Since Keith Lee was a kid, his dream was to be an NFL Quarterback, and then later on, a coach. He idolized Black QB's like "Jefferson Street" Joe Gilliam of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Shaq Harris of the Los Angeles Rams.

Now, having long since accomplished that dream, experiencing the highs and lows of pro football,and retiring from the NFL in 1986, the married father of three can focus on doing what he loves - teaching and mentoring football’s rising stars. From his UCF office, Lee talks to ONYX Magazine about his football career.

Raised in the tough streets of South Central Los Angeles, Keith opted for athletics versus the gang violence the borough has become all too legendary for. He played high school football where he was the star quarterback at Gardena High School. During his senior year, a number of colleges pursued him, but to his disappointment, not as quarterback. He held fast to his dream to play QB, and he would not be moved, though he knew the odds were stacked against him, as in the mid-70's, colleges rarely had Black quarterbacks.

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He enrolled at Santa Monica Community College, one of few schools that would let him play his choice position. He showed them what he was made of during the two years he was QB, and was named Junior College All-American. His triumph there, though, was not without incident. He had the support of his team and his coach, but he was the target of intense racial discrimination, from death threats to bomb threats. In the end, he persevered, made it through, and was thrilled when Colorado State University called in1978 with an offer for a quarterback position. Lee happily accepted the spot, thrilled to be given the opportunity to play QB for a big name school.

To say that his time at CSU was bittersweet would be a gross understatement. He has good memories; he made a lot of friends there, and had his share of pretty decent experiences. Here is where he experienced one of his most memorable and triumphant moments in his football career; but not all his memories are fond ones. CSU was also where he continued to be the target of bitter racism.

He recalls the very beginning of his time there, when he had to vie for the starting QB position against two white counterparts. He recalls the smug attitudes of his competitors as they openly bragged about how they'd beat him out and eliminate his position. But Keith Lee won the starting position as quarterback for Colorado State University in1978. The university made the announcement at a press conference. It was a big deal for Keith. He was slowly but surely on the road to achieving his childhood dream.

"When we came back in the summer, I was listed as the starting quarterback," recalls Lee. "Our first game was against Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, to be aired on national TV."

On game day, Lee says he was brimming with anticipation and excitement. "I was excited to play," he says. "It was my first major college game, and on national TV no less."

Brigham Young kicked the ball off to Colorado State. Lee recalls, "I went to the coach to get the first play on offense. I took one step onto the field, and the coach grabbed my arm, and told me, 'We can't do it. I'm sorry, we just can't have you out there.' And sent one of my white counterparts into the game."

Lee says he stood on the sidelines for the entire first half of that game with his helmet on, devastated and numb with shock. "I had worked so hard to reach this goal and been through so much to get to that moment, and it was just snatched from me. Just like that.

"Later on, in about the middle of the third quarter, we were losing badly, so they decided to put me in. I threw two touchdowns, but we had run out of time, and I couldn't bring us back, and we lost."

The following Monday morning, Lee went to his coaches' office and told him he was resigning his position on the team and leaving CSU, because he thought what they had done was unfair, to say the very least.

"They pleaded with me not to leave. They said they couldn't afford for me to leave because I was a leader on the team. But they wanted me to give up my position as starting quarterback."

Lee, a multi-skilled player, agreed to do it…for one game. "That was my deal with them," Lee remembers. "I said I'm going to play wide receiver for you for one game just to show you that if I ever so chose to switch positions, I can handle it." But Lee told his coach after that one game, he was leaving.

The next week, CSU played University of Utah. "I had never played wide receiver before; never caught a football, never blocked anybody. What I had done all my life as a football player was throw a football. That was all I had done."

CSU lost that day, but it wasn’t because of Lee's performance or lack thereof. As wide receiver, he caught a touchdown, and played a fairly decent game.

The following Monday, steadfast to his word, Lee reported to his coaches’ office to turn in his things. Realizing that he was very serious about his leaving CSU for possibly another school or retiring from football altogether, Lee recalls that they were very upset, reiterating that they couldn't afford to lose him, that he would hurt the team.

They conceded, though, relenting rather than lose a key player, and CSU reinstated Lee’s position as starting quarterback, where he gave solid performances for the next two years.

One of his greatest moments of bittersweet triumph came on a day that CSU played their arch rival, the University of Wyoming. It was 1978. At that time, he had to regularly endure death threats, bomb threats, and almost daily harassment, since not everyone embraced the idea a Black quarterback playing at a predominantly white school.

