Former USC Star Banks Battles His Toughest Opponent : Drugs: Standout linebacker struggles to remain free of cocaine, knowing he’s one positive test from being banned from NFL for life.

The docudrama of Chip Banks’ life is played out every day at a barnlike training complex on the drab flatlands of the city’s outskirts.

This is where the Colts practice. And this is where they wait to see what will become of the troubled 30-year-old left outside linebacker they acquired in a trade with the San Diego Chargers on 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 Banks’ teammate 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 is one random urinalysis 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 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.

“You can’t revert,” Banks tells himself every day. “It’s possible to stay clean. 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. They say curing the disease is more than simply a matter of willpower. “Just say no” is fine if you haven’t made cocaine a habit. “Just pray no” is more realistic once you have the habit.

“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.”

Banks was the third player selected in the 1982 draft, a four-time Pro Bowl selection 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 the 6-foot-4, 245-pound Banks.

It is one day after the Colts have beaten the Jets and six days before they will face the Chargers, Banks’ former teammates. Meyer sits behind a huge desk, shuffles a stack of papers, leans forward and says: “Maybe I’m too soft. I’m prejudiced. I like football players.”

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

In 1988, he took a similar chance with former Patriot running back Tony Collins, who 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 near the Colt complex. And he continues to receive outpatient drug therapy.

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

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

Katz says 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.

When Katz, a former football player, finally tried to get into a downtown San Diego detox 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 to a seven-day program, then into a long-term rehabilitation that took seven months. For the ensuing 18 months, 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 last four.

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

Between February of 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 cocaine possession. The sentence is running concurrently with a five-year probation for a March marijuana conviction.

“He has a storied past,” Meyer says. “I’m not naive enough to think we have all the answers. 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 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 last 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 hard. “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 Katz says: “Every time something like that (Manley) happens again, it will hit Chip the same way.”

Meyer and Steve Ortmayer, San Diego’s director of football operations who made he trade from the Chargers’ end, have been friends since Ortmayer’s days as an assistant coach at Colorado in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.

Because of friendships and previous associations, certain NFL teams talk to certain other teams on a regular basis. Dallas is another team the Chargers communicate with more than others, and the Cowboys originally wanted Banks.

But a deal fell through when Katz persuaded Banks that he shouldn’t leave San Diego and the outpatient treatment he was receiving there.

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

Meanwhile, Ortmayer was talking with 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 (Colt General Manager) Jim Irsay.

Time passed, and the Colts’ need for a linebacker became more obvious. 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.”

After 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-round choice, depending on how well Banks does the rest of the year. If he backslides, the Chargers will still get the fourth-round selection.

One day after the trade was announced, Banks, who hadn’t played a down since December of 1987, was practicing with the Colts, who will pay him $250,000 this season and $275,000 if he plays for them in 1990.

He started in Indianapolis’ 23-12 upset of the Bengals Oct. 22 at Cincinnati. On the Bengals’ second play from scrimmage, Banks hurried Boomer Esiaison 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 benefited from a defensive scheme similar to the one he played in Cleveland.

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

Facing the Chargers here today, 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, parties and 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 as though 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 during a 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.

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

Banks says that several 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 himself.