SimplifyTheMessage @simplifyingtm - Twitter Profile

about 3 years ago

30 years ago one mom made a culture-changing, icon-creating road trip to save her son. Without it, we may never have heard of Allen Iverson: It's 1994. The nation's number one high school recruit, in basketball AND football, a young AI, is in trouble... Most of you reading this know Iverson was an elite HS hooper. But you here's what you may not know: As a freshman in high school Iverson started on the varsity football team at wide receiver and safety. As a sophomore, he moved to quarterback and defensive back, once intercepting five passes in a single game. Junior year he led the team to a Virginia high school championship, returning a punt for a touchdown, rushing for a touchdown, throwing for 200 yards and grabbing two interceptions in the title game. He’d go on to win Virginia’s high school football player of the year award and field recruiting offers from most of the major football programs on the east coast. In particular, Florida State, who had recently won the National Championship with Heisman Trophy winner/starting point guard Charlie Ward as their quarterback, thought Iverson might be their next multi-sport star. “We were on him hard," former Florida State assistant head coach Chuck Amato once told VICE Sports. "He was just a great athlete and a competitor. He would've been the first Michael Vick.” Or the next Charlie Ward. Either way, it never happened. After winning Virginia’s high school state basketball player of the year in the winter of 1993 (averaging over 30 points per game) Iverson famously ran into legal trouble following a controversial brawl in a bowling alley in Hampton, Virginia. The entire situation was a racially-charged embarrassment to the legal system that led to all the black kids involved in the brawl (Iverson and his friends) getting arrested while all the white kids got off. It was awful. After getting charged with three felony accounts and sentenced to five years in prison, Iverson served four months at a minimum-security jail before he was granted conditional clemency by Virginia’s governor, Doug Wilder. He was allowed to finish high school, but not allowed to play sports. Worse, all of the offers to play college sports disappeared. "Even the Division-II offers," Iverson later said in an interview. This is where Ann Iverson took matters into her own hands. She knew how talented her son was and she was not about to stand by while her boy's future was ruined. Instead, Ann made a hall of fame mom road trip to Washington, D.C., on behalf of her son, to ask John Thompson if he would personally let Allen play for Georgetown, since the legal issues had scared off nearly every other school. Iverson said she told Coach Thompson, "'I need you to save my kid's life because if he stays down there, he's gonna go to jail forever and he's gonna die." Thompson agreed, but made it clear that Iverson was there to play basketball, not football. And the rest is Hoya and hoops history... I found this story when I was researching '1996: A Biography" and I wanted to share it on Mother's Day. If you enjoyed reading, please share it and follow me @Jon_Finkel for fascinating stories, updates on my books and more. And PS: