He sat outside the Memorial Union on a sunny spring day, taking a bite out of a sandwich and talking at the same time. He wasn't trying to be rude, but he had less than an hour before his next class, so talking with a mouthful was his only option.
It was 11:20 a.m. and Terrell Suggs, a Baltimore Ravens' defensive end, had already been to one class and still had two to go.
Suggs rubbed his eyes and said he missed his sleep; this time last year, he was lounging in bed or playing video games, enjoying five months of off-season vacation. This spring he hit the books instead, trying to finish 12 credits needed for an undergraduate degree before heading back to the NFL.
Less than a half mile away, Suggs' former ASU teammate Shaun McDonald, an NFL wide receiver, entered the Intercollegiate Athletics building. An intern with the ASU football strength and conditioning coach, he was supposed to train recent ASU student athlete graduates attempting to break into the professional ranks, but he was a little late for their workout.
He had just come from his computer literacy class - his easiest class, he said, but the only one in which he was getting less than an "A." He planned to change that before graduation in May.
Three years ago, both Suggs and McDonald left ASU before finishing their degrees for lucrative careers in the NFL. They are not alone. According to NCAA data, 38 percent of all Division I college athletes fail to graduate within six years. That number climbs to 46 percent for football players.
At ASU, athletes do slightly better. According to NCAA data, 50 percent of ASU athletes graduate within six years, compared to 55 percent of the study body as a whole.
While it's not unusual for top athletes to leave college before graduating, it is unusual for them to come back, especially when their careers are still going strong, said ASU Athletic Department spokesman Mark Brand. McDonald and Suggs are exceptions, he said, but smart ones.
The average career of a professional football player is less than four years -- and then an athlete has to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.
Without a degree, jobs are limited -- it's as simple as that, Brand said.
"Job security remains a question mark for a lot of professional athletes and injuries can ruin a career in a matter of seconds," he said. "Finishing up their education can help a former athlete not have to worry as much."
After completing the semester in Tempe this spring, Suggs and McDonald took a break, then headed to their teams' training camps in late July -- Suggs to the Baltimore Ravens and newly graduated McDonald to the St. Louis Rams. Suggs planned to return to ASU next spring to finish up his studies during the NFL's off season, with hopes of graduating in 2008.
A lesson learned
McDonald sat outside the ICA building massaging his right knee -- a knee that needed surgery two years ago. If that knee buckles one more time, it could be the difference between a football career and an 8-to-5 job.
He stared at his scar. It's no bigger than a quarter, but it's a constant reminder of why he's back in school.
"I'm hoping I can [play football] for years to come," McDonald said. But "you've got to be ready to go out into the real world."
McDonald, who racked up 2,867 yards in his three years as a wide receiver at ASU, decided to forego his senior year and enter the NFL in 2003. He was just one semester short of graduation.
He said he doesn't regret the decision, but he also knew that he wanted to finish his degree in interdisciplinary studies. "I was real close to getting [my degree], so I just wanted to get it out of the way so I can concentrate on making plays out on the football field."
His NFL career so far has been a successful one. Last season, he caught 46 passes for 523 yards as a wide receiver for the Rams. In his three years with the team, he's made $1.294 million. But, entering the 2006-07 season as a restricted free agent, McDonald was realistic about his prospects.
"I'm not financially set right now," he said. "It'd help to be, but everything doesn't really work out like that in the league."
As it turned out, McDonald did not get the big contract he was hoping for; he signed a one-year restricted free agent qualifying offer worth $721,600 with the Rams. But he does have his degree.
McDonald credits friend and former teammate Skyler Fulton for pushing him back into the classroom.
"I was here on my bye week and I was driving with Skyler and we were driving down the street, down University, and he was like, 'Man, you might as well go in there and get it done,'" McDonald said.
Corinne Corte, ASU's academic coach and coaching specialist of football, said she encouraged Fulton in his attempts to lure McDonald back to school.
"Skyler and I would speak about Shaun and how close he was to graduating," Corte said. "But, ultimately, it came down to Shaun. He needed to make the commitment himself; it wasn't up to Skyler or me."
Making the decision was one thing; getting through those last 12 credit hours was another.
"I've never really been a class guy; it's just something I got to get through," McDonald said. "I just always find myself looking at the clock hoping the time goes by faster."
But he kept thinking about what graduation would mean to him and his family.
"No one in my family has graduated college, so to be the first would be cool," he said.
He also kept in mind what happened to his brother, Tariq McDonald, who also entered the NFL draft a year before he was to graduate from college in 2000. Tariq decided to enter the NFL draft even though he was only ASU's third best receiver, with 33 catches for 386 yards. He said he needed to do it for financial reasons.
"Raising a 2 1/2-year-old daughter, which I've come to realize is a very big responsibility and a big strain on my girlfriend and both of our families," McDonald said in a statement at the time.
He was unclaimed on draft day, but signed two days later as a free agent with the Cincinnati Bengals. Four months later, he was cut due to roster size. He never played a down on Sunday. And he never returned to school.
