http://kansasstate.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1539495
A fine line still divides Coleman's life
D. Scott Fritchen
Assistant Editor
It was a punch. No, it wasn't so much of a punch as it was an open-palm slap, a strike of frustration from Andre Coleman that had been brewing for months. He remembers the window inside his parents' home was large, but the standard size for on-base military housing in Germany. He had no idea that a single blow from a 15-year-old boy could shatter such a big window.
Coleman
But the window shattered. And when Andre instinctively ripped his right hand back from the glass shards, blood from a slit wrist shot to the ceiling, covered the floor, and the window of opportunity that he so wanted was suddenly slipping away, away, away with each beat of his panicked heart.
He was home alone with a buddy, whose mother was a nurse. She soon arrived and rushed Andre to the base hospital. He didn't mean to do it. Man, he didn't mean it. He held the bandage tight against his wrist. All he wanted was a chance to go back to Hermitage, Pa. Good grades? He got them. Do chores around the house? He did those, too. It was all a part of the deal. Doing the little things, demonstrating responsibility, would punch his ticket to play high school football with his friends back in Pennsylvania.
Or so he thought. Despite his efforts, despite making good on his end of the bargain, Delores and Cole Coleman still resisted.
And now there was a shattered window and a slit wrist.
"I didn't mean to almost kill myself, I didn't mean to do it, but I almost died," Coleman says. "My mom collapsed when she got to the house. When she collapsed, she said that she didn't know I wanted to go that bad.
"After that incident, she decided to let me go."
He still gets teary-eyed over it all. The pain that he felt in his right wrist that day today knifes at his heart. His mother passed away from cancer in 2006.
"I understand now being a parent myself, you don't want to let your kid go," Coleman says. "I wouldn't let my kid stay with some family, either."
* * *
Today, 40-year-old Andre Coleman has a family of his own. They've adjusted to Manhattan over the last few months. And every day, on his way to the Vanier Football Complex, where he enters his first season as Kansas State's wide receivers coach, Coleman says, he calls 85-year-old Sallie Harris, his grandmother, who gave birth to 10 girls and one boy. She still resides in Charlotte, N.C., where Coleman was born on Sept. 19, 1972.
KSU Sports Information
Not long after arriving on campus for spring football, new K-State receivers coach Andre Coleman began to have an impact on the team on and off the field.
"She's still going strong, man," Coleman says. "We grew up in the housing projects, lived with my grandma, and 15 of us lived under one roof in an apartment. I know what it's like to struggle. I know what it's like to not have a lot. I know what it's like to worry about what the next meal is going to be. But when you're young, when you're a kid, it's just life, and you don't know any better."
When Andre was 11, Delores married Cole Coleman, an Army officer. They moved to Hermitage, Pa., where they resided for three years. During the process, Cole officially adopted Andre as his son, and Andre adjusted to his new life.
"I'd never really been around white people," Coleman says. "I just hadn't been around it. Going from inner city and project housing to living in Hermitage, it was predominately white and considered 'rich kids.' Football became my outlet."
Enter Pop Warner football and coach Guy Gibbs. Enter the sudden realization that Andre was special, as was the kinship that he developed with his teammates, who just wanted to play football and have fun. They won the league title every year. During sixth and seventh grade, Andre in particular grew close to Jeremy Rupnik. They could usually be found together on the Little League fields or shooting hoops at the nearby YMCA.
"We didn't know race," Coleman says.
Enter heartbreak. Relocation. Enter life as a military child. Yes, an uproot to Germany.
Somewhere outside that window in base housing was an opportunity thousands of miles away. Coleman knew this much.
So did coach Gibbs, who was eventually promoted to head coach at Hickory High School in Hermitage. Gibbs, who routinely won Pop Warner titles, inherited a high school program that couldn't win a game.
"The high school was kind of like Kansas State in the early 1980s," Coleman says. "They didn't win any games and they weren't very good. Me being one of Coach Gibbs' better players when I was there, he called my parents to know if it'd be possible for me to come back from Germany and play for him. My mom was totally against it. I knew it was my only opportunity to get a scholarship. It'd be tough to get one in Germany.
