After $3.5-Million Deal With Bears, He’s Still Mark From Poly

Mark Carrier, although he is now rich, was not lounging by a country-club pool. He was sweating on a searing field at Long Beach Poly High School.

On scruffy grass outside the locker rooms, Carrier, 22, sprinted forward and backward, then high-stepped through a maze of pylons as he prepared for a football career with the Chicago Bears, who will pay him more than $3.5 million over five years.

“It’s almost like I never left,” he said. “Kids who go to Poly now see me and it’s no big deal to them. I get treated the same. They know I’m still Mark.”

In the distance was Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and, in the haze beyond, Signal Hill. It was a view permanently imprinted on his retinas, so he did not need to look.

A lifelong resident of the inner-city neighborhood around the school at 1600 Atlantic Ave., Carrier was 7 and a Pop Warner player when he first stepped onto the Poly football field. He was a star safety and a campus hero at Poly in the mid-1980s and then went to USC, where he became an All-American.

Now, after deciding to forgo a final college season, he will go on to Chicago. “We needed somebody who will turn some heads,” Bears Coach Mike Ditka had explained in April when asked why the Bears drafted Carrier in the first round (the sixth pick, overall). “This kid will turn your head. If you don’t watch where you’re going, he’ll knock it off.”

In three years at USC he had 336 tackles and 13 interceptions and, as a junior last season, won the Jim Thorpe Award as the nation’s best defensive back.

“I’ve never had a kid fulfill his potential the way Mark has fulfilled his,” said Jerry Jaso, co-head coach at Poly.

Carrier fits the Bears’ tough, aggressive image, but off the field remains the affable model of good behavior he was at Poly.

“Mark is a very down-to-earth kid and he works hard to stay that way,” said his mother, Marie Carrier. “He’s still the same. I don’t think he’ll ever change.”

Beyond the 20 pounds of muscle he has added to the 6-foot-1, 175-pound frame he had in high school, Carrier has not changed noticeably, even in light of sudden wealth.

“He’s more mature, but he’s the same nice well-mannered kid,” said Thomas Whiting, Poly’s other co-coach.

Carrier, too, detects no alteration:

“I act the same way and carry about the same amount of money in my wallet that I did before I got paid by the Bears. A lot of my friends give me a hard time because they see me dress the same way and act the same way.

“We sit here and make bets, and I bet $5 and if I lose I get mad and they look at me like I’m crazy. After I signed, a lot of people came up to me and said I would have a new car, a luxury wardrobe and buy my mom a house. All that wasn’t really needed. I have a car that works fine, and my mom lives comfortably. I just take care of her bills for her.”

Carrier, who leaves for the Bears’ rookie camp early next month, lives in a condominium on Ohio Avenue in Signal Hill with his mother and two sisters, Lynn, 24, and Rhonda, 23.

“I still sleep on the couch,” Carrier said. “Nothing’s changed; they show no mercy on me. They’re not going to treat me special because I play for the Bears.”

Marie Carrier, an occupational safety and health manager at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, said she plans no changes in her lifestyle, either. “People ask why am I still working? I used to work for them (her children). We had to divide the money four ways. Now my paycheck is my paycheck. That’s important to me.”

Although her son’s bank account has enlarged dramatically, his head has not. She would not allow it anyway.

“If I see him getting out of hand, I’ll call it to his attention,” she said.

It has always been difficult to envision Carrier getting out of hand. “He’s a guy you’d want to bring home to Mom,” said Tim Tessalone, USC sports information director.

Carrier, who redshirted in 1986 because of a broken foot, would have been a fifth-year senior this fall at USC. He worried about his decision to turn pro because he said he has a “binding agreement” with his mother that he will finish his education.

“For me to leave school, I had to show her that I was not a year away (from graduating),” he said. “I’m right there, but I had an opportunity that I didn’t think was going to come around again, so I took it.”

He plans to return to USC next January and take the three classes he needs to graduate in May with a degree in communications.

But what he anticipates the most now is the start of his pro career and especially the home opener Sept. 9 against Seattle at Soldier Field. “I can’t wait to put my Bear uniform on and run through the tunnel,” he said.

Chicago already has impressed him. “Big, very big city,” he said with his easy smile. “I hope to buy a home there in three years and make that my city, but Long Beach will always be my home. If I don’t have a house here, my mom will. Someone will always be here. I just love this city, plus I don’t like the winters in Chicago, so I’ll at least be out here for half the year.”

Carrier was told by his family and friends that he could expect resentment from some of his former high school teammates because of his sudden fortune, but he said he has not experienced any.

“I’ve run into people I haven’t seen in many years and they were as happy for me as if they got drafted,” he said. “They tell me I deserve everything I got. They know how hard I’ve worked to get where I am.”

Carrier’s workout partners this week were three childhood buddies and Poly alumni--Alvin Warren, a wide receiver at New Mexico State; Eugene Burkhalter, a defensive back at the University of Washington, and Chuckie Miller, a defensive back with the Detroit Lions.

“Mark has the money, but he wants to show he’s worth it,” Miller said.

During a break, Carrier said: “People know how hard I’ve worked. I went to school and I paid a price. I’m here working out on a hot day, so it’s not like I’m taking any shortcuts.”

The workout continued as the summer afternoon turned into a replica of all the others Carrier has known at Poly. As the sun got even hotter, the new pro did what he always has:

He sprinted harder.