Coming Clean...Sporting News conversation with Lawrence Taylor

Lawrence Taylor has come to trip the light fantastic. It only seems as though he is going to bash in your skull first. Many years removed from his cocaine-fueled fall from grace, the legendary Giants linebacker, considered far and wide the greatest defensive player in NFL history, still is enigmatic enough to consent to an interview, pick the spot -- a dance studio outside Miami -- then walk in 25 minutes late, look you dead in the eye and declare, "(Expletive) this. I'm not answering any (expletive) questions." Ah, well. It's only 6:25 a.m. -- an hour when the 50-year-old Taylor used to still be awake, not rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. There will be time after his Dancing with the Stars practice for this impasse to be resolved, much as there has been time since his rock-bottom arrest in October 1998 on crack cocaine charges for Taylor to turn his life around.

A few days after that arrest, Taylor was offered the chance to audition for the football film Any Given Sunday -- "with two drug counselors in tow," his manager, Mark Lepselter, recalls. A decade later, Taylor quietly celebrated 10 years of sobriety with his third wife, Lynette, and their newly adopted son, 3-year-old Malcolm. Football's real L.T. (sorry, LaDainian) spoke with Sporting News' Steve Greenberg.

SN: A member of your marketing team described this period of your life as "the reinvention of Lawrence Taylor." Do you buy that?
TAYLOR: I don't know about that. I think I reinvented myself the day I quit doing drugs. I looked at Dancing with the Stars as a challenge, combined with this NutriSystem diet I have been on that has helped me lose 30 pounds. But, no, I don't feel like I have to reinvent myself. To be honest, I'm quite comfortable with who I am today.

SN: What are your goals, then?
TAYLOR: I'm not trying to accomplish anything else. I've done what I set out to do. Now I'm just living every day and enjoying myself and not, I guess, tarnishing my name any further than it has been, you know? Just do positive things from now on.

SN: It'll never be easy to put the words Lawrence Taylor and Viennese waltz together. You're the fifth NFL player to do Dancing, but it was more like a first -- none of the other guys had anything like your persona and mystique.
TAYLOR: It's a little different, but I've seen some footage on all those guys, and from my perspective they did very, very well. I was surprised at the way they could get around that floor. I (didn't) want to embarrass myself. I never want to embarrass myself. I've gone through the NFL, done my thing, and nowadays I'm somewhat off the radar. This was something really out of my character.

SN: So what does 50 feel like?
TAYLOR: Not a hell of a lot different than 49. Fifty is more of a big thing to other people than it is to me, but I'll say this: Twenty years ago, you couldn't have told me I'd get to 50. I'm very blessed to be 50. I have no major medical problems, no major financial problems. I used to always say 50 is an old man, but 50 is the new 30. And you get the best of both worlds. When they ask you to do something, "Man, I'm 50 years old! I'm not doing that." Then there's "You can't do something." "Man, I'm only 50 years old!"

SN: Why did you doubt you'd make it to 50?
TAYLOR: You know my history. It's not a secret. I'd gotten on a path where there's nothing but destruction there. There was a time I thought I couldn't get off that path. Even when I first got clean and stuff, hey, the problems just come up and up and up and up. You think you can always hide problems on the back burner and never have to deal with it, but every problem I've had, you have to deal with it. Maybe not at that time, but eventually it comes back to you. When the last drop of problems was out of me, I was happy.


SN: You are said to be clean and sober since 1998. Is that the truth?
TAYLOR: Actually, since October of 1998. The first couple of years are the hardest because even though you didn't become an addict in a day, it's going to take more than a day to get over it. Every year, I get stronger and stronger.
SN: Is the Any Given Sunday story -- that it helped you get your life turned around -- true?
TAYLOR: Definitely. Any Given Sunday came at a time in my life when I didn't have much hope for a brighter day. It gave me something to build upon. I said to myself, "(Expletive), you gotta run with this." And I've been clean ever since. SN: How far gone are the darkest days? Are you still fighting for your sobriety?
TAYLOR: I'm not fighting for anything. I just thank God that I'm all right. I've done what I've done, made my mark, and now it's for other people to tell this story. I don't get into that nostalgia (expletive). That's for other people.

Outtakes from the interview
On dancing: "With a lot of things, my body just don't go that way. But I'm enjoying it. You've got some moves out there that make you look so bad when you first try them, but when you get it and can put it together, it's a beautiful thing."
On how dancing compares with football: "It's more time-consuming, especially the mental work. It's a lot like going through the playbook. You expect to read it and know it by Sunday. That's the correlation I see and the biggest challenge."
On current Giants defensive stars Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck: "I don't watch a lot of TV. It's not like I'm glued to the TV every weekend. But I see those guys and think, 'Man, I wish I had guys like that to play with.' Those guys are real studs. They are built like the type of athletes you want -- tall, lean, strong, just wiry type of guys you want to win with." On whether he was ahead of his time, physically, as a player: "I was big for a linebacker, fast for a linebacker; I would like to think I could have played in any era. • The game has changed, though. I don't like it as much as I used to. It's become almost more of an individual game rather than a team sport."

Crazed Dogs and The One Man Wrecking Crew.

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Re invented his position ........

You Don't Tug on Superman's Cape.

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Still not sure what he meant here............

On current Giants defensive stars Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck: "I don't watch a lot of TV. It's not like I'm glued to the TV every weekend. But I see those guys and think, 'Man, I wish I had guys like that to play with.' :think2:

Banks, Carson and Johnson were Ham Sandwiches ??

My favorite defensive player of all time ... Used to wear his Jersey to school in my teens