Starting Over : After Father’s Death and Bout With Alcoholism, Hipp Plays Again at Fullerton

This is how Jeff Hipp remembers the day he has gone to great and dangerous lengths to try to forget--the day his father died: “He just went to go get his hair cut one day and never came back.”

James Hipp died of a heart attack that day, nearly two years ago. So it was that Jeff Hipp became acquainted with the facts of death. Death doesn’t make appointments. It pops in whenever it pleases, showing little concern for the pain and anguish it brings. It is unannounced and uninvited. It comes with a cause, but no explanation.

These were all difficult realizations for Jeff Hipp. He fought them, and lost. And it was this defeat that turned his life, which had yet to reach its 20th year, upside down. Alcohol nearly consumed him. He looked for solutions to his problems in a bottle, and found only more problems. “After my father died, that was my escape, I guess,” he said.

Hipp says that’s all behind him now. He’s majoring in human services at Cal State Fullerton, and says he hopes to become a counselor and coach so he can use his experiences to keep others from making the same mistakes. And he has rejuvenated a football career that, in the summer of 1985, appeared to be in jeopardy.

Last Saturday night, Hipp, a sophomore linebacker, made his first college football start. He made 14 tackles, recovered 2 fumbles and forced 2 more, broke up 2 passes and had a sack for a 14-yard loss. Fullerton beat Utah State, 33-0, and Hipp was named the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. defensive player of the week.

Hipp is quick to admit that it will take more than one good football game to prove that he has righted himself. But it was certainly enough to make him feel better about himself and how far he’s come. “There’s no feeling like that in the world,” he said. “It’s been two years since I’ve had any kind of game like that. It felt great.”

It felt pretty good for the Titans, too. They hadn’t won a game in five weeks. Injuries to key players, mistakes that opponents have used to their full advantage and a demanding schedule had turned a season once thought to hold such promise into one of disappointment. The victory over Utah State was Fullerton’s second of the year, and hardly offsets six losses.

But, as Titan Coach Gene Murphy admits, there are worse things to lose than a football game.

“What we’ve gone through this year is nickel and dime compared to what Jeff’s gone through,” Murphy said.

James Hipp was an air traffic controller and father of six. The Hipps moved from Barstow, where Jeff was born, to Huntington Beach 16 years ago. Jeff began playing Jr. All-American football at 8, and was still at it by the time he reached Edison High School.

Hipp played running back and nose guard during his varsity years at Edison. He was a two-time, All-Sunset League selection at nose guard. Bill Workman, then the Chargers’ coach and now coach at Orange Coast College, called him “a very excitable guy, especially on game night.”

Workman remembers James Hipp as a devoted fan of his son and described the Hipps as a close-knit family. “It wasn’t one of those situations where he didn’t talk to his dad much. That wasn’t the way that family operated.”

The Chargers went 4-4-2 in Hipp’s senior season. When the college recruiting season hit, Hipp, then not quite 6-feet tall and 180 pounds, found little demand for a defensive lineman of his stature. Fullerton and Northern Arizona were the only schools to recruit him. He wanted to stay close to home, so he chose Fullerton, knowing that the Titan coaching staff intended to convert him to linebacker.

But football was interrupted. He was redshirted in 1984. And in 1985, his father died.

“It was really unexpected,” Hipp said. “He was only 54. But it just happens, I guess. I’ve finally learned to accept it.”

At first, he chose to reject it. “I went to the service and talked to him a little bit there,” Workman said. “I asked him how he was doing. He said, ‘OK.’ But I heard through other players that he had taken it pretty hard.”

So hard, in fact, that he became a problem drinker. “I wasn’t a full-blown alcoholic,” Hipp said. “I wasn’t drinking in the mornings or anything. But I had a problem with drinking. I ended up blowing off classes . . . the whole bit.”

Things snowballed from there. “A whole summer was wasted,” he said. That fall, alcohol-related problems prevented him from playing football at Fullerton. Hipp practiced with the Titans and played on their scout team while trying to get his life back in order. It helped to have an understanding coach.

“I think if I had any other coach besides Coach Murphy, I wouldn’t be playing football anymore, with everything that happened,” he said. “He was really supportive. He worked with me. When I had to be other places, he understood.

“Everybody in my family was really supportive. But, in the end, it was my thing. It was my fault . . . all the things that happened, and I had to get through it on my own.”

Hipp became an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous and worked out during the summer at Orange Coast College, where he was taking classes.

He said he began the 1986 football season sober and ready to re-establish himself. He began as a reserve linebacker and special teams player. When starting linebacker Bryan Riggs was lost for the season after injuring his knee in the third game, Hipp figured his time had come. Instead, senior Greg Williams filled Riggs’ spot. “That’s what the coaches thought was best for the team at the time,” Hipp said. “It was fair. He’s a senior. But I knew I’d get my chance eventually.”

Williams suffered a slight knee injury that limited his mobility in a 30-20 loss to Long Beach on Oct. 11. The following Monday, Hipp was told that he would start against Utah State.

“Last week, we just decided to go with Jeff,” said Kirk Harmon, Fullerton linebacker coach. “It turned out to be a good move for us and for him. We knew he’d be aggressive and play hard, but he did some things we didn’t expect him to do.”

Statistically, it was the best performance by a Fullerton defensive player this season, and it attracted a lot of attention.

Earlier this week, a reporter came to ask Hipp about that game, and about his unpleasant past. Hipp could have avoided discussing his problems with alcohol, but didn’t. It’s not that he’s proud of them. It’s just that he has come to terms with them.

“It’s not going to be a new thing to a lot of people,” he said. “All my friends back home know about it, so why am I hiding it?

“I mean, it’s my chance to say, ‘Hey, I came back. Now I’m doing what I want to do.’ I guess I have that right.”