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Playing for the love of the game

The St. Petersburg Sharks swim up-current in pursuit of their dreams, but that doesn't keep the aging athletes from strapping on the pads in an overlooked semipro league.

[Times photos: Jamie Francis] Sharks waterboy E.J. Brown helps James Reynolds wrap his wrist before a game against Lake Butler.

By BRUCE LOWITT, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 11, 2002

ST. PETERSBURG -- If you believe, you can see it just beyond the horizon. You measure the distance in dreams.

The St. Petersburg Sharks play at the 31st Street Sports Complex. From there they can see the National Football League. Or maybe it's Peoria.

There are teams to which players aspire, even the Peoria Pirates in Arena Football's minor-league offshoot, af2.

Then there are the Sharks, defending champions of the semipro Southern States Football League -- more accurately Southern State; its 12 teams are based in Florida.

Former NFL receiver Ernest Givins coaches the Sharks and plays quarterback in a pinch.

The Sharks, young and not-so-young men, play for fun. Some, though, haven't let go of their dream. They endure long bus rides, no pay and minimal crowds, and envision themselves on an af2 roster. The af2, after all, feeds the Arena Football League.

And if Kurt Warner can jump from the Arena League's Iowa Barnstormers to Amsterdam in NFL Europe to the NFL, and can quarterback the St. Louis Rams to the Super Bowl ...

Sharks owners Darrell Hammond and Derrick Pollock prefer you call the Sharks minor league since players receive no money and retain college eligibility. But the American Football Association and other organizations list the SSFL as semipro because it is not play-for-pay football. It is pay-to-play.

Rookies pay $200 and veterans $150 a season. Uniforms are provided. The 60 or so players buy equipment and insurance and have to sell at least three tickets, $7 apiece, to each game. The team averages 300 fans. Try finding someone in the stands who isn't a Sharks relative or friend.

"Only 1 percent of high school players make it into college," SSFL commissioner Dave Rice, former athletic director and coach at Fordham, said. "If it's that low there, you can imagine what it's like to make it into even the lowest pro level."

Once in a great while, though, a player stokes his teammates' dreams.

Landscaper Craig Watts, 26, a rusher-receiver from Osceola High, ran track at Baltimore City Community College. Last year he caught a scout's eye and signed with the Oulu Northern Lights in the Finnish American Football Federation. He got paid "and for the first time in my life I signed autographs. I got a taste of what it's like to be in the NFL."

The NFL? Does Watts think ...

"Nah," he said dismissively. "It's only a dream."

Not so for 19-year-old tackle D.J. Weilbacher. He went from East Lake High to the freshman team at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. He supervises children at a day care center. He wants to be a physical therapist. And he has this gut feeling.

"I have a good chance to make it to the NFL if I keep working as hard as I am now."

The NFL? There is a moment of silence.

"Am I a dreamer?" Weilbacher said, anticipating the question. "Not at all."

Some semipro franchises -- sometimes entire leagues -- spring up and vanish almost at a moment's notice. Others have been around for decades.

The Sharks were born in 1991 in the United Football League, renamed themselves the Suncoast Triangle in '95, reverted in '97 to the Sharks and joined the Southeastern Football League, returned to the UFL in '98, and in 2000 became part of the Sunshine States Football League.

Midway through the 2001 season the owners of the league dumped it and shut down their team. The seven remaining franchises reorganized as the Southern States Football League (to keep the same letters). This year it absorbed five former UFL franchises.

The team opens the playoffs Saturday at the 31st Street Sports Complex against the Tampa Bay Bulldogs. It practices there weeknights on an open field. Rent: $15 an hour. It plays on adjacent turf with all the football-field amenities. Rent: $25 an hour.

"They treat you different when you're adults," Pollock said. "They roll out the red carpet for kids."

True, said Phil Whitehouse, manager of athletic operations for St. Petersburg's Parks Department. "We do take care of youth leagues first. They pay only for the lights ($1 an hour). But they have to be nonprofit."

That pretty much defines the Sharks. The team doesn't lose money; the little it makes goes for uniforms, renting the field and so on. It pays $2,500 in SSFL dues, pays to have the field laid out, pays for the officials who work the games. Its lone major contributor is Darryl Rouson, attorney and president of the NAACP chapter in St. Petersburg. Games are neither broadcast nor televised.

Pollock, assistant principal at Osceola Middle School, and Hammond, an Osceola teaching assistant and retired police officer, have owned the Sharks for two seasons. "I dragged Darren into it," Pollock said, "and Ernest dragged us both into it."

Ernest Givins was an NFL wide receiver from 1986-95. He is 37, a St. Petersburg native, campus monitor at Bay Point Middle School and Sharks coach since he started the team. In an emergency he also is its quarterback.

"I had my time," Givins said. "I did everything I could as a young man. Now I want to give back to the next generation, point them in the right direction."

Pollock said they want to give players "something to do or to look forward to." If they didn't attend or play in college they can join the Sharks and show what they've got.

Problem is, Givins said, rarely does a scout at any pro level see what they've got. "Most don't even return my calls."

Brian Magee is a computer analyst at a St. Petersburg consulting firm, a Notre Dame grad, and was a safety from 1992-95 for the Irish, a starter as a junior and senior.

"At the end of my senior year maybe I had what it takes (to play in the NFL), but for whatever reason it didn't happen. ... I realize I'm 27," Magee said, leaving the door open just a crack. "If it hasn't happened by now, my chances are slim. Right now, though, I'm here for the love of the game." That's fine with Erica. "As his wife I stand by him no matter what. I encourage it. If he doesn't make it (to af2) he still had a chance to play and have fun."

Leonard Johnson was quarterback at Clearwater High and Alabama A&M. He is 5 foot 10, 200 pounds. Agents said he was too small, told him to switch to wide receiver. He got cursory looks from a couple of teams, then gave up.

At 35, Johnson has something the Bucs don't -- a championship ring from last season. It is relatively modest, gold with a garnet chip in the center, not jewel-encrusted and paperweight-sized. No matter. To him, Johnson said, it looks like a Super Bowl ring.

He also has a fiance. "She says she'll be glad when this is over. She tells me, 'You're 35.' I tell her, 'I love the game.' She doesn't understand."

Semipro playoffs

WHAT: Southern States Football League playoffs, St. Petersburg Sharks (9-0) vs. Tampa Bay Bulldogs (4-6).

WHEN/WHERE: 7 p.m. Saturday; 31st Street Sports Complex, St. Petersburg.

DIRECTIONS: Interstate 275 to 54 Avenue S, turn east to 31st Street, turn north (left).

TICKETS: $7.

INFORMATION: (727) 896-6961

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