SUPER BOWL XXIX : Muncie on an All-Time High : Former Charger Is Off Drugs, Helping Youngsters Avoid Trouble

Super Bowls always prompt memories of former players, the guys who never quite made the big game, the guys whose promising careers were severed by any number of reasons, including chronic drug use.

Whatever happened to Chuck Muncie, Charger fans might ask?

Great running back, had all the tools, just couldn’t keep his nose clean. The Chargers during the early 1980s mirrored Muncie: All the talent in the world but they self-destructed every year and fell short of the Super Bowl.

Finding Muncie often was a challenge. His addiction to cocaine put him in odd places, with odd people, often doing awful things to themselves.

Finding Muncie now is a cinch. The place is odd only at first glance, and the people are all doing healthy things.

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The pouring rain has turned Pleasant Valley Road into a river. Cars are cramming into the parking lot of the Port Hueneme Boys and Girls Club anyway, dropping off kids of all ages.

A couple dozen teen-agers are milling around out front, dribbling basketballs, performing dance routines, just happy to be hanging where the action is.

Once inside, a cramped office on the left is fronted by a harried receptionist answering questions from half a dozen youngsters. Squeeze past them, around a box of baseball caps that read “Just Say No to Drugs,” and there is Muncie, sitting behind a cluttered desk surrounded by used furniture and file cabinets.

He doesn’t sit for long. As the club’s executive director, Muncie spends 10 to 12 hours a day supervising a small staff, raising funds and organizing activities for the more than 2,000 members.

“When I took over 10 months ago, there were only 150 members,” he said proudly. “We’ve made this a positive place for kids to come. They feel at home and safe. For a lot of kids, this is their home.”

Muncie, 41, clearly is a man transformed. Years of taking drugs and using people have given way to the giving of himself.

And through giving, Chuck Muncie has found Chuck Muncie.

“This is who I am,” he said, waving a hand around the club. “Being here is a way for me to relate to the dreams I had when I was a kid.”

His efforts already are fulfilling the needs of club members.

“Chuck has taken the club beyond where it was and given it a bright future,” said Barbara Striker, a regional director of Boys and Girls Clubs of America. “He is a charismatic individual, so open and warm-hearted.”

Muncie’s transformation began while he sat in a federal penitentiary serving two years for cocaine trafficking in 1991. Stripped of his fame, his money, his marriage and his so-called friends, he was stuck with himself.

“It was finally just time to stop,” he said. “It had run its course, like bell-bottom pants.

“If I was going to change my lifestyle, I had to take a step back and come up with a plan with what to do with myself.”

Muncie charted a course that returned him to his roots. As a boy he would take a train 60 miles from his home in Uniontown, Pa., to the Boys and Girls Club in Pittsburgh.

As it is for the troubled youngsters who flock to him, the club has become home to Muncie.

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For nearly 15 years, Muncie felt at home anywhere. He was a celebrity. But his life was at once grand and grotesque, star-studded and cocaine-crazed.

He dabbled in drugs at Cal, but earned a degree in sociology and finished runner-up to Archie Griffin for the Heisman Trophy his senior year in 1975.

At 6 feet 3, 235 pounds with great speed, Muncie was blessed with a tremendous athletic body.

“I thought I was superman,” he said.

A top draft pick of the New Orleans Saints, Muncie put together several good seasons before being traded to the Chargers in 1980 amid rumors of drug abuse.

From New Orleans to San Diego, Muncie had simply bounced from one party town to another.

“I partied quite a bit but not more or less than other guys in the league,” he said. “Everybody was doing it. The ‘80s were the super fast lane. Cocaine was the cosmetic drug that fit our lifestyle.”

The drug use escalated even as his career peaked: In 1981 he rushed for a career-high 1,144 yards and 19 touchdowns, yet the following summer he twice went through detoxification programs for marijuana and alcohol abuse.

After leading the Chargers in rushing for a fourth consecutive season in 1983, Muncie was suspended after one game in 1984 because he missed a team flight. He was traded to Miami but failed the Dolphins’ drug test and was suspended by NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle.

“Chuck was the greatest talent of all time, the best I ever saw,” said Hank Bauer, a Charger from 1977-82. “He’s a smart guy, cordial, down to earth.