“The game was at Wyoming, and we were headed out to the field to warm up,” he said. “When our team came out of tunnel, everyone in the stadium threw bananas and banana peels at me and made monkey noises and gestures. I’ll never forget it - the field was just littered with banana peels.

“I had to suck in my feelings. I had to fight back that intense anger and emotion I felt. I couldn’t very well beat up 65,000 people. But I knew I wanted to win that game bad.

“It was a good game. We were tough, they were tough. It came down to fourth quarter, 30 seconds left to go. We were down four or five points, and the clock was running. My roommate was the wide receiver. I called the team in a huddle, told him to go deep. I was going to throw, and for him to just catch it.

Lee says he took every ounce of anger, every bit of hurt and rage he felt, drew it back in his arm, and threw the ball as hard and as far as he could. “At that moment, I got knocked down, so I couldn’t see, but he caught that ball in the back of the end zone, scoring the game-winning touchdown for CSU,” he gleams. Lee’s team won 20-16.

“That was the first time that I can recall crying from joy. It shocked me at first, because I couldn’t figure out why I was crying,” says Lee. “But there was so much pent-up emotion inside me from what the entire crowd had done to me earlier, and this win was just overwhelming. I felt vindicated.”

Victorious, the team carried Keith back to the locker room on their shoulders. He stopped them though, near the tunnel, where he picked up a banana peel and threw it back into the stands.
The pigskin from that game sits in his office to this day.

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The irony of Keith Lee’s story is, many many years later, his eldest son Lamar, who was a high school All-State QB in Nevada, was flown in and offered a scholarship by Colorado State University. They realized that his father had played there many years before. In fact, some of Lee's CSU team mates were now CSU coaches. "He was very excited to go there," Lee said.

Upon his return from his recruitment trip, however, CSU called. "They told him that even though he was originally recruited to play QB, they now didn't want him in that position," he continues. "They offered him a spot as an athlete on the team, essentially without a position. They told him they'd call back the next evening for his decision."

Lamar didn't sleep a wink that night. While he was a little disappointed at not getting a QB position, he was still thrilled at the idea of going to his father’s alma mater, and anxiously anticipated CSU’s call. So he waited by the phone the entire next day.

And waited.

And waited.

At around 7 p.m., the phone rang. Finally, it was the call. But before Lamar could tell them that he would accept the position, they flatly told him, "We've changed our minds. We don't have a scholarship for you," and hung up. Lee was suddenly hit with the worst kind of deja vu, all over again.

Ironically and unbelievably, a couple weeks after delivering this shattering blow to the alumnus and his son, Lee received a letter from CSU. They were seeking a financial contribution.

About a year later, while Lee was working at the University of Nevada, he was invited to a football game. University of Nevada was playing Colorado State University, at CSU.

"When I went there," Lee begins, "I noticed that they had built a very nice memorial hall for CSU alumni football players. I went into the alumni center, looked on the wall for the years that I had played, and my picture was nowhere to be seen. The two white quarterbacks that were behind me were on the wall. I had worked incredibly hard and beat tremendous odds to win that starting QB position, but for my alma mater, it was as though I had never existed."

Ironically, neither of those two players ever made it to the pros. One came close, though, landing an assistant coach position for an NFL franchise.

Though terribly stung by the treatment of both he and his son, the elder Lee is not embittered, and believes all things work for the greater good. “You know, in God’s infinite wisdom,” he reflects, “when I was there, I really didn’t have a very good offensive line, so I had to use alot of my athletic abilities to get away from pass rushers. I had to run alot just to save my own behind. But what that did was really showcase my athletic abilities and skill, and in the process, someone in the pros realized I was a good athlete, and worth drafting. They thought they could make me a great defensive back. So I was drafted.”

Indeed in 1980, Lee was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the fifth out of 12 rounds as Defensive Back. In 1981, he became a free agent and was signed by the New England Patriots.

Among other lessons, Lee learned about nobility, professionalism and diplomacy from some of his NE team mates. The one he recalls most is Sam “Bam” Cunningham, a veteran player whom Lee looked up to when he was a kid and Cunningham played for USC.

“Sam “Bam” was the epitome of class and professionalism,” he recalls. “He was a role model to everyone on the team. “We all held him in very high regard.”

During the 1981 season, Cunningham lost a parent to a heart attack. Exactly one year later, the other parent died of the same affliction. Ron Myer, fresh out of college, was just named the Patriots new head coach, and the NFL and many of its rules was very new to him.

Cunningham had to go home to L.A. to take care of his family, which included his younger brother, now-retired Minnesota Vikings quarterback Randall Cunningham.

