Post by Banana Cat on May 30, 2011 9:28:00 GMT -5
www.buffalonews.com/sports/article437101.ece
Trying to make a clean break
Kevin Concepcion couldn't escape the streets when he played football at UB. Now, he's trying to resurrect his life and career.
By Rodney McKissic / News Sports Reporter
May 28, 2011
The police interrogation began with a simple line of questioning for Kevin Concepcion. The accusations were serious — rape, sodomy and sexual abuse — and they needed answers.
Concepcion told them he smoked marijuana with his accuser, but as their encounter progressed physically she had a change of heart and told him no. He bowed to her wishes and after they exchanged hugs, the accuser left Concepcion's dorm room. There was no sex, he said, and no rape.
Soon after, the University at Buffalo cornerback was strip searched and photographed naked because the police wanted to see evidence of bite marks and scratches. Concepcion was humiliated and, for the first time in his life, scared. He had no fear surviving on the streets of Rochester or when he faced Ben Roethlisberger or Byron Leftwich on the football field.
But this time Concepcion was scared and he should have been. The rape charge, which led to probation after a plea deal, was sandwiched between a marijuana possession charge and a failed drug test that spelled the end of his collegiate career in 2003. Cut loose from college, he returned to the streets, which led to a three-year prison term on a gun charge. Concepcion wouldn't play another meaningful game of football for eight years.
His return to football and normalcy are equal parts resurrection, redemption and remorse. It began last year with the Rochester Raiders in the Indoor Football League, where he was one of the league's top receivers, and continues today with the Erie (Pa.) Explosion in the Southern Indoor Football League.
"I knew all my dreams of playing football, of wanting to make it to the NFL, of being
someone better than what I am, had gone out the window," he said. "It was from my own stupidity. It was no one's fault but mine."
Perhaps Jim Hofher, his coach at UB, summed it up best: "He was a fantastic athlete that college football fans really didn't get to see."
Touchdown machine
One day Kevin Concepcion is a redshirt freshman starting at cornerback and oozing with pro potential. The next, it seems, he's married with four children and driving a minivan. He's 28 now and while he's not exactly creaky-kneed, his legs aren't as spry, either.
"I'm not as young as I once was but I still have some tools, I still have some talent," he said.
Evidence can be found in Erie, where he stars for the northernmost team in the Southern Indoor Football League. The pitch-and-catch nature of the SIFL — not to mention the league's strict rules prohibiting double teams and zone defenses — plays to Concepcion's strengths.
Through nine games Explosion quarterback Adam DiMichele, who played at Temple, has 70 touchdown passes and has connected with Concepcion for 36. No one else in the league has scored more than 23.
"That level of football is probably fun or like practice for him," said Richard Sanders, a former teammate at UB. "His athletic ability surpasses that level."
Concepcion redshirted as a true freshman in 2001, not because he wasn't ready but because Hofher's philosophy was a prospect could help the program more at 23 than he could at 18.
"He was one of the guys as a freshman who stood out among the seniors that were there," Sanders said. "When we were on scout team, Kevin played defense with us and there were times when coaches came up to him and said, 'We're trying to get a look here, don't lock these dudes down like that. Don't hit these dudes like that, they have to play this week.'"
Hofher said that as a true freshman the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Concepcion had the same physical capabilities as James Starks, the former Niagara Falls star who is now a running back with the Green Bay Packers.
"Kevin was a similar type, very gifted athlete," said Hofher, who recruited Starks to UB and is now an offensive coordinator at Delaware. "It was very obvious to the coaching eye that if everything fell into place, which unfortunately for Kevin it did not, there wasn't any question about his potential. He had size, speed, ball skills and game type savvy that would have forced someone to make an evaluation, 'Can this guy play in the NFL?'"
Antonio Goss, Concepcion's position coach at UB, was part of two Super Bowl-winning teams in the 1990s with San Francisco. Goss knew he was coaching a pro.
"Running, moving, hips, feet, speed and athleticism," said Goss, now an assistant at Furman University. "He could have played safety for us, he could have played receiver. Kick returner, punt returner he could have done all that. He was that kind of guy.