"I pleaded with my mom. She gave me a challenge, 'If you get your grades up and do your chores and all of these things, I'll think about it.' So I'm doing everything I can to go back and spend my junior and senior year stateside, so I could play under Coach Gibbs and try to get a scholarship.
"I did all of these things and my mom still said, 'No.' Then one day, I lashed out. I wasn't thinking. I hit the window."
He pauses.
"I didn't punch it, I hit it with my palm and just kind of banged it," he says. "My hand went through the window and my reaction was obviously to pull it back. I still have a slit on my wrist. It was a fraction of a centimeter from severing the whole vein. Blood just shot everywhere. That's something I'll never forget."
* * *
Andre Coleman remembers this, too: How he deplaned at Harrisburg International Airport in Middletown, Pa., the summer before his junior year and was met by Bob Rupnik and son Jeremy, and how that day they drove directly to the Penn State football camp. Life was about to change. Again.
KSU Sports Information
Coleman landed at K-State as a receiver and helped lead K-State to its first bowl game.
"It was different living with the family," Coleman says. "They had a daughter. They got a lot of grief from the community. Like I said, it's a school supposedly for the rich kids, so they got a lot of flack letting this black kid come in, and they have this teenage daughter.
"But that first year, we went 11-1, which was kind of like years later at K-State. It was a big turnaround. The Rupniks took me in, made me like their son, and eventually adopted me and did all the legal things that you had to do for a kid. I mean, they treated me like one of their own. I got an allowance, I got Christmas, I got everything.
"They brought me into their home and showed me that color doesn't matter. It's about people."
As a running back, Coleman amassed more than 3,700 rushing yards and 67 touchdowns in his two seasons, including 37 touchdowns as a senior to lead Hickory High School to a 12-2 record and the Pennsylvania 2A state title. The Pennsylvania small high school Player of the Year, Coleman had 257 rushing yards on 25 carries and four touchdowns in his final high school game.
Meanwhile, Bob Rupnik worked at General Motors with a man named Jaime Mendez, Jr., whose son was an All-State selection up the road at Cardinal Mooney High School. Mendez told Rupnik that his son was being recruited by fellow Mooney High alum Bob Stoops and planned on attending Kansas State.
"Jaime's dad and Mr. Rupnik worked together for about 25 or 30 years, and there was a connection there, and they had a strong relationship," Coleman says. "I didn't know Jaime personally in high school, but there were some ties between Jaime's dad and Mr. Rupnik, which helped to make me understand that K-State would be a good fit for me."
Funny how life turns out sometimes.
"The Rupniks and I stay in touch to this day," Coleman says. "I think they'll be in town for the North Dakota State game."
* * *
The date Dec. 29, 1993 will mark the 20th anniversary of the initial breakthrough for a Kansas State football program that had previous appeared in one bowl game in its horrid history. Twenty years since Andre Coleman, the second-team All-American in the white No. 2 jersey, returned a punt 68 yards for a score to close the first half, and recorded eight catches for 144 yards and a touchdown, a 61-yard scoring strike, in the Wildcats' 52-17 win over Wyoming in the 1993 Copper Bowl in Tucson, Ariz.
After completing his final collegiate game, the 5-foot-10, 170-pounder, arguably the most electrifying player on a squad that finished 9-2-1 and posted its most wins in 83 years, smiled into an ESPN camera on the field.
Coleman, the Copper Bowl offensive MVP, opened the night's SportsCenter by yelling the show's signature final beats: "Da-da-da! Da-da-da!"
Most K-State loyalists know the path that followed: Coleman became the first former K-State player ever to score a touchdown in a Super Bowl in 1994. Prior to his 98-yard kickoff return touchdown for the San Diego Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX, no player had ever covered a longer distance on a kickoff return in a Super Bowl game. Coleman established seven other Super Bowl records in the contest.
Coleman built to this point, of course. He followed a path blazed by former wide receivers Frank Hernandez and All-American Michael Smith. As a senior, Coleman tutored a redshirt-freshman named Kevin Lockett. Lockett earned first-team All-Freshman honors and actually led K-State with 50 catches for 770 yards and four touchdowns, the most of any freshman in 1993.
Something special was brewing in the Little Apple.
"It's funny because when I got there, one of the first things was Frank, Smitty and Andre, those guys said, 'Hey, this is becoming Wide Receiver University. You've got to carry it on,'" Lockett recalls. "Andre said, 'You've started something, you're now going to have a target on your back and you've got to be able to carry on the tradition.'"