Although Shaun McDonald isn't sure what he'll do with his degree, he figures: "Just to have that paper, it should help me down the road somewhere, hopefully."
ASU football coach Dirk Koetter said he was caught off guard when he learned that McDonald, who was set to report to the Ram's training camp on July 27, was returning to school.
"I did not expect him to come back as quick as he did -- while he was still playing," Koetter said.
"By normal person standards the amount of money (McDonald and Suggs) are making is astronomical," Koetter said. "But the fact that they would work so hard during the season and now take time in the off season to go to school-- it says a lot about them."
Keeping a promise
He set an NCAA record his junior year with 24 sacks and then signed a contract worth more than $10 million directly out of the 2003 NFL draft. He won Associated Press Defensive Rookie of the Year in his first year with the Baltimore Ravens and has played in the NFL Pro Bowl.
But Suggs, a former ASU defensive end, spent this past semester back in the classroom, thanks to a promise he made to his parents that he would finish his degree. This year, he made good on that promise, returning to ASU to take a full load of classes. He plans to do the same next spring during the off-season and, if all goes well, he'll graduate in 2008.
"I told myself I was going to take my first year off and come back the second year," Suggs said. "But I didn't come back the second year, and it was getting harder and harder."
Suggs decided not to let any more time pass, so he signed up this spring for classes in construction management and child development. He's working toward a degree in elementary education and would like to some day be a high school football coach like his longtime mentor and former Chandler Hamilton High football coach John Wrenn.
"Me getting a degree will pretty much start the second half of my life," Suggs said. "I see myself after my (NFL) career coaching high school, settling down with a wife and kids -- all that stuff."
Suggs has remained close to Wrenn, 54, who was recently hired as ASU's running backs' coach after nearly a decade at Hamilton. Suggs said that before he met Wrenn, he was just a kid playing football without any direction.
"[Wrenn] totally changed the lifestyle and road that I was heading down," he said. "He had me tutoring for the SAT instead of out doing God knows what. I guarantee I wasn't the first [person] that he helped.
"This is just as much his success story as it is mine."
When he arrived at ASU, Suggs found another mentor in Corte, the football team's academic coach.
"If it wasn't for Corinne, I wouldn't know how to write my first paper," Suggs said. "Some kids need more attention in school than others and she gave me the extra attention and made sure I got it."
Corte said student athletes, including Suggs, sometimes have difficulty handling the pressure of multiple responsibilities. Corte said she tries putting difficult material into a language the student athletes can understand easier.
"If an athlete is having difficulty with a math problem, I'll relate it to football," Corte said. "Such as, how many football players were on the field when you take away a certain percentage?"
Suggs said it was Corte he turned to when he decided to come back to school, and it has been Corte who has pushed him along this far.
"She's always been my guiding light, my jiminy-cricket, so to say, and she's always helped from the time I got to campus until I left," he said. "She always got 30 to 40 football players that needed help and I'm just grateful that she could squeeze me in."
Suggs looks back at his days at ASU as his best. "If I could [play for ASU] all over again, I'd do it in a heartbeat," he said.
"In college and high school the game is pure. You play for the genuine love and at the end of the day, you take home what you put into it," he said. "It's not like that in the NFL. NFL has endorsements, TV, the whole celeb life and fame. But that's just a whole bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with football.
"The guys in college will never understand how precious it is to wake up at 5:45 a.m. with 100 of your teammates," he added. "It's not just you and another player and the guy that's getting the most money is a no-show. No, in college, all of you guys are there building it together. Everybody is putting in the same work together.
"That's the type of stuff that you can't buy."
Coming back to ASU to finish his schooling, Suggs said, is a way that he can pass on the lessons he has learned about the importance of education to other student athletes.
Junior wide receiver Rudy Burgess is one player who has gotten the message.
A classmate of Suggs at ASU, Burgess said it meant a lot to him that Suggs came back to school.
"It's inspiring to me and a lot of other players that education is important," Burgess said. "Big bucks come with education even if you don't go to the next level. But if you get your education now, you could end up in Terrell's position."
Postscript
Last month, McDonald and Corte attended the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics' annual conference in Pittsburgh, Penn. McDonald had already received his degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in education and family studies. He had already attended ASU's student-athlete graduation, which recognized his 4.0 GPA, including the "A" he received in computer literacy this spring.
But McDonald still had one more award to accept.
Corte, who had been contacted by a player development representative, was informed that McDonald would be honored with the 2006 NFL Player Development Academic Achievement Award, recognizing one NFL athlete.
From the moment he declared himself eligible for the professional ranks, the odds were against McDonald finishing school. Now, entering his fourth NFL season, McDonald walks into training camp with an NFL contract in one hand and a bachelor's degree in the other.
For a wide receiver who runs routes on a daily basis, he now has two paths leading him into the end zone.
Reach the reporter at james.schmehl@asu.edu.