The Patriots had a game against Chicago the following Sunday. Sam “Bam” left Los Angeles Saturday, flew in to Chicago, played the game Sunday, and left immediately afterward to finish attending to his family affairs.

When he returned to New England a few days later, Coach Myer fined him in excess of three to five thousand dollars for leaving the team.

Lee commented that any other player may have flown off the handle in protest, and justifiably so, but not Cunningham. “He reached into his pocket, took out his checkbook, and wrote a check for the entire amount of his contract,” Lee remembers. “He handed it to the coach and said, ‘There is no price you can fine me for the lives of my parents. You can have everything I make, but you can’t buy my parents or their memory.’ That man was a class act.” Coach Myer rescinded that fine, and in that profound moment, Lee gained a whole new level of respect for his colleague.

Lee played Defensive Back with New England from 1981 till summer of 1985, when he was released, and picked up by Indianapolis.

Still actively pursuing his dream of being an NFL Quarterback, Lee had a strange turn of luck. After he was picked up by the team, the Colts lost one of their quarterbacks, and Lee picked up the spot. Finally his dream was realized. Lee recalls that the victory was hard fought, and worth it.

After playing in the NFL for six years, though, Lee realized just how much football was a business as much as it was a sport. The politics of the game weighed heavy on him. “It was more about dollars, draft choices, contract negotiations, signing bonuses. There was so much you had to go through before you could do what you came to do - play football, win games, and go to the Super Bowl. That taste of the reality soured my passion for pro football. I still loved the game, but I lost what was really necessary for me to exist in the NFL - a total passion for playing, and I’d lost it. I wasn’t as good an athlete playing out there with half a heart. So I retired from the NFL with the Colts in 1986.”

Upon retirement, Lee was offered three different coaching jobs - two professional and one college - all of which he turned down. “At that time,” he explains, “my taking such a job was not in the best interest of my family.” He turned down the coaching job with confidence, knowing that eventually another choice opportunity would present itself at a more opportune time.
Such an opportunity did arise, one better than he had hoped for. “I had the opportunity to kind of keep my hands in the sport, but at the same time, address the issues of the sport and also promote the benefit of the sport without actually playing.”

Lee says that while he was still playing for the Patriots, he read a book written by Dr. Richard Lapchick, the Executive Director of the National Consortium for Academics and Sports. The book, he says, changed his perception about some things. “I was fascinated by his history, by his insight, and by his lifelong commitment to racial harmony in the world of sports. He is one of the country’s leading civil rights activists, and was even back then. I was fascinated by his work and his mission in life, so right after I left pro football, I joined his staff at Northeastern University in Boston as an outreach coordinator.

Today, Lee is the Chief Operating Officer for the Consortium, whose headquarters is at the Sports Management Department at the University of Central Florida campus in Orlando. The Consortium’s mission is to create a better society by focusing on attaining education and using the power and appeal of sports to positively affect social change. The organization promotes the positives of sports, helps athletes complete their education, building positive role models for young people, and offering programs that help them off the fields of play.

Lee comments that he still loves the game, he just doesn’t like the business of football. “I never lost my passion for the game, I just lost the passion to play.”

But he hadn’t lost the passion to teach. The same year he left the NFL, Lee’s brainchild was born. He founded Athletic Career Enrichment (ACE), an organization that promotes youth sports development. Lee, along with his best friend and former team mate Roland Hooks, began facilitating youth football camps around the western United States. “We did football camps in non-traditional areas and small towns, places like Native American reservations in Moab, Utah; St. George, Utah; Temeculah, California; Snake Rive, Idaho; Anchorage, Alaska. These kids were so appreciative of our coming there to run football camps. It was fun for us, but also extremely rewarding, so we did those camps for 15 years,” said Lee.

When Lee moved to Orlando, former Patriot team mate and good friend Robert Weathers, convinced him to bring ACE’s concept and mission to the Central Florida area. The company was incorporated, camps are up and running, and Lee anticipates a fairly rapid growth. “Within the next five to seven years,” he states, “we will have the ACE Sports Academy built and fully functional. This facility will encompass all sports for all ages of children, including clinics and camps for professional hopefuls. Our goal is to teach not just the sport, but the focus, mental preparedness and other key skills and fundamentals that will carry them throughout life, on or off the playing field.”

For now though, ACE offers football camps, personal training, positional and speed training, professional workshops and seminars; and youth coach clinics.

Lee is chronicling much of his college and professional football experience in his autobiography, entitled And Another Thing, still in production.