A little bit of foreshadowing? For sure.
Coleman enters his first season at K-State coaching junior Tyler Lockett, Kevin's son. Twenty years later, Coleman catches himself telling Tyler many of the same things.
"It's a teaching process. I just talk with my kids explaining how we were as players here. It's important."
-- Andre Coleman
"It's a teaching process," Coleman says. "I just talk with my kids explaining how we were as players here. It's important. I talk with Tyler, Curry Sexton and Tramaine Thompson that they set the tone for the receiving groups -- their work ethic, their character, everything about what being a Kansas State wide receiver entails, and it's just their job to set the tone.
"Those younger guys are looking up to them. Those younger guys are going to follow until they're in a position to lead. It's important that they set the right example. And it's an every day journey. It's not an overnight thing."
In the days preceding the 2013 Fiesta Bowl, fourth-year K-State wide receivers coach Michael Smith sat in a ballroom in Phoenix. Smith said, "We're gaining that tradition back again and that's fun to watch. We've got a chance to be really, really good."
Then, seemingly overnight, Smith left K-State to accept the same position at Arkansas to complete the initial staff for new Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema, also a former assistant coach at K-State.
Engrossed in his own duties during the Razorbacks' fall camp, Smith was unavailable to speak for this report. But Smith broke the news of his former teammate's hiring on Twitter in February when he wrote: "Congrats to my man Andre Coleman! I'm very proud of you!!!"
Little could anybody predict that when Smith discussed K-State's wide receiving tradition, it would involve a change on the K-State staff. Coleman, who was hired in February, joined four other current assistant coaches played football at K-State.
"We lost a great guy in Smitty, a founding member, as well," Jaime Mendez says, "but you couldn't ask for a better transition. If a change was going to happen, to have Dre come in and take his place, I couldn't dream of a better scenario."
When head coach Bill Snyder introduced Coleman individually while assistant coaches stood on the field during K-State's Fan Appreciation Day on Aug. 17, Coleman received among the loudest of ovations.
"When you're a part of that foundation, you know what it's all about," Coleman says. "You get into camp and your legs hurt and you get tired and sore, and it's easy to start complaining, whining and finding excuses. Guess what? What you're doing has been done and I've experienced it. When I was in school, we didn't have a 20-hour rule. Understand that these guys laid the foundation before you, they've been here and done it. You're not re-inventing the wheel here."
* * *
However, consider this daunting task: What becomes of a man who's called upon to re-invent himself again and again and again? An infant sharing an apartment with 14 relatives in the projects of Charlotte to moving to Hermitage, Pa., 11 years later, followed by a move to Germany? Incredible.
Then the return to Hermitage, living under a different roof, with a family that breaks race barriers and makes you their own? Admirable. Then following Jaime Mendez to K-State, becoming Offensive MVP in the finale of a stellar senior season? Storybook. Being a third-round draft pick by the San Diego Chargers and setting eight Super Bowl records? Unheard of. Two Pro Bowls and additional stints with the Seattle Seahawks and Pittsburgh Steelers to -- whaaat? -- going into private business with former K-State teammate Thomas Randolph in Atlanta? Really?
"I had a closeness in high school, a closeness in college, and then when I got to the pros, it just wasn't there," Coleman says. "It kind of bummed me out. I wanted to get away from it."
Yes, Coleman and Randolph, also a 1993 All-American, dabbled in real estate when the timing was perfect, and bought and sold homes. They explored the entertainment industry in the Atlanta area, and owned a pair of nightclubs and a skating rink. They promoted local concerts as well.
Leave it to another former K-State teammate, offensive lineman Eric Wolford of that 1993 Copper Bowl team, to crash the party. Wolford, who accepted the head coaching job at Youngstown State in 2010, gave Coleman an opportunity to re-invent himself again.
"Obviously, I kept in contact with Andre, and I went to the Arizona Cardinals and got cut, and he went on and had a successful NFL career," Wolford says. "We kept in contact. When I had an opportunity to hire him, I said, 'Hey, come back, finish your degree, and you could be a great coach.' I like having Kansas State guys on my staff because I do a lot of things similar as far as running the Kansas State blueprint as a program.
