He Fights On : Junior Seau Uses Memories of Being Treated as Outsider at USC as Inspiration in NFL

Linebacker Junior Seau stalked off the field, removed his helmet and hurled it to the turf.

Then he carried his tantrum to the Charger defensive coaches.

“We weren’t getting a sack,” Seau said. “I couldn’t believe it. We should have put more pressure on the quarterback. I’m telling them, ‘Blow off the scheme we’re using and do something else. Do what we’ve practiced.’

“We were losing, I’m frustrated and I’m thinking, ‘Do something more, Junior.’ ”

It was an exhibition game.

“Junior wants so badly to be successful,” said Ron Lynn, Charger defensive coordinator. “And not only to be successful, but I mean to be a giant.”

Seau already has the five-year, $4.525-million contract, the $1.14-million house and the Mercedes with the “SAY-55-OW” license plates. Those who have watched him practice this summer have advised him to make plans for a Pro Bowl invitation to Hawaii at season’s end.

Junior Seau’s quest for greatness, however, has more to do with where he came from than where he is going. It begins at USC and continues with such intensity because of USC.

“I came into college and nobody wanted any part of me,” Seau said. “They saw me as a dumb jock, and the university saw me as just another minority coming into the system and trying to use athletics to get through.

“There’s no way to erase it. I came into college (under) Proposition 48, and it is a stigma that has really stuck with me. I will use it to benefit me until the day I die.”

Seau dominated San Diego County athletics as a standout football, basketball and track performer for Oceanside High, but he scored poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and fell short in English curriculum college entrance requirements.

Seau, admitted to USC under the NCAA proposition denoting academic problems, was ineligible for athletics in his freshman season.

It disappointed him so much that he addressed an assembly of his peers at Oceanside High and apologized for his academic deficiencies.

“He’s a very proud person, and he was embarrassed and upset with himself,” said Don Montamble, his high school basketball coach. “He got to USC and he was blackballed. They let him eat at the training table, but he ate by himself. It was a real difficult time for him, and it has stayed with him.”

Rejection has scarred him, and it has driven him with a vengeance to start anew.

“It was terrible,” he said. “I used to walk the campus and not be part of the inner circle. I had no friends. The guys would be mingling on the steps, and that would be the inner circle and they didn’t accept me. They were USC. They were the players, and they were looking at a guy who didn’t pass his SATs. They didn’t want any part of me because they were afraid I might rub off on them.”

After an ankle injury limited his contributions in his sophomore season, Seau became a unanimous first-team All-American as a junior at outside linebacker. Then he pounced on the opportunity to become rich in the NFL.

“It was a money decision,” he said. “I had the security of my mom and dad in my hands. I don’t know how my dad made it, paying the bills while we were growing up, but I owe everything to him and my family.”

Seau was 7 and unable to speak English when his parents moved from Samoa to Oceanside. Tiaina, Junior’s father for whom he is named, urged his six children to advance by getting into college.

“What people don’t understand is their whole family dedicated themselves to Junior’s development,” Montamble said. “This is truly a culmination of a loving family getting behind someone and really nurturing him to achieve his goals.

“That’s why when you talk to him, you feel that overwhelming sense of responsibility on his part to carry the family’s financial burden.”

Seau purchased a new home for his parents one block from Oceanside’s El Camino High, where the elder Seau works as the custodian. Mom and Dad now drive a new car.

“My family stuck by me, but I remember taking a big pounding, even from some of my relatives, when things went bad at USC,” he said. “My own blood. That just killed me. I was the dumb jock. The dumb jock.

“My self-esteem had been just blown away. I couldn’t have made it there if it wasn’t for me wanting to do something for my mom and dad. I promised I’d get them out. I was the family’s only chance, and it motivated me.”

His first season in professional football became a replay of his freshman year at USC. He was on his own again, out of place at inside linebacker, and was overwhelmed.

“I was lonely,” Seau said. “I felt like I shouldn’t talk to anyone. I felt like I wasn’t doing my part. I felt like I wasn’t a player. I had the money, but they didn’t look to me to make the big play. I wasn’t the guy. I wasn’t used to that. I wasn’t used to being just another player.”

The Chargers had used the fifth pick in the first round of the 1990 NFL draft to select the hometown linebacker. They had made him happy, and he had promised to deliver.

But the smell of money put a chokehold on Seau.

“Scary stuff,” Seau said. “You never realize how much a million dollars is until it’s slapped on you. So many people are chipping at you, and they all sound good. I lost myself. The money began to run me.

“Being at USC, you see all that money flowing around, and I was never a part of it. Now I had my chance. I was trying to be Ralph Lauren instead of Junior Seau from the slums in Oceanside. I had to get back on track.”

To know Junior Seau, as defensive coordinator Lynn said, is to be drawn to him. He is enthusiastic and “going 900 m.p.h. when he gets off the bus to go to the locker room,” in Lynn’s words.

But Seau wasn’t himself when he reported. He had turned aloof and contentious. He came to the stadium, worked and went home.

It was just like USC. “Go to school, go to the gym and go home,” he said. “School, gym, home.

“When one thing went wrong, another followed,” he said. “I couldn’t find a way out. Being as young as I was, that took its toll. The enormous amount of money I received, that took its toll. The new position they wanted me to play and my selfishness in not accepting it, that took its toll. It was the first time I ever felt like not wanting to go to the locker room and suiting up.”

