The Diesel finally getting it right

some pop up keeps sending me to the homepage when i try to access the article

Shame he was a frickup coulda been a great RB in the NFL

— There come the tears again, welling up in former Miami Dolphins running back Cecil Collins' eyes, a smile turning them back as he lists why he's so happy. There's his marriage to Elena. There's his new job with a Broward electrical company.
There's the freedom he's breathed for 13 months after more than 13 years in prison for creeping into a sleeping Broward woman's apartment back when the future shimmered with fame, way back in 1999 while he was on probation for a similar offense in Louisiana.
"I've been up, and I've been down, and I've been way, way down," Collins, 37, says, getting emotional here at the kitchen table in his Tamarac apartment. "But now I'm up for good. Life is great now. Life isn't hard like it used to be.

Cecil Collins on life after prison

"Even the air tastes good to me now."
For a moment, as he smiles away those creeping tears of joy, there's the glimpse of the Dolphins' rookie so full of personality and promise, the one who hoped to be a NFL star and instead became a shooting star across one fleeting season.

Sometimes people recognize him and call him the "Cecil The Diesel," just as everyone did back then. But he asks them in a friendly tone to please not call him that. That person doesn't exist anymore, he says. The Diesel is dead.
"I'm just Cecil Collins now," he'll say. "And I'm happy like this."

That's what he wants you to know. He's changed. He's happy. He wishes the young, stupid "Diesel" who lived the carefree life where decisions weren't weighed, career opportunities weren't seized and so much money wasn't turned into alcohol in South Beach clubs was this smart and happy.
He'd like to use "The Diesel" as a cautionary tale in talks with boys and girls, and especially young athletes who covet the fame and fortune but aren't ready for its fellow traveler called temptation.
He'd tell them to work harder, listen to their parents, how success is often harder to overcome than failure and also that some so-called friends are, "like weeds you should cut away,'' he says.
But what he'd also say is prison was a blessing for him.
"Who knows who I'd be, or if I'd even be around, if I wasn't sent away?'' he said.
It was an eventful 13 years. His second daughter, Zakayla, now a high-school freshman, was born to a Louisiana girlfriend the first month he was in prison. He met Elena while she was visiting a friend at his prison and married her in 2006 wearing his prison-blue uniform. He nearly died in 2011 when a chicken bone he ate ruptured his esophagus.
When he got out in July of 2013, there was a small party, a dinner of steak, potatoes and asparagus, and a bit of Tom Hanks in the movie, "Castaway" in his thoughts, a man out of society so long he seems a bit lost.
Email? He didn't have an account. Cell phone? He didn't know it had become a computer, too. Flat-screen TVs? The new cars?
"Remember what you wanted when you got out?" Elena says.
"I wanted a beeper,'' Collins says.
"I told him no one has those anymore, '' she says.
For those wondering if Collins' 13 years in prison was too harsh for the crime, understand he doesn't allow his mind to bend that way. It would do him no good. Besides, he says, the final year of his sentence put the final changes in him.
"My grandmother died and then my cousin, who was like a brother to me, died in a motorcycle accident,'' he said. "I was close with God before that. But that final year was important for me to pull even closer."
He has plans. He starts school next month to become a licensed electrician. Elena and he are planning a wedding ceremony where he will wear a tuxedo — "maybe on the beach,'' he says.
He also talks, half-seriously, of playing football at his age, even mentioning a Canadian Football League team invited him to a tryout last summer.
"I've still got the speed,'' he says.
But can he still take a hit?
"That's the question,'' he says, laughing. "I don't know about that."
When he was just released from prison, Collins would wake at night, his heart would lock and his sleep-induced mind wouldn't be dreaming of football, as he did so many years in his cell.
It would trick him into thinking he was back in prison. Then he'd see there was no overhead fan like in his cell. He'd touch his wife sleeping beside him. And in those moments, the man who used to be "The Diesel" and touched football fame realized what he says with tears brimming his eyes now:
"I've never been happier."

I want to vomit thinking about the wasted talent he was blessed with...there is not one ounce of doubt in my mind that barring injury he would have won the Heisman before leaving LSU...

Whoever made that website should be shot.

frick that site and their pop-ups

I met him at Drusilla Seafood when Lee Brecheen was doing the recruiting bash back then. That was also the first time I saw Charles Hanagriff who was the moderator and realized he'd never be on TV.

Cecil didn't look that big and I didn't know he had already had a history of perversion that was covered up because he was a football star.

I shook his hand and noted that he didn't look any taller than me which is not very tall and saw that he had a charming personality but I didn't really know that he would be the beast of a football player he showed in his short career even with his credentials. After all, so did Brad Smalling, except for the height - he was a giant - who I'd met at Hooters in an earlier recruiting bash.

In any case it's good to see he's saying all the right things and I hope he's true to his words.