"I knew Andre would understand the discipline, work ethic, and those kinds of things, and it was basically just getting him up to speed with the style of offense I wanted to run here at Youngstown State. It took some recruiting. I had to recruit him, but he finished his degree, and shoot, in three years he's coaching at a BCS school that was once ranked No. 1 in college football. That's quite an honor.
"Coaching for your alma mater is a great honor in itself, but to do so at a great program and under a Hall-of-Fame coach in Coach Snyder is big."
-- Eric Wolford
Youngstown State
head coach
"Coaching for your alma mater is a great honor in itself, but to do so at a great program and under a Hall-of-Fame coach in Coach Snyder is big."
Youngstown State finished at 7-4 in 2012, which includes the program's first-ever win over a BCS opponent with a 31-17 victory at Pittsburgh. In his third season at Youngstown State, Coleman coached a young wide receiving unit that featured no senior, one junior and a bevy of freshmen and sophomores. Six sophomore and freshmen wide receivers combined for 109 catches for 1,434 yards and eight touchdowns.
Now Coleman inherits a bunch at K-State in which Tyler Lockett (17 starts) and Tramaine Thompson (18) are the first wide receiving duo to both return at least 15 career starts since Kevin Lockett and Mitch Running did so in 1995. While Chris Harper graduated to the NFL, Lockett, Thompson, Sexton and Torell Miller accounted for 92 receptions (45 percent) and 1,328 yards (49 percent) and 10 touchdowns (63 percent) of the team's total last season.
In the sometimes pass-happy Big 12 Conference, the window remains open for K-State and its plethora of pass-catchers, regardless of starting quarterback, to improve upon last season's 207.4 passing yards (ninth in the league) and perhaps have its first 1,000-yard receiver since Brandon Banks in 2008.
"Andre understands the intricacies of the position," Wolford says. "He saw it from a player's perspective. He also has a wealth of knowledge from the different coaches he's had experiences with. As a coach, you take something and learn something from all the different coaches you've had.
"When you have a couple receiver coaches and then you have a couple more in the NFL, you really formulate what you feel is the best way to run a comeback, to run a fade, to run a slant, to block, to block an outside run, to block an inside run, and how to stutter and go. Andre has a wealth of knowledge. He's going to coach them hard."
Kevin Lockett witnessed Coleman's passion first-hand during a scrimmage on Aug. 12.
"I just left practice probably 30 minutes ago and I watched the entire scrimmage," Lockett said. "He's coaching with that same intensity and fire that he played with. One of the things that he's going to bring to this group is an intensity to really try to increase their level of play. But really what I see is growth overall from the entire group because what he's bringing to all the kids is really detailed, fundamental coaching."
Some things never change. Lockett recalls Coleman's words to him as a freshman.
"Andre was big in teaching me that I had the ability to do some of the things that I was able to do," Lockett says. "That's why we remained good friends even after he left. He was the guy who early in my career told me, 'The sky's the limit for you.'"
Lockett finished his career with 3,032 receiving yards and 26 touchdown catches. They remain the framework of what is possible as a pass catcher in a K-State uniform.
Nearly two decades later, they're also a pair of marks on the school's receiving charts that remain unbroken.
* * *
Just past the lobby to the Vanier Football Complex and through the double doors sits a bevy of Kansas State bowl trophies and individual honors backlit and shielded by panes of glass.
KSU Sports Information
Coleman's 68-yard punt return for a touchdown, put the Wildcats up 24-10 at halftime over Wyoming in the 1993 Copper Bowl.
The various mementos exemplify years of sweat under the legendary Bill Snyder, who in 2012 helped the Wildcats to become the only Top 25 program to improve upon its win total in each of the past five consecutive years. After posting 10 wins in 2011, K-State last season went 11-2, earned its first-ever No. 1 ranking in the Bowl Championship Series standings in late November, captured a share of its first Big 12 Championship in nine campaigns, and earned the league's automatic Bowl Championship Series bowl berth. The Wildcats suffered a 35-17 loss to No. 5 Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl and finished ranked No. 12 in The Associated Press final poll.