After his first practice with the Chargers, Montamble walked from the field with Seau. He was there to congratulate his former pupil after Seau had signed his handsome contract.

“We put our arms around each other and there was kind of a prolonged hug, and I thought, ‘Wow, that was kind of weird,’ ” Montamble said. “I looked back at him, and his eyes were pooled with water and he was quite emotional. I said, ‘What’s going on?’ And he said, ‘Coach, you don’t know the half of it.’

“He felt he was being painted in an unfair light. He was this million-dollar whiner and crybaby. The general population in San Diego didn’t understand.”

A few days later, Seau made his NFL debut against the Raiders in the team’s exhibition finale. On his second professional play, he took a poke at Raider guard Steve Wisniewski and was ejected from the game.

“I hit flesh,” Seau said. “It was a good punch. But that was a fierce guy going out there. I was very immature and acting very stupid.”

He was just warming up. He contributed to a Dallas scoring drive in his first regular-season game with a 15-yard penalty for spearing, then helped lift Houston over the Chargers with a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for leaping on a teammate’s back to try and block a field goal.

“The one person I look up to is my dad,” Seau said. “He’s my hero. Dad was mad because of all the perceptions out there about me. The only way people knew me was through the newspapers and the media, and I didn’t click. He was giving me the silent treatment and the glare.

“My dad had sacrificed everything, and I was screwing up. He took it hard when we lost. In high school if we lost a game, my dad wouldn’t give me any lunch money. If the team lost, it was because I hadn’t done enough. That has been engraved in me.”

The Chargers continued to lose ground in 1990, but Seau began to make progress. Although he did not have the benefit of training camp, he was in the starting lineup for the second game of the season.

His zest for conflict suddenly became a charming trait on the football field, and it began to endear him to fans. He started 15 games, became the team’s second-leading tackler and was voted second alternate to the Pro Bowl.

“After the season was over, I looked back, and it wasn’t anything to brag about,” Seau said. “My performance was terrible, but my mom and dad were happy. They had a new home and a new car, and that brought me peace.”

He has accomplished what he set out to do, and now there is only football to be played.

His work this summer in training camp prompted Coach Dan Henning to tell the San Diego Tribune: “Junior is practicing as well as any player I’ve seen practice in the 25 years I’ve been fooling around this league.”

Seau’s practice regimen makes other players appear as if they are running in place.

“What I found out here is that the guy across from you is not always going to go all out,” he said. “You start going half speed and that’s when the guy across from you goes full speed and says this is his chance to look good.

“I fell in with the vets last year and this business of not practicing too hard. You’re supposed to be mellow, do what you got to do. It’s like, ‘Hey, we lost, let’s drink beer and gamble a little on the plane ride home. Then get paid on Monday.’

“That’s not me. When I’m in the locker room, I’m scared. I play my best when I’m scared.”

Seau’s metamorphosis from troublesome phenom to budding superstar is almost complete, but not without a little more controversy.

“I accept the fact I’m playing inside linebacker,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but at the same time, they can’t tell me there is a better outside linebacker.

“I played outside linebacker all my life, and I have the mentality of an outside linebacker, which is to run, run, run and just recklessly let loose. Inside linebacker is a patient sort of thing. Put me at inside linebacker and it slows me down.”

Seau balked at playing inside last season. When no one listened, it drove him to distraction.

“I think if you were to talk to him right now, he’d tell you it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him,” Lynn said. “Why? Because we hypnotized him.

“Listen, he’s the ideal guy to play inside. There will be no one else with the capabilities he has for doing what he’s going to do over the course of the season. I can’t tell you what he’s going to do because that involves strategy and tactics, but he may line up almost anywhere. At inside linebacker, I think he’s going to make a tremendous impact in this league.”

Seau has a rare combination of size, speed and desire. He left college with little more than a year’s experience of big-time football, and he begins his second season in the NFL at a time when he should be a rookie.

During a practice session, he attacks the center when he mistakenly reads run, but then he retreats in time to step in front of the tight end to make an interception.

“Most incredible thing I’ve seen,” guard David Richards said. “Saw it, and then I had to watch it on film.

“He created quite a few fits for us during training camp. You don’t know where he’s going to be, but you’ve got to move where he’s headed. He’s going to cause a lot of problems for offensive lines around the league.”

Teammates advise him privately that he is playing out of position. Fans write the local newspapers and question the intelligence of the Charger defensive coaches. Junior Seau bites his tongue.

He will start at inside linebacker.

“If they had told me last year this is what they had in mind, maybe it wouldn’t have been so difficult,” Seau said. “I missed training camp and I wasn’t ready, but I didn’t know that it was going to be such a big deal. I thought I was just a pawn on a chessboard last year.

“It was like, ‘Just stand here, jump into the B-gap and stuff it. Whatever happens, don’t worry about it, just get back to the huddle. On third downs, go sit on the bench and wait for first and second downs.’ ”

Every down belongs to Seau now. He will play inside against the run on first down, rush the passer over the guard on second and jump outside to defensive end on third down. He will be on the move, urged on by his own demands to make good.

“Let me tell you this, Junior is not going to be the dummy ever again,” Seau said. “I’m not going to have the team across from me say, ‘Don’t worry, in the fourth quarter, Junior will mess up.’ If there’s any time left on that clock, they’re going to have to contend with me.”