Before his three children rose to greet the beginning of their busy school week, Marco Coleman was up and hurtling toward his own.
By 6 a.m. Monday, he already was approaching I-10 in north Florida, westbound, having driven up from St. Augustine. This 41-year-old college junior, this 14-year veteran of the NFL front line, this ultimate, unlikely commuter student, had a long, flat road ahead.
Five-and-a-half hours later, Coleman pulled into a metered spot on Spring Street near Georgia Tech’s College of Management. He could shave a few minutes off this twice-weekly drive, he supposes, if only he didn’t have to stop along the way to shake out the aches that build in an old pro’s body.
Compounded punishment aside, there are certain advantages to a long professional football career: Coleman is the rare student arriving at the Tech campus in a Cadillac SRX.
The man signed NFL contracts reportedly totaling near $40 million — granted, they were not guaranteed, so he didn’t see all that in his 14 years with six teams. That doesn’t mean he can’t play the frugal college student, too. Before the start of his Financial Management 3062 class, Coleman sat in his car chewing on the turkey sandwich he’d packed that morning.
“I’ve got to do this as cost effectively as possible, especially the way the gas prices are going up,” he said.
Thus began another week in the life of a onetime member of Georgia Tech’s 1990 national championship team, a player who left school early, 56 credit hours shy of a management degree, to be taken 12th overall in the 1992 draft. Now, in stubborn pursuit of the degree he left behind, Coleman is doing college the hard way.
No frat parties. No hanging with teammates in the players’ lounge. Not much socializing of any kind, given that there is a generation separating him from everyone else around him. Just a difficult routine of driving 380 miles to class and 380 miles home, at least twice a week.
And while rehabbing study habits that had atrophied over the last 20 years, Coleman also has to answer to the roles of husband and father to three children between the ages of 9 and 16.
“It has been difficult, but I know that in the end it will all work out,” said Coleman’s wife of 16 years, Katrina. “We all pitch in and do what we have to do to make it through the day.
“He thinks [Tech] is where he can succeed and we’re all behind that. This is a small issue compared to what some families have to deal with.”
If he knew then ...
When he left college before his senior year, giving up the pursuit of a degree to enter a draft eager for the services of a quick, pass-rushing defender, Coleman was hardly unique. According to Troy Vincent, vice president of player development for the NFL, on average about 55 percent of the players in the league at any time don’t have a college degree (the number was 54 percent in 2010, he said).
At the time Coleman left, he was the Yellow Jackets’ record holder in career sacks (27.5, which puts him third now) and tackles for loss (50, fourth now). The Miami Dolphins snapped him up, and he rewarded them by being named the Sports Illustrated Rookie of the Year.
Coleman has plenty of time during his long drives now to beat himself up for not coming back right away to finish his degree. He meant to, really he did. Twice in his first two off-seasons he re-enrolled, and twice he dropped out. “Too many distractions,” he said. “I was too young, too single.”
Football filled his plate. After four years with the Dolphins, he signed his first big free agent contract with San Diego. Three years later he was in Washington, where in 2000 he made his only Pro Bowl. As a steady veteran presence, three other teams — Jacksonville, Philadelphia and Denver — brought him in to solidify their lines before he retired following the 2005 season.
During that long span, he also began dabbling in the business world. He briefly owned a restaurant in Atlanta, and still has some real estate here as well as in Florida and Ohio. For the past three seasons, he has done pre- and post-game work for the Jacksonville Jaguars radio network.
“I see where I could have used then what I’m learning now,” he said.
A standout student
About a year ago, Coleman began hatching his plan to finish out a Tech degree. The time seemed right with his children getting older, his wife going back to school herself and his hunger building for a new challenge. He had been away too long to take advantage of an NCAA program for returning athletes, but Georgia Tech has its own, more open-ended degree-completion program.
Athletes from various sports have returned and earned their degrees, their tuition paid so long as they maintain a C average and work a few hours a week with the athletic department. But Coleman’s long-distance scholarship sets him apart.
“He wants to get that Georgia Tech degree. It’s a different situation; he’s definitely committed to a very challenging plan, but that’s what will work for him,” said Doug Allvine, assistant athletic director for special projects and coordinator for the program.
Cradling his Fundamentals of Corporate Finance book and official Georgia Tech spiral notebook in one hand, Coleman did not exactly melt into the crowd of students heading to class late Monday morning. A middle-aged, 6-foot-3, 270-pound junior tends to stand out on campus.
Coleman quietly entered the auditorium-style classroom and, as he has every day since the semester began last month, sat next to Ryan Flynn. Flynn’s 18, just two years younger than Coleman’s oldest child.
So low-key is Coleman about his former life that Flynn said he had no idea he had been sitting near an NFL veteran before a reporter mentioned it to him Monday. “He seems a little more interested in talking about his son playing soccer,” Flynn said.
With his real-world experience, Coleman is also a valuable resource to mine when lectures turn to stock and bond valuation, Flynn said.
Calculus looms
Monday was a light day in Financial Management 3062, with instructor Qiyu Liu passing back the previous week’s test for review. Coleman would have good news to report home. With a bonus, he scored a 102, much better than the 72 he got on the last one.
“The kids have an opportunity now to be on him about his grades,” said Katrina. “If he gets a good grade, they give him a high five. If not, they kind of get onto him about it.
“They’ve used it as a chance to give back to him what he has given to them.”
For this first semester back, Coleman is taking a light load, just this one class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and Marketing Management 3300 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Coleman is able to drive back to Florida on Tuesday and Thursday and be home in time to take one kid or other off to some practice or after-school event. He occasionally will fly in and out of town for Friday’s class.
While Coleman plans on taking a heavier load in the summers, piecing together his degree will be a long process, not completed, he said, until at least the spring of 2013. Some classes he may be able to take at a nearby school or online, but Tech requires the final 36 hours toward a degree to be completed on site. And still lurking is the bane of many a Tech athlete: the calculus requirement.
“My daughter is preparing to take introduction to calculus. Maybe we could share the same tutor,” he laughed.
‘I want to finish’
Coleman jokes that he probably passes 45 to 50 colleges each time he drives from St. Augustine to Atlanta. He had thought about transferring his credits to another school, but, he reasoned, a degree from any other place wouldn’t mean as much.
Growing up in Dayton, Ohio, he attended a technical high school where his weeks were split evenly between school and work at a sheet metal plant. He never gave college much thought until football showed him a way there.
By the time he left Georgia Tech early for the pros, Coleman never completely let go of the idea of a degree. Yes, he is at a point in life where he could get along without any piece of paper conferring status upon him. Still, he places such an importance on securing a degree that he has turned it into an interstate quest.
“I started this [22 years ago] and I want to finish it,” he said.
“I do have a 16-year-old daughter who will be off to college soon. I’m pretty sure it will be tough for her, where at some point in time she might decide, ‘Hey, I don’t want to go to school.’ It’s a lot easier to tell somebody to do something that you’ve actually done yourself.
“And for myself, there’s the challenge. Right now there are not a lot of things that are super-challenging in my life. I like challenges. My whole football career was a major challenge. I thrived off of that. Now here is an opportunity for the next year and a half or so to actually see if I can stay with this and do what is necessary to get it done.”
The challenges tend to pile up like the miles on his Cadillac.
This past school week underscored the complications of trying to balance a grown-up life with taking a collegiate mulligan.
Blessed Friday came, but instead of heading home, Coleman remained in Atlanta, where his wife and daughter Kabrione joined him. Seems the college junior’s daughter is ready to look at colleges herself, and wanted to check out Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, Tenn.
So off they went on just what dad needed — another long car ride.
