He Has No Room for Error : Pro football: Chip Banks is playing well for the Colts, but the former Charger also is just one failed drug test away from banishment by the NFL.

The docudrama that Chip Banks’ life has become gets played out every day at a barnlike training complex located on the drab flatlands that make up the outskirts of downtown Indianapolis.

This is where the Colts practice. And this is where they watch and wait to see or hear what will become of the troubled 30-year-old left outside linebacker they took in trade from the Chargers Oct. 17.

“I can’t say that I don’t think about it,” says Duane Bickett, the Colts’ Pro Bowl right outside linebacker who was a teammate of Banks at USC. “Every morning, when I walk into the locker room, and I don’t see Chip, I say, ‘Shoot, I hope nothing’s happened.’

“You know what I mean? It might be that he just hasn’t come in yet or whatever. But it’s always there.”

Banks, you see, is one random urinalysis away from being the next Dexter Manley. One more positive drug test, and Banks, like the Redskins’ Manley, will be banned for life by the NFL from doing what he does best.

And the odds are stacked, like a short-yardage defense, against him. Statistics show that more than 50% of cocaine abusers who have undergone rehabilitative therapy end up backsliding into the dark world of drugs.

“You can’t revert,” Banks tells himself every day.

“It’s possible to stay clean,” he tells himself. “It’s not impossible.”

But, he adds in the next measured breath, “it’s also possible for me to mess up next week. You flip a coin every day.”

The drug experts emphasize that addiction is a disease. Curing the disease is more than just a matter of willpower. “Just Say No” is fine if you haven’t made cocaine a habit. “Just Pray No” is more realistic once the demon has gotten inside you.

“People have come back from lower ditches and gutters than me to lead clean and sober lives,” Banks says. “All things can be accomplished with the grace of God.”

Only God knows why he blessed Banks with the size, strength and speed that made Banks graceful enough on the field to become an All-American, the third player selected in the 1982 draft, a four-time Pro Bowl participant and a man who has started all 90 of the NFL games in which he has played.

“This guy is sculptured,” says Indianapolis Coach Ron Meyer of Banks, who is 6-feet-4, 245 pounds.

It is one day after the Colts have beaten the Jets and six days before they will face the Chargers, Banks’ former teammates. Meyer--wearing a pressed blazer, and a wide-striped, button-down shirt, with matching tie--sits behind a huge desk, shuffles a stack of papers, leans forward and makes a confession.

“Maybe I’m too soft,” he says. “I’m prejudiced. I like football players.”

So much so that between the time the Patriots fired him as their coach in 1984 and the Colts hired him in 1986, Meyer served as a player agent.

In 1988, Meyer took a similar chance with former Patriot running back Tony Collins. Collins subsequently failed an NFL drug test and wound up in a hospital.

Meyer knows the same thing could happen to Banks, which is part of the reason he chats privately in his office with Banks at least once a week.

Banks lives in a hotel room near the Colts complex. And he continues to receive ongoing outpatient drug therapy in Indianapolis.

Banks also talks on the phone regularly with David Katz, the San Diego-based therapist who guided Banks through the rigorous 90-day rehabilitation program at the Rancho L’Abri institute in Dulzura, Calif.

Banks says Katz, 39, has been free of drugs and alcohol for several years and calls him “a living miracle.”

Banks left San Diego against Katz’s wishes. “Chip knows how I feel about it,” he says. “But his dedication to recovery was on line, or else I wouldn’t have let him go.”

Katz was an ironworker in San Diego until he became “extremely addicted” to drugs and alcohol 10 years ago.

“How low did it get for me?” he asks, repeating the question. “It got to a point where I was having seizures on a daily basis, neurological deterioration, and my liver was giving out.”

Katz says his wife took their three children and “went east.” He hasn’t seen them since and doesn’t know where they are. Before he sought professional help, he was sleeping in the homes of various people at night and collecting money for drug peddlers by day.

“I’m a former football player,” he says. “So I was kind of big. I was like a henchman.”

When Katz finally tried to get into a downtown San Diego detoxification center, it was full. So he waited three days and slept in the garbage dumpster outside the building. “That’s pretty low,” he says matter-of-factly.

From detox, Katz moved onto a seven-day program and then into a long-term rehab that took seven months. For the next 18 months after that, he lived next door to the rehab center.

He says he has been drug and alcohol free for six years and working as a therapist for the past four.

It was Katz who helped convince the NFL to reinstate Banks before the trade deadline. It was not an easy sell.

Between February 1988 and last June, Banks, who grew up in Augusta, Ga., was arrested four times in Atlanta on cocaine and marijuana possession charges. On Oct. 11, an Atlanta judge sentenced him to five years probation for a cocaine possession conviction. The sentence is running concurrently with a five-year probation for a March marijuana conviction.

“He has a storied past,” Meyer says. Hence, the private chats.

“I’m not naive enough to think we have all the answers,” Meyer says “We just take it day to day. Hour to hour.”

In their meetings, Meyer asks questions. “Painful questions,” he says. And Banks weighs his responses. The subjects they discuss have very little to do with football.