“But it’s a statement to the power of drugs that they could ruin it all for someone like him.”

Muncie’s career was over but his addiction was not.

“I had no idea what to do with my life and that’s when the drugs really kicked in,” he said. “Life was a 24-hour party. I had a bunch of money, living off my fame. I’d be sitting in a bar and somebody I’d never met would slap my palm and put a quarter-ounce of cocaine in it.”

Muncie hit bottom in January, 1989. Awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to federal charges of intending to sell two ounces of cocaine, he was jailed after testing positive for drug use.

Two weeks earlier, he testified in court that he had not used illegal drugs since 1985, an out-and-out lie.

“That’s the illness, pure denial,” he said. “You can look someone dead in the eye and say, ‘I don’t need it anymore.’ Then three hours later, you are blazed out of your mind. I did whatever it took to put up that front.”

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Muncie still employs the phrase: Do whatever it takes. Now it refers to straightening out the lives of teen-agers, many of whom have severe problems at home and are beginning to use drugs.

Last week a 16-year-old club member called Muncie at his home two blocks from the club to say he had no place to spend the night. His father had been drinking, become abusive and kicked him out.

Muncie gave him a place to sleep in the club, then paid a visit to the father the next morning.

“I let the parent know I was watching out for their son,” Muncie said. “If necessary, I will report them. I am an advocate for the kids.”

For the first time, he is using his fame for positive gain. He has gone from embodying the excesses of the ‘80s to offering guidance to the children of the ‘90s.

“Chuck, he helps all of us here and we show him respect,” said Henry, a 15-year-old club member dressed in a white T-shirt and baggy pants.

Muncie knew a strong Boys and Girls Club was needed in Port Hueneme when he was recruited for the job a year ago. He was assistant director at the Boys and Girls Club of the Colorado River in Bullhead City, Ariz., and came to Port Hueneme for an interview.

“That weekend a 16-year-old was shot outside a mini-mart a block from the club,” he said. “I decided then I would take the job.”

Sometimes the job seems like an ongoing crisis. Muncie’s program director, Jaime Zendejas, describes the role of club staff as equal parts developing programs and putting out fires.

The cavernous club offers athletic teams, a basketball gym, a boxing gym, a weight room, a shop for woodwork and ceramics, a game room and a library where kids can do homework.

“You help one kid out and feel that you want to help more and more out,” said Zendejas, a veteran recreation director who was hired by Muncie eight months ago.

Although he grew up in the Imperial Valley and said, “I was a Chuck Muncie fan myself,” Zendejas, 28, was initially skeptical of the former NFL star’s sincerity.

“I thought he was going to be stuck up, tell me what he wants me to hear,” Zendejas said. “But I walked in the door, and from the first sentence that came out of his mouth I knew he was real.

“I’m convinced he’s here for the kids. You hear that a lot, ‘So and so is doing it for the kids.’ He’s probably the second guy I’ve ever met who really means it.”

A group of teen-age club members realized Muncie meant business when he called them into a room his first week on the job. The addict-turned-director smelled something funny in the gym and knew what it was.

“I smelled pot and there was a (marijuana cigarette) smoldering in the corner,” Muncie said. “I got them together and said, ‘I can’t stop you from doing it, but I can stop you from doing it here, and I can tell you that what happened to me is gonna happen to you.’

“Eventually they realize drugs are not the way. You don’t have to be high to have fun. Once they discover that, the fun they have here follows them out the door.”

When Muncie leaves work, he heads to the home he shares with Gina, his girlfriend of three years. His 12-year-old daughter, Danielle, joins them on weekends. He relishes the normal routine.

“By helping others, I’m helping myself,” he said. “This job is therapy for me.”

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Muncie is at the Super Bowl, having flown in Friday with thousands of Charger fans. He is part owner of a San Diego travel agency that organized the package.

He has mixed feelings about surfacing in such a public arena.

“I had everything and I ruined it all because of drugs,” he said. “I’m angry at myself. I see guys I played with doing things I could have done.

“But when I feel that way I look at this club and these kids and remember there is a reason for everything. I believe in my heart I was meant to do this.”