Second chances

As soon as Mike Barrett got out of prison, he went to see a football coach but it didn’t go so well. The coach asked straightaway: “How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“You’re not playing for this team.”

Barrett still had the look, wide shoulders tapered to strong legs. A big jaw and chipped front tooth. If you squinted, you might see a ghost of the kid who had played almost every position while starring in high school a decade earlier.

So much had gone under the bridge since then. He’d been a construction worker who stayed close to football by coaching at his old school. After that, he’d just been a guy who missed the game.

Then came a night shortly before Christmas of 2000, one he says he still cannot remember clearly, that landed him behind bars for almost five years.

By the spring of last year, Barrett was ready to take care of unfinished business. Like so many young men, he looked to junior college football for a second chance.

After the first coach turned him down, friends suggested he call John Cicuto at Glendale College.

Cicuto is something of a football stereotype. Stocky and bespectacled, he talks about keeping kids in line and once backed it up by cutting an all-state running back for missing practice.

“Can you be here at one o’clock tomorrow?” he asked Barrett.

The next day they sat and talked for a while. Barrett had gotten himself in shape, running and doing push-ups because the prison didn’t allow weights. But there was no kidding anyone -- he was a decade older, a decade slower.

Cicuto finally looked at him and said: “Do you want to come practice?”

*

Take almost any junior college team and you’re likely to find comeback stories, guys hungry to play at a level that offers no scholarships. Maybe they ran into trouble or couldn’t make grades in high school or just took a break from the game.

Guys such as Benjamin Soza, who had to support himself, working three years in a restaurant before enrolling at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. Now he’s playing safety and has three interceptions this season.

Gerald Washington caught only one pass in high school, then joined the Navy where he spent four years as a helicopter mechanic. He ended up at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga and earned a scholarship to play tight end at USC this fall.

At East Los Angeles College, Coach Reuben Ale has 12 players with criminal backgrounds, Ale, a probation officer during the day, insists it’s not about winning.

“Everyone deserves a second chance and that’s what the junior college experience is all about,” Ale said. “We’ve got to keep our doors open to these kids.”

Not everyone agrees.

Junior college football has produced disturbing headlines in recent years, players arrested on suspicion of murder, rape and burglary. Grossmont College in El Cajon won last year’s state title playing part of the season with three team members who had been convicted in a felony beating.

Critics say some coaches overlook criminal behavior for the sake of athletic prowess. There is concern over lax enforcement of recruiting rules, schools accepting players without checking their backgrounds.

At Glendale, Cicuto has taken on his share of problem cases with the proviso they follow rules. Wear your uniform neatly, no excessive celebrating after touchdowns and, above all, go to class. While some have flunked out or been kicked off the team, more have succeeded.

That’s why he agreed to meet with newly paroled Barrett in the spring of 2005.

“That’s the beauty of junior college,” he said. “A lot of these kids are trying to do the right thing.”

*

There wasn’t much of anything Barrett did wrong at Burbank Burroughs High in the mid-1990s, at least not on the field. Big and talented enough to play any position, he filled in wherever needed.

That meant leading the defense in tackles as a linebacker. Passing for 1,100 yards and 11 touchdowns one season as a quarterback. Rushing for 225 yards and seven touchdowns in a game at running back. Coach Robert dos Remedios called him “the heart of our team.”

But the all-star player never paid much attention to classwork and did not qualify for university.

After graduation, he took a job in computer programming, then switched to construction. Coaching part-time at Burroughs through the late 1990s, he quit only when his paying job grew too demanding.

On the night of Dec. 15, 2000, his company threw a Christmas party and Barrett recalls getting “really, really drunk.” His Camaro sped through a red light and slammed into a van carrying a family.

A husband and wife were badly hurt, as was a mother-in-law. Two children escaped serious injury.

Barrett, who had never been in legal trouble before, pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and causing bodily injury. The victims declined to attend his sentencing and, through prosecutors, requested he not contact them.

He wasn’t looking for forgiveness -- he’s still not sure he deserves that -- but realized he needed to do something other than wallow in guilt.

“All I could do was try to be a better person,” he said. “Take that experience of being a bad person and learn how to change my life around.”

Earning a spot in an inmate firefighter program, he battled wildfires throughout Southern California. Off-hours were spent reading any book he could get his hands on.

“A lot of science and philosophy,” he said. “I can honestly say I never read a book all the way through until I got to prison.”

That led to thoughts of getting a college degree. And that led to another idea.

“I never had the experience of being a college football player,” he said. “I felt bad. I felt like I quit on the game.”

*

Other Glendale players tease him, call him “old man,” and the age gap is undeniable.

“There are a lot of things in the locker room that I’m too old for,” said Barrett, now 28. “What 18-year-old kids find funny isn’t funny to me anymore.”

But his presence is welcomed. His teammates know that for the last season and a half, he has bicycled an hour from his parents’ home to campus each day because he has yet to regain his driver’s license. They cheer when he catches a long pass in practice.

He isn’t the only one on the field looking for a second chance.

Quarterback Brendon Doyle -- tall and strong-armed, an excellent student -- didn’t get much attention from college recruiters playing at tiny Bellarmine Jefferson High in Burbank. He hopes that leading Glendale to a 6-1 record this season might attract scholarship offers.

“This is a tool to get to the next level,” Doyle said. “That’s why we’re here.”

At 6 feet 5 and 300 pounds, offensive lineman Eugene Ingram was hard to overlook at Los Angeles Belmont High. He wound up at Glendale because, like Barrett many years earlier, his grades were poor.

Bad study habits followed him into junior college until last winter, when Cicuto asked him to stand up with several others who were failing classes. He told them: “I don’t want you around. If I catch you in the weight room, I’ll kick you out.”

The message got through to a 20-year-old who, despite his size, is baby-faced and speaks in a youngish voice.

“Coach Cicuto stood me up and put me in that line,” Ingram said. “Taught me to be a man.”

All of a sudden, he was turning in papers and showing up at extracurricular sessions for his ethnic studies class. His grades rose and Cicuto took him back.

As a starting tackle, he often lines up beside Barrett and has learned from his older teammate.

“People listen to him a lot,” Ingram said. “He’s been through the struggles. When you look at him, it shows you not to quit in life.”

*

In a program that traditionally favors the run, Barrett has caught one pass this fall. But numbers don’t matter to a young man earning his degree in political science, a player who knows this is his last season. What matters is suiting up on Saturdays and walking down the tunnel with his team.

“I’ll be able to look back and say I finally finished with football,” he said.

Barrett keeps a ready smile and casual manner, nodding to everyone who walks past the coach’s office before practice. Asked about the last year, he tells two stories that have nothing to do with what happened on the field.

Last spring, a Glendale newspaper wrote about him. Word trickled back to Barrett -- a relative of the accident victims e-mailed the reporter to say they were doing well and were pleased to read that Barrett was too.

Again, it wasn’t about absolution. Maybe just a little closure.

“They don’t hate me,” Barrett said. “They don’t want to spit on my grave.”

The other story dates to that first day he met with Cicuto, when the coach asked: “Do you want to come practice?” Barrett dearly wanted to, but had arrived in street clothes, not so much as a pair of sneakers.

Cicuto took him downstairs to the locker room, found a T-shirt and shorts, cleats that fit. Just that quickly -- after so many tough years -- Barrett was back in football.

At that moment, he said, “I knew this was where I belonged.”

david.wharton@latimes.com