“Chip knows the tremendous ramifications if he falls out of line,” Meyer says. “All you have to do is look at Dexter Manley.”

Manley’s banishment over the weekend hit Banks’ teammates hard. “We thought Tony Collins was going to make the team,” Bickett says. “It’s not like we haven’t seen this before.”

Manley’s banishment hit Banks harder. “It was like it was almost me who did it,” he says. “It really upset me that a guy with his talent would jeopardize his whole career.”

But talking about recovery, he says, “is easier said than done.”

“And every time something like that (Manley) happens again, it will hit Chip the same way,” Katz says.

Meyer and Steve Ortmayer, the director of football operations who effected the trade from the Chargers’ end, have been friends since Ortmayer’s days as an assistant coach at Colorado in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

Saint Coach Jim Mora was Meyer’s defensive coordinator at New England. Mora’s son is the Chargers’ secondary coach.

Because of connections like these, certain NFL teams talk to certain other NFL teams on a regular basis. Dallas is another team the Chargers communicate with more than others. In fact, the Cowboys originally wanted Banks more than the Colts did.

But a deal fell through when Katz convinced Banks he shouldn’t leave San Diego and the outpatient treatment he could receive there.

Then Charger owner Alex Spanos offered to re-sign Banks if Banks would be willing to sit out the 1989 season. Banks accused Spanos of “stringing him along.”

Meanwhile, Ortmayer had continued talking to Meyer about Banks. The Colts needed a linebacker because of the knee injury suffered by starter O’Brien Alston.

“Our first reaction when Steve brought up Chip Banks’ name was like everyone else’s: ‘Hell no,’ ” Meyer says. “You keep your hands off guys like that. And I conveyed that feeling to Jim Irsay (Colts’ general manager).”

Time passed, and the Colts’ need at linebacker became more glaring. As the trade deadline neared, the Chargers’ asking price for Banks came down.

Meyer went to tackle Chris Hinton and running back Eric Dickerson, both of whom had played in Pro Bowls with Banks, and made inquiries. And he double-checked with Bickett, who told him: “If you can, get him over here.”

Following marathon negotiations between Irsay and Ortmayer, the Colts agreed to take Banks in exchange for a fourth-round pick in the 1990 draft. That selection could become a third or second-rounder depending upon how well Banks does the rest of the year.

If he backslides, the Chargers still get the fourth-rounder. The Colts are paying Banks $250,000 this year and will pay him $275,000 if he plays for them in 1990.

The Chargers announced the trade on Tuesday, Oct. 17. Banks, who hadn’t played a down since December of 1987, was practicing with the Colts the next day.

He started in Indianapolis’ 23-12 upset of the Bengals in Cincinnati that Sunday. On the Bengals’ second play from scrimmage, he hurried Boomer Esiason into an incompletion. He was on the field for 49 snaps and finished with three solo tackles, three assists and four quarterback pressures. Meyer awarded him a game ball.

“Physically, the guy has not lost anything,” says Rick Venturi, who coaches the Colts’ linebackers. “He can still burst and accelerate.” And he has benefitted from a defensive scheme similar to the one he played in Cleveland.

In five games, Banks has totaled 23 tackles, one sack, five quarterback pressures and one interception. He has played through a wrenched back and a pinched nerve.

Facing the Chargers Sunday, he says, will be “fun.”

Charger tackle James FitzPatrick, who also played at USC, says playing against Banks will be “bizarre.”

The temptation is to say that Indianapolis is a good place for Banks because there are fewer distractions here than in California or Atlanta. And, Venturi says, “nobody lives in this league other than in seven-day cycles.”

But while the coaches work their way through 18-hour days, players are free after practice. Indianapolis has alcohol. Indianapolis has parties. Indianapolis has drugs just like every other city.

Bickett walked into a nightclub not long ago, and the first person he noticed was Banks. “He was drinking soda water,” Bickett says. “He wasn’t raising hell, and he left early. It wasn’t like I was checking up on him.”

But it wasn’t like Bickett was unhappy to see Banks in control of himself either.

Katz says he wants Banks back in San Diego after the season to continue treatment. Banks, who has never tested positive for drugs in season, has already gone through more than one therapist in Indianapolis. “Chip had a problem with trusting,” Katz says.

Meyer says he hopes Banks finds a permanent place to live in Indianapolis. But, he says, “I don’t know if I know Chip Banks.”

Banks says he might go back to Atlanta,

“I don’t think too many people are inside Chip Banks,” Meyer adds. “And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Unless the demons are still in there plotting a way to transform Banks back into the babbling addict who walked away from a $4.7 million, five-year contract offer from the Chargers in 1988.

Banks says that years ago an uncle told him: “ ‘As long as you are still breathing, you can be knocked down but not knocked out.’ ”

That same uncle told Banks: “Don’t ever count your opponent out.”

The day Chip Banks does will be the day he begins to die. His opponent is not the Chargers or any other NFL team. His opponent is an insidious disease for which there is no known cure.