"When he was at corner we didn't have to worry about Kevin's guy, we could lean more to the other corner. He could man his guy up, no problem and take up almost two-thirds of the field."
But Concepcion, who started all 12 games in 2002, didn't merely get by on talent and spend long hours studying film, especially the tendencies of receivers.
"He knew the steps, he knew the reads," Goss said. "He knew when receivers made adjustments — if they were below the numbers or above numbers if he was wider — when we were trying to coach him that, he would be in the meeting room calling it out. He was really smart."
Which raises the question: What went wrong?
Trouble finds him
Concepcion should have never attended UB. He realizes that now. Too close to home. Too close to the temptation of the streets. But he couldn't help himself.
He was set on attending New Hampshire until Hofher offered him a scholarship after attending one of his basketball games. He was good enough in basketball to solicit a few Division I offers.
"New Hampshire was in the middle of the forest and I grew up in the city," he said. "How would I adapt from the environment I grew up in to coming out here? When you're 17 or 18 years old, you're not going to prepare for the road that's ahead of you. I stuck with the decision to stay close to home."
His mother, Nancy Cordero, was 16 when she had Kevin and he didn't lay eyes on this father, Darryl Reed, until he was 13, a meeting that was so emotional Concepcion started crying. He didn't see him again for another five years. He was raised primarily by his grandmother, Shaloyda Gonzalez.
"It was basically just me and Grandma," he said. "It was like that until I went to college."
When he was around football, there was nothing above the team for Concepcion but there was always that tug from back home.
"That's what got the best of him and it was easy for him to fall into," Goss said. "When the other guys on the team were around him, he was good but you had to coach him off the field. 'Kevin, are you doing the right things? You taking care of things? Where are you going when you go back home?' We had to call Kevin a little bit more than some of the others because of the way he was."
Concepcion got into enough trouble here in Buffalo. He said he got caught with "a couple of bags" of marijuana outside a Main Street club but the charges were eventually dismissed.
A month went by after he was initially accused of rape — the time when he was photographed naked — when Concepcion said a campus detective wanted to see him for further questioning. Instead, he was charged with third-degree rape, first-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse and was held without bond. He was taken to Erie County Holding Center, where he stayed for a week.
"I was in the holding cell and I was scared, I didn't know what was going on," Concepcion said. "I went from being in my dorm to being booked, fingerprinted and taken to a holding cell, then being presented in front of a judge. He told me I was being held without bail."
Concepcion wanted to fight the charge because he insisted he didn't do anything wrong and to this day he says he's innocent. But on the advice of his lawyer and his mother — and facing a possible 25-year prison sentence — Concepcion accepted a plea deal for three years probation, which included restitution and fines. After missing the 2003 season while serving a university-mandated suspension, Concepcion returned to UB for spring practice in 2004.
"Kevin, you better walk on egg shells because you're being targeted," Hofher told him. "All eyes are on you. Whatever you do is going to come into the light."
It didn't take long for Hofher to become prophetic. Concepcion was suspended for the final week of spring drills and days after the annual Blue and White Game the school announced he had been dismissed from the program for failing a drug test.
"Coach Hofher called me in his office and I knew by the tone of his voice I was in trouble," he said. "I had been down that path several times."
Making bad choices
Concepcion describes the days immediately following the end of his UB career as some of the saddest of his life. He lived in Buffalo with his future wife, Arriel, who was pregnant with their first child, Kevin. He turned his back on football.
"I knew I screwed up," he said. "My mother said, 'Why don't you come back home?' I ended up leaving Buffalo and moving back to Rochester."
But with idle time, home was the last place Concepcion needed to be.
"I got involved in a lifestyle I shouldn't have gotten involved in," said Concepcion without going into specifics. "I started hanging out with people I really shouldn't have been hanging out with and doing things I really didn't have any business doing. I got involved in an area that even to this day really disappoints me."
He applied to St. John Fisher College, where he might rekindle his football career, but was arrested on a gun charge.
"I was basically trying to protect a friend of mine when I got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time," Concepcion said.
He was out on bail awaiting trial for a year when Arriel became pregnant with their second child, Arrion. He was sentenced to four years at the Orleans Correctional Facility, a medium security prison in Albion. Concepcion's time at Orleans would have been even more monotonous and spirit draining had it not been for Arriel.
