A Victory for the Home Team : Charger Top Draft Choice Chris Mims is Already a Star in His Old Neighborhood

Any other day, Chris Mims would have loved to stay and sign autographs for his new legion of fans. But Saturday afternoon, the Chargers’ No. 1 draft choice had more important things on his agenda.

Minutes after the Chargers’ Family Day scrimmage against the Rams, Mims was on the freeway headed north for El Camino College and the Los Angeles Prep Senior Bowl. He will not be able to get there fast enough. Because, when he arrives, the 6-foot-6, 268-pound defensive end will feel bigger than he’s ever felt.

The all-star game, held annually for football players in Los Angeles city schools, will be renamed the Chris Mims/Los Angeles Prep Senior Classic during a halftime ceremony. Jerry Weiner, the game’s director since 1977, will announce that Mims has donated $50,000 to the game this year and will do so each of the next three years.

Mims will be given a plaque that says, “As great an athlete and football player as you are, you are an even greater human being.”

Until Mims came forward with his donation, Weiner said, the game was in danger of being canceled.

“He’s given the game a solid foundation for the next four years,” Weiner said. “We had asked the Raiders, the Rams and other pro athletes for donations, but nobody came through. Chris came up with four or five times the amount we were asking for.”

The amount Mims will contribute each year is about 1/14th of his annual salary--the deal he signed with the Chargers will pay him about $3 million over four years.

Although he signed the contract two months ago, the numbers are still a bit mind-boggling to Mims, who won’t turn 22 for another two months.

Only four years ago, Mims came out of Dorsey High and simply tried to make an impression on junior college coaches at the Prep Senior Bowl. He was named the game’s MVP.

Now after stints at Pierce, Los Angeles Harbor and Southwest junior colleges and the University of Tennessee, Mims is driving to the game in his new Mercedes-Benz.

And they’re actually naming the game after him? Even in his wildest imagination, could he have dreamed this?

“I haven’t even gotten to ‘wow’ yet,” Mims said. “I might have gotten in a quick ‘wow’ the other day, and that’s about it. I always wanted to play pro ball, but I never thought it would happen. It was so far out there.”

Mims knows that today he could easily be living another reality--a life without his own house in Scripps Ranch, his own car and seven-figure NFL contract. During the Los Angeles riots this summer, Mims realized how close he came to being locked in a closet like many of his friends.

“The riots were the kids’ opportunity to get things they always wanted--like a pair of brand new jeans,” he said. “I can’t blame anybody. I probably would have been in their shoes too.”

Mims, whose house in South Central Los Angeles was not damaged in the riots, said he was in no position criticize anyone for their actions.

“There’s a lot of things that aren’t giving kids much hope for anything else,” he said. “I could have been out there. I just happened to get discovered and then drafted. I could tell my friends not to go out there. But I’m not in their shoes. They have to do what they have to do.”

”. . . People are starving for jobs out there. You just can’t survive working at McDonald’s or Burger Kings. They could build all the McDonald’s and Burger Kings they want to, but those are $4.25-an-hour jobs. You can’t raise a family or do anything with that kind of money.

“If you don’t go off to school or bump into the right person, there’s no hope.”

Maybe now, Mims said, the politicians will begin to listen.

“It’s good that (the riots) happened,” he said. “It let people know that Los Angeles should be better than what it is.”

While at Tennessee, Mims said he grew tired of the questions people would ask him about growing up in Los Angeles.

“People would say, ‘You’re from L.A. I know you were in a gang. How’s Ice Cube?’ ”

These days, Mims said, he would rather answer questions about how he might fit into the Chargers’ defensive plans.

The Chargers are hoping that Mims fits in quickly. They were 12th in the AFC in quarterbacks sacks and 22nd in the NFL last year.

“We didn’t have enough pressure on the quarterback last year,” said Billy Devaney, director of player personnel. “You never pass up a great pass rusher or a great corner. Those guys are so unique, so valuable. You never have enough of them.”

The Chargers were also considering drafting Ohio State defensive end Alonzo Spellman, but when Spellman was taken by the Bears before they picked, Mims was the clear choice.

“Chris might have been the best pure pass rusher in the draft,” Devaney said. “Spellman is big and not too far off his potential. We thought, long range, Mims had more potential than Spellman.”

But when a team is coming off a 4-12 season and hasn’t made the playoffs since 1982, fans tend to expect more than potential out of first-round draft choices.

Mims said he’ll do his best, but . . .

“I know the fans probably expect me to come in here and be like Superman and make every sack, but it’s a team sport,” he said. “Whatever I can put into the pot for the team, I’ll do. Hopefully, the fans will back us up as a team.

“Hopefully, I’ll just be able to stay patient. If I don’t, it’ll be worse than a long year. It will be a monster, miserable year.”

