid of the guy. When he said something, everyone listened.”

Andre later got revenge. He and the bully went to different high schools, and both played football. “I got a chance to lay him out, without his buddies helping him,” Tippett said of their football meetings. “I made his day miserable, time after time.”

Tippett tells the story with relish. Asked the bully’s name, Tippett said: “His name’s Mandy Carter, but don’t give him no publicity.”

You almost get the feeling Andre wouldn’t mind taking another crack at the guy.

Sunday, Tippett will take out his hostility and aggression on the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl here, a long way from Newark.

Reflecting on how far he has come in football and in life, Tippett said: “I’m living basically a Cinderella story.”

It’s not the only rags-to-riches football story in town this week, but it’s a pretty good one. Tippett has become more than just a fine pro football player. He has become one of the league’s true sack monsters, in a class with Lawrence Taylor, Mark Gastineau and Richard Dent.

From his left outside linebacker position, Tippett recorded 18 1/2 sacks last season, second in the league to Gastineau, and has 16 1/2 so far this season, second in the league to Dent’s 17. He was voted the AFC’s defensive player of the year.

For a couple of seasons, football experts considered Giant linebacker Taylor football’s premier defensive cruncher. But Taylor has slipped a bit, and now there is some feeling that Tippett is the man.

He’s even getting some recognition back in his old neighborhood, down on South 10th Street off Central Avenue, in the heart of heartless Newark.

“I go back all the time. My parents still live there,” Tippett said. “Kids will all be talking about Taylor, because he’s in Jersey (home of Taylor’s Giants). I’d say, ‘I’m from New Jersey. What about me ?’ Now they’re starting to talk about me, too.”

Yeah, the word is out. Andre is not a man to be trifled with. When the Patriots played the Raiders in the playoffs early this month, the Raiders assigned tackle Henry Lawrence, instead of blocking back Frank Hawkins, to block Tippett.

“Hawk usually can block anyone, but I wouldn’t put Frank Hawkins and a tank against him,” Lawrence said of Tippett. “I wouldn’t want to block him, but I have to.”

Tippett led the Patriots that day with nine tackles, and the Raiders fumbled their way out of the playoffs.

The Jets tried to block Tippett with tight end Mickey Shuler. On one play, Tippett snatched Shuler, moved him sideways three yards, blew into the backfield, forearmed a second blocker out of the way and slammed quarterback Ken O’Brien to the turf.

“If he gets his hands on your pads, it’s over,” Shuler said.

When those teams met again in the wild-card playoff game, Tippett knocked O’Brien out of the game with a concussion.

It will be interesting to see how the Bears deal with this 6-foot 3-inch, 241-pound walking contradiction--part steely discipline and part uncontrolled fury.

Tippett is a family man, a studious type who asked one reporter he respected for a list of good books to read. He didn’t drink until about a year ago, and now has only an occasional beer with pals on the team. No drugs. Not a bad record for a player who, as a kid, idolized Hollywood Henderson.

“I get out and party and raise hell but I keep it to a minimum,” Tippett said.

Andre attributes the discipline in his life on and off the field to studying karate. He started taking lessons when he was 12, as a survival skill. Inner city Newark is horribly overpopulated and poor. You can run into a lot of angry people there who will covet your watch or your lunch money.

“I had four brothers and one sister,” Tippett said. “I’m the oldest, and they all looked up to me. When you’re the oldest, someone gets into a tight situation, you’re gonna have to go straighten it out. I’d do what I had to do to handle the situation, then go on my merry way.”

Andre’s karate proficiency gradually earned him respect on the block, and the bullies backed off. The more karate he knew, the less he used. So karate didn’t help him terrorize the neighborhood, but it did help make him a great football player.

“I’ve been able to incorporate a lot of the mental discipline into football,” Tippett said. “I know what I’m doing out there, and I have the desire to go that extra.”

Tippett said that he doesn’t use karate techniques in football, except one time last season when he retaliated for what he considered a cheap shot, karate-kicking the feet out from under Cleveland’s Joe DeLamielleure after the whistle.

The conditioning aspect of karate has proven valuable to Tippett, too.

“He’s tireless,” said Don Shinnick, the Patriot linebacker coach. “In a tough football game, in the last two minutes, he’s still going strong, he doesn’t stop, when anyone else would be beaten down. He’s in better shape because of the karate. He also knows when not to work too hard in practice, not do too much. He knows his body.”

Shinnick was a berserko-type linebacker for the old Baltimore Colt dynasty, and he later coached wild men Ted Hendricks and Dick Butkus. He compares Tippett favorably to those two linebacking legends.

If Tippett is becoming a legend, he’s working up to it the hard way, from obscurity. He was a star, not a superstar, in high school. Had he been massively recruited, this city kid probably wouldn’t have wound up playing his college ball at Iowa.

He was an All-American at Iowa, but the pros weren’t bowled over. The Patriots picked him 41st overall in the ’82 draft, and he didn’t become a full-time starter until his second season.

Soon, though, he was making an impact on the league, and last season he was named to the Pro Bowl. Now he’s in the Super Bowl, where most of the pregame noise is being made about the other team’s defense, which makes sense to Andre.

“(The Bears) really beat up on people,” Tippett said, admiringly. “They’re like a bunch of muggers out there. They can really dominate a team. It’s gonna be pretty exciting to watch them.”

The Bears will be watching Tippett closely, too. In the Patriot defense, Tippett is free to improvise, to go where his instincts take him. He appreciates the freedom, and he likes playing for Raymond Berry.

“You look at (former Patriot coach Ron) Meyer, now you look at Berry. It’s like Christmas now.”

It’s also like the Super Bowl, media blitz time, and Tippett is finally getting some of the ink he deserves. He has tried to pass along some to the Patriot linebacker on the opposite side, Don Blackmon.

“I think we are the two best outside linebackers in the league right now,” Tippett said.

Shinnick isn’t even sure which of the two he would run at if he were coaching the Bears.

“I think it’s 50-50,” he said. “I think (the Bears) got a problem.”