She and the children never missed a visit each week for three years, Saturdays or Sundays on alternating weeks, and on Jan 27, 2007 while Concepcion was still incarcerated, the couple married.
"It was no problem at all, rain, sleet or snow we were always there," Arriel said. "We had to be there for him."
Arriel said leaving the marriage was never an option for her.
"We had been together for a while before he ended up getting into trouble. I had two kids by him and I decided to be there with him. I knew that was the person I wanted to be with for the rest of my life and we all make mistakes."
During his time in prison, Concepcion read that former UB players Ramon Guzman (Indianapolis Colts) and Gemara Williams (New England Patriots) had hooked on with NFL teams. He put down the paper and sighed, "Look at where I am."
"Not to be cocky or nothing, but I was better than these guys," Concepcion said. "I'm not proud of what I did but I'm glad that I came here because it could have been worse. Prison did it for me, it opened my eyes to life. I was taken away from my family, my kids. They didn't know where I was. All they knew was daddy wasn't home."
Looking ahead
As of March 4, 2009, daddy's been home and looking just as comfortable behind the wheel of a minivan as he does undressing defensive backs. He's there for his wife and their children: Kevin, 6; Arrion, 5; and newborn Lloyd, who is named after his great-grandmother. Concepcion has another son, 5-year-old Keyon, from another relationship.
Since his release from prison he's been employed at the Rochester Athletic Club and makes the nearly three-hour commute for practices and games. Missteps of his youth cost him a potential career in the NFL and his freedom so he's paid a steep price.
Even in a league hell bent on scoring, Concepcion's indoor football numbers are strong and there's hope that the Canadian Football League will take notice. Concepcion and his wife recently visited Charlotte with the hope of relocating to the city by August to escape his bad influences in Rochester.
"I've done certain things in my life that I shouldn't have done," he said. "No matter what I may have accomplished in life — legally or illegally — I would give up everything to go back to school, go back to college and do it all over again. I would do it completely different. It's all a learning experience."
On the road to redemption, wisdom will suffice.
Kevin Concepcion couldn't escape the streets when he played football at UB. Now, he's trying to resurrect his life and career.
By Rodney McKissic / News Sports Reporter
May 28, 2011
The police interrogation began with a simple line of questioning for Kevin Concepcion. The accusations were serious — rape, sodomy and sexual abuse — and they needed answers.
Concepcion told them he smoked marijuana with his accuser, but as their encounter progressed physically she had a change of heart and told him no. He bowed to her wishes and after they exchanged hugs, the accuser left Concepcion's dorm room. There was no sex, he said, and no rape.
Soon after, the University at Buffalo cornerback was strip searched and photographed naked because the police wanted to see evidence of bite marks and scratches. Concepcion was humiliated and, for the first time in his life, scared. He had no fear surviving on the streets of Rochester or when he faced Ben Roethlisberger or Byron Leftwich on the football field.
But this time Concepcion was scared and he should have been. The rape charge, which led to probation after a plea deal, was sandwiched between a marijuana possession charge and a failed drug test that spelled the end of his collegiate career in 2003. Cut loose from college, he returned to the streets, which led to a three-year prison term on a gun charge. Concepcion wouldn't play another meaningful game of football for eight years.
His return to football and normalcy are equal parts resurrection, redemption and remorse. It began last year with the Rochester Raiders in the Indoor Football League, where he was one of the league's top receivers, and continues today with the Erie (Pa.) Explosion in the Southern Indoor Football League.
"I knew all my dreams of playing football, of wanting to make it to the NFL, of being
someone better than what I am, had gone out the window," he said. "It was from my own stupidity. It was no one's fault but mine."
Perhaps Jim Hofher, his coach at UB, summed it up best: "He was a fantastic athlete that college football fans really didn't get to see."
Touchdown machine
One day Kevin Concepcion is a redshirt freshman starting at cornerback and oozing with pro potential. The next, it seems, he's married with four children and driving a minivan. He's 28 now and while he's not exactly creaky-kneed, his legs aren't as spry, either.