Through more than two weeks of training camp, Mims already has gotten a taste of miserable. Even though he put on some 10 pounds in the weight room this summer, Mims’ lack of strength is showing. Before this summer, Mims had barely lifted a weight in his life. As a result, he has spent more time on the ground than in quarterbacks’ faces.

Tight ends Derrick Walker and Duane Young have spent the past two weeks indoctrinating Mims into the NFL.

“They’ve put me to the test,” Mims said. “Double-teams, I don’t care if it was legal or illegal, they did it to me.”

Mims said Walker and Young appear to hit him a little harder because he’s a No. 1 pick.

“I didn’t think I was going to be a marked man,” he said. “I thought I was going to come in here like anybody else. But I’m hanging in there. I guess I could hold my head down and say, ‘Coach, why do they always want to knock my block off?’ ”

Mims said he could be a lot worse off if he hadn’t spent his summer with strength coach John Dunn in the weight room.

“I’d probably be laying in my room with a cast on,” he said. “It’s a lot of pounding and your body just can’t take all that without strengthening your muscles and building some mass up. You just can’t come off the street doing this.”

But that’s about what Mims did at Tennessee, where he recorded several of his 9 1/2 sacks in two seasons on natural ability.

“I got away with quickness a lot,” Mims said. “Here, you can’t get by with slashing. You have to have some kind of bam to it to push people off.”

George O’Leary, the Chargers’ defensive line coach, said Mims is having trouble pushing people off.

“Chris is going to have to turn it up a notch,” he said. “Every day he’s going to have to get better. He’s striving to do that, but he’s struggling right now.

“He had a lot easier chore in college beating people. He beat a lot of people on the corner because of his innate speed. Here, you have people that are going to lock on. So he has to develop things other than just raw talent.”

Like maybe a second move?

“You’ve got to have a second, a third and maybe a fourth move,” Mims said. “Your mind and your hands have to be so quick. You can’t hesitate. It’s got to be a reaction and you have to be so quick at it.”

But O’Leary said Mims’ problems are not only physical.

“I’d like to see him put more pressure on himself,” he said. “It’s a self-commitment that he has to develop. I don’t want to always be the one putting the pressure on him.”

With veterans Burt Grossman and Leslie O’Neal holding down starting end spots, the pressure will not be on Mims to play immediately.

Grossman, who started as a rookie, said Mims is in a perfect position.

“It’s a luxury for a defensive lineman to come in and be able to learn for a year before getting thrown in there,” he said. “I didn’t enjoy getting signed three, four days before the opener and getting thrown in there. Lineman always take a little longer to develop, because it’s a lot more physical in the pros.”

From what Grossman has seen thus far, he doesn’t envision Mims playing much this season.

“He’s not really a threat to either one of us,” Grossman said. “I see me and Leslie playing; if one of us gets hurt, maybe (Mims will play). Where he’s at now, I don’t see all three of us playing.

But O’Leary said there could be times when Grossman, O’Neal and Mims are in the game together.

“I’m a firm believer in having the four best pass rushers on the field,” O’Leary said.

Said Devaney: “He’ll be a nickel pass rusher. He’ll play a ton this year.”

Mims figures his time will come.

“I’ve been learning a lot from Burt and Leslie,” he said. “I’m raw. I’m right out of the refrigerator. But (General Manager Bobby Beathard) believed in me by taking me in the first round. I don’t want to disappoint him, and I don’t want to disappoint myself.

Devaney said Mims can be as good as he wants to be.

“It’s all on his shoulders,” he said. “If he wants a career of being a situation pass-rush guy, that’s what he’s facing now. If he wants to make the commitment to get bigger and stronger in the off-season, there’s no reason why he can’t be a full-time player.”

How good can Chris Mims be? Devaney said Mims reminds him of a young Dexter Manley, the Washington Redskins All-Pro defensive lineman.

“He’s not as explosive as Dexter, but he’s kind of a project like that,” he said. “A guy who plays 100 miles an hour. He already plays the run better than Dexter did on his best day. This guy will be a much more complete player than Dexter.”

But even if he never becomes an All-Pro defensive end, Mims has made the long journey from the Los Angeles Prep Senior Bowl to junior college to Tennessee and finally to the NFL. When he heard that others might be denied the opportunity he received, Mims stepped in.

“We just wanted to show the kids that you can make it playing at a big-time school right away,” he said. “It’s something to keep the kids’ head up. It might be a big break for somebody or it might be their last time to play football with a bunch of guys they’ve played against.”

Weiner said Mims’ gift will pay for the renting of El Camino College, security and equipment.

“All the guys playing in the game will know that one of them made the game possible,” Weiner said. “Most guys being in Chris’ situation would be sucking up every penny and buying everything in sight. For him to do what he did is tremendous. He’s a guy, I think, that’s going to go a long way.”