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Rob Weathers’ first recollection of his football career drastically contrasts that of his counterpart and colleague. His story begins in 1976, when he was in ninth grade. He wanted to try out for his high school’s junior varsity team, but missed the team’s opening cut, as his family was moving from Tampa to Ft. Pierce. So he called the head coach and pleaded for a spot on the team. The coach granted his wish, and Rob became the starting running back for the Ft. Pierce Central High School football team. He was also on the school’s track team, breaking the school record for the 100 yard dash. But it was at that point that he was introduced wholeheartedly, gut-first into football. This dynamic and solidly-built speedster impressed his coaches with his skill and athletic ability.

“My sophomore year, Coach Phillip Farinella recommend that I play on the varsity team,” recalls Weathers. “We had some good running backs on the team, but I managed to get quite a few minutes on the field each game. By my junior year, I was seen as one of the top high school running backs in the state of Florida.”
Weathers faced some tough challenges, though, that would test him and make him question whether he loved the game as much as he thought.

“In my junior year, I fractured a vertebrae that almost left me a paraplegic,” he remembers. “So they wouldn’t let me play football at all that year. Senior year, while recovering completely from his back injury, he turned his attention back to the track team.

Miraculously, Rob played only three games in four years of high school, yet still managed to attain a full football scholarship to play football for Arizona State University. He said it was a very revealing time for him, and far different than his colleague Keith Lee.

Born and raised in Florida, and having dealt with various levels of intolerance, Weathers had some degree of expectation that Arizona State would be more tolerant or liberal in their mindset. When he arrived, though, he was in awe to see just how much. People of different races and ethnicities were intermingling and interacting in an environment where there was for the most part, racial harmony. “Where I was raised,” he states, “there were opportunities to do that, but it was understood that you were taking a big risk by doing so. So when I first saw people of different races freely interacting, holding hands, etc., I found myself a little scared, looking around for the angry mob to arrive with lit torches, but it didn’t happen.” He says when he would call home and tell his family about the level of tolerance, the racial harmony, and the open interaction, no one believed him.

Weathers recalls one of his proudest achievements was being one of the first freshman in the history of Arizona State to start as running back in the Garden State Bowl in East Rutherford, New Jersey against the University of Arizona. Much like his colleague Lee, Weathers remembers the excitement of his first nationally televised game, where all his family could watch. “That was a huge deal for me and my family back then,” he said.

After a productive tenure at Arizona State, Weathers was drafted in the second round by the New England Patriots in 1982, and thus began his rookie season in the NFL. That’s where he met Keith Lee.

“There is a hierarchy in pro football, and rookies are made clear right away where lines are drawn,” he begins. “In a nutshell, it was rookies versus the veteran players. The rookies would be asked to do things like sing the ‘fight’ song on demand, carry the veteran’s duffel bags or equipment, bring them food, you name it.” Weathers says he and Lee met when Lee cut in line in front of him at a team event. “I was mad, and I wanted to put a whoupin’ on him,” jokes Weathers, “but he had the support of a tough veteran staff, and as a rookie, there was nothing I could do. So I figured I’d be his worst nightmare on the football field during games and practices. I tried to stay on him, but whenever I’d try to get close, he’d be going the other way. He really was good.” The two eventually became friends, and have a friendship that has spanned two decades.

Both men have settled quite comfortably into their lifestyles after pro football. Weathers and his wife of 20 years, Denise, recently renewed their marriage vows and live in Orlando where she is Resource Development Manager for the National Urban League’s Orlando affiliate. His son Michael recently graduated from Bridgewater State with a degree in mass communications and media, and assists his dad at football camps. His 13-year-old daughter Milan attends middle school in the Central Florida area, where she is on the school’s step team.

Lee met his wife, the former Karetta Lash, in college at Colorado State. They married soon after she transferred to FIT in New York and he was drafted by the Buffalo Bills. They have three children, most of whom have inherited the sports gene from dad. Lamar, 21, is a defensive back for Arkansas State University. His second son O’Nell, 18, is also a sports lover, but is studying to be a mechanical engineer at the University of Central Florida. “My angel for a daughter Sable, is nine, and probably the best athlete in the family,” Lee comments. “She plays softball and basketball. This past year, she made the Oviedo Minor League Softball All-Stars,” beams the proud dad.

Lee, along with Weathers and his brother Clarence, are using their combined 75 years of experience as players, coaches, mentors and consultants to bring to the nation’s youth a well-rounded sports program. And they intend to do so until they retire, for through through triumph and defeat, they persevere...for the love of the game.