"I'm not as young as I once was but I still have some tools, I still have some talent," he said.
Evidence can be found in Erie, where he stars for the northernmost team in the Southern Indoor Football League. The pitch-and-catch nature of the SIFL — not to mention the league's strict rules prohibiting double teams and zone defenses — plays to Concepcion's strengths.
Through nine games Explosion quarterback Adam DiMichele, who played at Temple, has 70 touchdown passes and has connected with Concepcion for 36. No one else in the league has scored more than 23.
"That level of football is probably fun or like practice for him," said Richard Sanders, a former teammate at UB. "His athletic ability surpasses that level."
Concepcion redshirted as a true freshman in 2001, not because he wasn't ready but because Hofher's philosophy was a prospect could help the program more at 23 than he could at 18.
"He was one of the guys as a freshman who stood out among the seniors that were there," Sanders said. "When we were on scout team, Kevin played defense with us and there were times when coaches came up to him and said, 'We're trying to get a look here, don't lock these dudes down like that. Don't hit these dudes like that, they have to play this week.'"
Hofher said that as a true freshman the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Concepcion had the same physical capabilities as James Starks, the former Niagara Falls star who is now a running back with the Green Bay Packers.
"Kevin was a similar type, very gifted athlete," said Hofher, who recruited Starks to UB and is now an offensive coordinator at Delaware. "It was very obvious to the coaching eye that if everything fell into place, which unfortunately for Kevin it did not, there wasn't any question about his potential. He had size, speed, ball skills and game type savvy that would have forced someone to make an evaluation, 'Can this guy play in the NFL?'"
Antonio Goss, Concepcion's position coach at UB, was part of two Super Bowl-winning teams in the 1990s with San Francisco. Goss knew he was coaching a pro.
"Running, moving, hips, feet, speed and athleticism," said Goss, now an assistant at Furman University. "He could have played safety for us, he could have played receiver. Kick returner, punt returner he could have done all that. He was that kind of guy.
"When he was at corner we didn't have to worry about Kevin's guy, we could lean more to the other corner. He could man his guy up, no problem and take up almost two-thirds of the field."
But Concepcion, who started all 12 games in 2002, didn't merely get by on talent and spend long hours studying film, especially the tendencies of receivers.
"He knew the steps, he knew the reads," Goss said. "He knew when receivers made adjustments — if they were below the numbers or above numbers if he was wider — when we were trying to coach him that, he would be in the meeting room calling it out. He was really smart."
Which raises the question: What went wrong?
Trouble finds him
Concepcion should have never attended UB. He realizes that now. Too close to home. Too close to the temptation of the streets. But he couldn't help himself.
He was set on attending New Hampshire until Hofher offered him a scholarship after attending one of his basketball games. He was good enough in basketball to solicit a few Division I offers.
"New Hampshire was in the middle of the forest and I grew up in the city," he said. "How would I adapt from the environment I grew up in to coming out here? When you're 17 or 18 years old, you're not going to prepare for the road that's ahead of you. I stuck with the decision to stay close to home."
His mother, Nancy Cordero, was 16 when she had Kevin and he didn't lay eyes on this father, Darryl Reed, until he was 13, a meeting that was so emotional Concepcion started crying. He didn't see him again for another five years. He was raised primarily by his grandmother, Shaloyda Gonzalez.
"It was basically just me and Grandma," he said. "It was like that until I went to college."
When he was around football, there was nothing above the team for Concepcion but there was always that tug from back home.
"That's what got the best of him and it was easy for him to fall into," Goss said. "When the other guys on the team were around him, he was good but you had to coach him off the field. 'Kevin, are you doing the right things? You taking care of things? Where are you going when you go back home?' We had to call Kevin a little bit more than some of the others because of the way he was."
Concepcion got into enough trouble here in Buffalo. He said he got caught with "a couple of bags" of marijuana outside a Main Street club but the charges were eventually dismissed.
A month went by after he was initially accused of rape — the time when he was photographed naked — when Concepcion said a campus detective wanted to see him for further questioning. Instead, he was charged with third-degree rape, first-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse and was held without bond. He was taken to Erie County Holding Center, where he stayed for a week.
