Carter quarterback

Q: I understand you are the quarterbacks coach at Roosevelt and that you are still involved in arena football. Can you fill me in?

A: This is my year at Roosevelt. Before that I worked three years at South Grand Prairie, coaching defensive backs and special teams and coaching track.

The past four years I've been coaching arena football, the Lubbock franchise. The arena football league owns Arena Football2. It's a developmental league to get ready for Arena 1. I played Arena 1 for seven years.

Q: Having played college and pro football, perhaps you don't reflect as much on high school as some of your teammates.

A: It really doesn't seem like it's been 20 years because the movie kind of brought it back to the forefront again. I really didn't talk about high school that much, up until the movie coming out. It kind of put us back into the forefront a little bit.

Q: In a good way?

A:  Right. The kids that I coached at South Grand Prairie and at Roosevelt, that was you, that was quarterback of that team? Because a lot of high school football players watched the movie because they are high school football players.

Q: Some teammates don't think Carter was shown in a favorable light.

A: I think some of the things were not positive. But I know Lloyd Hill, who was a receiver for Odessa. I'm the Godparent to his daughter. They were things they didn't like about the movie, as well. That was Hollywood. It's based on a true story, so some things probably will not be true.

Q: Do you think the fact the state championship was taken away is the reason there are no plans to honor the team?

A: The thing is, when you look at the titles that's been taken away from other teams, they were done quickly. SOC's title. Ours' took three years of investigating. If it was that simple and that clear cut what the mistake was, it would have been handled quickly. Just this past year, Roosevelt's district championship was taken away. They did an investigation and it was taken away like that.

Ours, for it to take years to come up with that, it seems like whoever was searching and maybe trying to find something, make something stick or be concrete.

Q: Did finding out you were disqualified from the playoffs seem unfair to a 17- or 18-year old?

A: When I first heard that we were kicked out, my thinking was well, let's go ahead and get started with this recruiting process. Of course you wanted to play. You wont he district. And then when our families and Royce West and everybody banded together, filed the injunction that allowed us to play, we were just thankful to play that week. We just wanted to at least win that week and show our gratitude for the people who were supporting us and fighting for us.

I think we kind of used it as motivation week to week. We knew if we lost, it's over with. We used it as, OK, if we win this week, we'll fight again. It was motivation. It's really the cliché. We took it week to week. We were not guaranteed anything the next week.

Q: Does it surprise you that most of the guys who did prison time seem to be doing well?

A: I was around those guys before those things happened. You know how your parents say the decisions that you make can either ruin you or save you. I was around those guys. We didn't come up in poverty.

A lot of people don't understand the Oak Cliff area. It is on the edge of Dallas. When I got to Carter as a freshman, a lot of the pictures up on the wall were of white football players. When we were there, that area had people working hard, two-parent homes.

I knew a lot of those guys' parents. I knew where they came from. The decision they made was probably more of greed instead of necessity. 'I'm not eating, so let me go rob and steal.' It was more of, 'It's never enough.' You see that on wall street. You see that in big business. Greed allows you to do things that you probably shouldn't. So in those guys' defense, I am not surprised to see them doing well because that's a bad decision they made; hopefully you learn from it and you realize, 'That's not real life.'

Q: LeShai speculated that the emotional roller-coaster nature of the playoff run might have played a role.

A: I can't speak for his version. But for me, football was a game. It's not life, it is a part of life. Once that is over, you go on to something else. My thinking was, 'OK, high school, we did something that no one has done around the Dallas area in a long time. Now, you enjoy it, you celebrate it, but now you know you have another phase. Now it's time for college.'

I celebrated and enjoyed it, but all things come to an end. For me, I wasn't trying to keep it going because with no more games to play, you've won the ultimate prize, how do you keep it going. You can't simulate that.

People don't understand. People say you were talented, but a lot of guys worked extremely hard in their craft. People don't understand nine of those guys on that team had a chance to go to NFL teams. Now, when was the last time you saw nine off one team get a chance to go to the NFL. That's minus two who went to jail who were all-state, all-American and could possibly have had a chance.

We were lifting in the morning, 6-something before school started; worked late. That means you are investing back into yourself.

Q: Do you remember what you were doing when you heard about Derric and Gary getting arrested?

A: It was summertime. We were working out. Guys were getting ready to go to college. Heard that, I believe, on the news. That really shocked me.

I was seeing these guys with more money, new shoes and different things like that, but I never knew they were out robbing people. That was the shock.

Q: Did you keep up with those guys in prison?

A: No, I didn't. That's something I probably should have done a better job of. I talked to people that were keeping with them or did go visit them. But I should have done a better job. I was knowing some of those guys since little league football, elementary, middle school. Carlos Allen, played little league football with them with the Oak Cliff Cubs.

Went to middle school at Hulcy with Derric Evans. Played against the other ones at Atwell. Yeah, I should have done a better job myself.

Q: Gary said he interviewed you for his book.

A: We were lifting weights together for a period. They call me and talk about football. We're still in touch. Our middle school coach, Coach Butler, passed away, saw some of those guys at the funeral.

Actually, when I was playing arena ball in Houston I would see Derric Evans. I played four years of Arena football in Houston, so I would see Derric. He moved down there. We would talk.

But you could tell guys were hurting. You see me playing or you see other people still playing and because of some decisions you made, that was kind of taken away from you.

Q: Would you like to see a reunion?

A: I would. I think the thing about something like that. I think for us, the players, I don't think we think of it as being as big as people around us have let us know. People talk to me all the time and tell me how much they enjoyed watching us. I mean from all over the state. We were like entertainers to a lot of people. People outside of us, that was a very fun time for them. I've met people from Marshall and Odessa Permian, from San Antonio who still remember that. And the people who started supporting us.

We were representing not only Carter and Oak Cliff, but we were representing Dallas. Including those supporting us that we played against. Not only alumni from Carter, but from SOC, supporting us because we represented the city.

Then when you bring the movie back out, the younger Carter guys can see where the school was. Because that is big when you look at it. Just like Grand Prairie, those coaches said, 'Man, y'all had a movie made about you?'