Pundits critical of Snyder's return to the sideline after a three-year hiatus and prior to the 2009 season now often contend it's difficult to count out the Wildcats under the strategic prowess of Snyder, the back-to-back Big 12 Coach of the Year and 2012 Bobby Dodd National Coach of the Year recipient. Yet K-State will open its 2013 season unranked by both major polls when the Wildcats face North Dakota State at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
Such a perceived slight comes in large part due to the Wildcats losing Heisman Trophy finalist Collin Klein while departed 2012 Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year Arthur Brown led a defensive unit that largely starts anew with much unproven starting talent.
"Granted we lost a bunch of starters, but that's been K-State for however long," Coleman says. "Keep winning, keep winning, and then all of the sudden, K-State is there. We're going to have to do it again."
For as much as Coleman insists that some things simply do not change in the national realm of college football, he understands much has changed, particularly in the world of football recruiting, since he donned a silver Powercat helmet nearly two decades ago.
Understand the Snyder coaching tree has become as legendary as the man himself -- more times than not during K-State games a graphic pops upon TV screens detailing the lineage of Snyder assistant coaches who've gone on to become head coaches -- but when it comes to the recruiting game, few K-State assistants might rival Coleman's accomplishments prior to his first official game.
During a five-hour period on July 27, K-State earned five commits, including four solely pursued by Coleman -- an unheard of harvest for a program that traditionally has bided its time in observing and offering prospects.
Defensive back Michael Stevens (Charlotte, N.C.) and wide receiver Dominique Heath (Huntersville, N.C.) were the first to give Coleman their word, and defensive back Kendall Adams (Fort Worth, Texas) soon followed. Wide receiver TL Ford (Cartersville, Ga.) phoned Coleman at 9:30 p.m. to give him the news.
"(Coleman) was very excited and glad I made the decision," Ford told GoPowercat.com shortly after phoning Coleman. "Coach Coleman is a good guy. He played at K-State also and I really like him as a coach. He sold K-State really well. It made it that much easier to make the choice."
Wolford saw all of this before as Coleman hauled in several talented players while at Youngstown State.
"That doesn't surprise me," Wolford says. "I told Coach Snyder when he called me, 'Listen Coach, Andre is the real deal.' One thing we take pride in here is recruiting. We recruit every day and we aren't afraid to recruit against anyone. Andre has had three years of experience in that at Youngstown State. We had heated battles with people and we have guys here who could very easily play at BCS schools."
Lockett saw such a day coming shortly upon Coleman's arrival at K-State in February.
"Talking to Andre, he came with an entirely different list of kids that he wanted to go after," Lockett says. "I think one thing about Andre's philosophy and that he buys into is that there's a reason a lot of people recruit along the east coast and that's because there's a lot of talent. The Floridas and Ohio States can't get everybody.
"Whereas in the past where sometimes K-State hasn't wanted to get into that battle, Andre wants to take that challenge head-on and really try to fight some of those universities to get those kids. That's why you saw (the commitments on July 27). Andre has the ability to communicate with them and can really sell them on why they should be in Manhattan."
Coleman maintains a dogged mentality. For much of his life, it's all he's known.
"I have a bulldog mentality because I know at the end of the day kids want to be successful," Coleman says. "I've been there and done it. No matter where they're from -- Georgia, North Carolina or Florida -- you want to put yourself into a position to be successful. There are a lot of kids like me. There are kids that might not be struggling, they might be well off, and they want to be successful. I've been in both worlds. But you still have the end dream and that's finding success.
"I take that and use it, and I think that separates myself from the next guy who talks with them, because the next guy doesn't have my story. If you're passionate about it and speak about it and have real-life experiences that kids can relate to, they gravitate to that. There are no gimmicks, there's no game, it's real life."
Coleman pauses.
"A lot of people don't know my story," he continues. "They just see the exterior. They don't know my journey. They don't know what I've been through."
For now, the journey pauses with Coleman holding Brielle, his baby daughter, and standing next to Brandi, his wife, under sunny skies on the field at Bill Snyder Family Stadium. He wears a smile as purple-clad children race past him seeking autographs from current football players.
The kids, of course, don't know Andre Coleman. But underneath the right sleeve of Coleman's black sweatsuit is his own dividing line between success and failure. A jagged line across his wrist.
He didn't mean to do it. Man, he didn't mean to do it. But he did it.
And really, that's how his story begins.