"I was in the holding cell and I was scared, I didn't know what was going on," Concepcion said. "I went from being in my dorm to being booked, fingerprinted and taken to a holding cell, then being presented in front of a judge. He told me I was being held without bail."
Concepcion wanted to fight the charge because he insisted he didn't do anything wrong and to this day he says he's innocent. But on the advice of his lawyer and his mother — and facing a possible 25-year prison sentence — Concepcion accepted a plea deal for three years probation, which included restitution and fines. After missing the 2003 season while serving a university-mandated suspension, Concepcion returned to UB for spring practice in 2004.
"Kevin, you better walk on egg shells because you're being targeted," Hofher told him. "All eyes are on you. Whatever you do is going to come into the light."
It didn't take long for Hofher to become prophetic. Concepcion was suspended for the final week of spring drills and days after the annual Blue and White Game the school announced he had been dismissed from the program for failing a drug test.
"Coach Hofher called me in his office and I knew by the tone of his voice I was in trouble," he said. "I had been down that path several times."
Making bad choices
Concepcion describes the days immediately following the end of his UB career as some of the saddest of his life. He lived in Buffalo with his future wife, Arriel, who was pregnant with their first child, Kevin. He turned his back on football.
"I knew I screwed up," he said. "My mother said, 'Why don't you come back home?' I ended up leaving Buffalo and moving back to Rochester."
But with idle time, home was the last place Concepcion needed to be.
"I got involved in a lifestyle I shouldn't have gotten involved in," said Concepcion without going into specifics. "I started hanging out with people I really shouldn't have been hanging out with and doing things I really didn't have any business doing. I got involved in an area that even to this day really disappoints me."
He applied to St. John Fisher College, where he might rekindle his football career, but was arrested on a gun charge.
"I was basically trying to protect a friend of mine when I got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time," Concepcion said.
He was out on bail awaiting trial for a year when Arriel became pregnant with their second child, Arrion. He was sentenced to four years at the Orleans Correctional Facility, a medium security prison in Albion. Concepcion's time at Orleans would have been even more monotonous and spirit draining had it not been for Arriel.
She and the children never missed a visit each week for three years, Saturdays or Sundays on alternating weeks, and on Jan 27, 2007 while Concepcion was still incarcerated, the couple married.
"It was no problem at all, rain, sleet or snow we were always there," Arriel said. "We had to be there for him."
Arriel said leaving the marriage was never an option for her.
"We had been together for a while before he ended up getting into trouble. I had two kids by him and I decided to be there with him. I knew that was the person I wanted to be with for the rest of my life and we all make mistakes."
During his time in prison, Concepcion read that former UB players Ramon Guzman (Indianapolis Colts) and Gemara Williams (New England Patriots) had hooked on with NFL teams. He put down the paper and sighed, "Look at where I am."
"Not to be cocky or nothing, but I was better than these guys," Concepcion said. "I'm not proud of what I did but I'm glad that I came here because it could have been worse. Prison did it for me, it opened my eyes to life. I was taken away from my family, my kids. They didn't know where I was. All they knew was daddy wasn't home."
Looking ahead
As of March 4, 2009, daddy's been home and looking just as comfortable behind the wheel of a minivan as he does undressing defensive backs. He's there for his wife and their children: Kevin, 6; Arrion, 5; and newborn Lloyd, who is named after his great-grandmother. Concepcion has another son, 5-year-old Keyon, from another relationship.
Since his release from prison he's been employed at the Rochester Athletic Club and makes the nearly three-hour commute for practices and games. Missteps of his youth cost him a potential career in the NFL and his freedom so he's paid a steep price.
Even in a league hell bent on scoring, Concepcion's indoor football numbers are strong and there's hope that the Canadian Football League will take notice. Concepcion and his wife recently visited Charlotte with the hope of relocating to the city by August to escape his bad influences in Rochester.
"I've done certain things in my life that I shouldn't have done," he said. "No matter what I may have accomplished in life — legally or illegally — I would give up everything to go back to school, go back to college and do it all over again. I would do it completely different. It's all a learning experience."
On the road to redemption, wisdom will suffice.