[VIDEO] One won the Heisman Trophy in maize and blue, while the other was a collegiate star for the rival Spartans, but Desmond Howard and Plaxico Burress shared the stage recently to discuss how Burress plans to turn his life around.
Howard interviewed Burress as part of the NFL Players Association’s “The Business of Football: Rookie Edition” in Sarasota, Fla. With the hundreds of rookies in attendance learning about Burress’s personal story, their conversation played against a backdrop of learning from your mistakes.
“A good friend of mine told me,” Burress said, “that your thoughts influence your decisions, your decisions influence your actions and your actions influence your results. I’m just trying to bounce back, and lucky for me, I do get another chance somewhere down the line.”
Burress said he cried himself to sleep for days—days that included spending 17 hours in his prison cell.
“My whole message is: Just don’t let any decision or choice that you make take away from the things that you love to do,” he told Howard.
Burress said he read 82 books during his two years in prison—about 80 more books than he had read in his life before that. He figured he might as well educate himself. And throughout his ordeal, he willingly discarded people from his life that weren’t there for him during the bad times.
He told the rookies: “Take care of yourself. This business can be cutthroat. Take care of your bodies—rest [and] sleep. Try to do what’s right. If it doesn’t benefit you, it doesn’t have any place in your kingdom. You’ve got a lot of people that are counting on you and a lot of people that are supporting you. Just be smart.”
The wide receiver told the crowd that one of his most challenging times was being in prison while his wife gave birth to their daughter. He learned the values of patience and self-belief, adding that the support he received from people like Tony Dungy, Alonzo Mourning, Jamie Foxx and Derrick Coleman helped him make sense of the situation.
Burress sounded supremely confident in his ability to make a comeback into the NFL. While taking questions from the rookies in attendance, he said he watched NFL games on Sundays for two seasons and missed “everything about” the game. With nine seasons to his credit up before the incident, he knows the two years he lost represented not just $12 million in income, but also two years of playing in his prime.
Topics discussed at the NFLPA’s event included financial planning, indoctrination into the NFL and how to be a professional on and off the field.
“A lot of people envy the money you make. It’s a business; that’s why you’re in it,” Burress told the attentive rookies. “We gotta take care of each other, because nobody else is going to do it.”
