Collins speaks to Toll Gate students about making right choices

By Jacob Marrocco
Posted 10/29/15

Former New England Patriots running back Tony Collins spoke to Toll Gate juniors and seniors on Tuesday morning about hard work, perseverance, sound choices and learning “to love to be …

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Collins speaks to Toll Gate students about making right choices

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Former New England Patriots running back Tony Collins spoke to Toll Gate juniors and seniors on Tuesday morning about hard work, perseverance, sound choices and learning “to love to be successful.”

Collins said he chose to drop out of East Carolina University with just 11 credits left to pursue training in Miami for the NFL Combine in 1981. He said he understood the risk involved in leaving college before graduation, meaning that if he had gotten injured he was out of an education and out of football.

Despite no one ever being drafted from his high school, Penn Yan Academy, Collins pursued his dream and ended up getting the call in the second round of the 1981 NFL Draft from the New England Patriots.

“My dreams have come true,” Collins said of that moment. “All the hard work, all the dedication, all the things that I’ve gone through to get to this point, has come true. Dreams do come true. We just can’t dream. Now it’s great to sit back and dream, but there’s work that you’re gonna have to do in order to make that dream come true.”

His work wasn’t done yet. He entered training camp third on the depth chart behind Vagas Ferguson and Horace Ivory, but he said, in his mind, he was always the No. 1 running back.

In the second week of training camp, Ivory got injured. Collins continued to work harder, being the first out on the field and last off of it.

“Felt bad for Horace, felt real good for Tony,” Collins said to laughs from the audience.

Ferguson suffered an ankle injury himself two weeks later, earning Collins the top running back spot on the team. Collins would go on to play in all 16 games, tallying 873 rushing and 232 receiving yards and seven touchdowns on the ground.

Collins had the best year of his career in 1983. He made the Pro Bowl after rushing for 1,049 yards and 10 touchdowns while picking up 257 yards through the air as well.

Then, in 1984, Collins had to make a difficult choice. He had suffered cracked ribs early in the season, and either had to sit down like Ivory and Ferguson before him and have his job taken away, or go on painkillers. He chose the latter, opting to receive cortisone shots before and during games as well to numb the agony.

“When the medicine wears off, wears down, I’m in so much pain that I can’t even go to sleep, that I cannot even breathe,” Collins said. “So I have to take all these painkillers just to go to sleep. And I’m taking painkillers all through practice and all through the year, and the painkillers were tearing up my stomach.”

As he became addicted to painkillers, he also began smoking marijuana to relieve nausea. He ended up being randomly tested by the NFL, failing two drug tests and getting cut by New England after the second infraction in 1988.

He was signed by the Indianapolis Colts the next day and promised himself that he would stay clean after receiving a second chance. If he failed another drug test, he would have been suspended an entire season, so he stayed away from marijuana. However, he chose to attend a party four weeks into training camp and, despite not actually smoking any marijuana, the secondhand smoke around him was enough to result in a third failed drug test.

He played one more season in 1990 for the Miami Dolphins before retiring, he said, as a “failure.”

“You make a choice to skip school, or you make a choice to do something you know you’re not supposed to do, and it could be your last choice,” Collins said. “You have to understand something: The choices that you all make, not only does it affect you, it affects people that love you. I hurt a lot of people. I embarrassed a lot of people. I know I hurt my mom and dad because of the choices I was making.”

Collins then went through an 18-year period of several marriages, depression and suicidal thoughts. He said he would stay clean from anywhere between several months and a couple years, but would then get high again.

The turning point in his life came when he got a job talking to athletes’ parents over the phone, and knew he hated it from Day 1. His plan was to go to McDonald’s at lunch and never come back, but he said a small voice in his head told him to return to the job.

That decision ended up saving his life.

He went back to his job, and ended up answering the phone of the co-worker next to him, who actually went to McDonald’s and never came back. On the other end was a woman, to whom he spoke for hours. They ended up chatting later on, and then for months. Collins said she would send him three or four positive e-mails every day, contributing greatly to getting him out of his downward spiral. He would eventually marry her, and go back to school to get his degree in communications at 52.

“If I didn’t pick up that phone, if I didn’t go back to that job, I would not be standing in front of you today,” Collins said. “I always thought my purpose in life was to play in the NFL and make a lot of money and have a great time. That was part of it, but God spared my life for you all. Today, Oct. 27 at Toll Gate High School, I am fulfilling purpose.”

Collins said that respecting one’s parents or guardians is the most important key to success, including saying “Yes, sir” or “Yes, ma’am” to show respect, while it is also vital to surround oneself with good people. Ultimately, Collins told the students, the “only one who can stop you is you.”

“You have to learn to love to be successful,” Collins said. “There’s gonna be sacrifices that you’ll have to make. Each and every one of you in this building today is successful. You have success on the inside of you, but you have to learn to love to be successful.”

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