Chuck Smith finds life beyond football through family and mentoring the sport's youth
Former Atlanta Falcons’ defensive end Chuck Smith could feel the tide was in his favor. He was leading 10-8.
It was time to add to his win total. Smith drove to the basket, but he never made it, at least with the authority he had envisioned. His hamstring began searing with pain.
As Smith assessed the damage, a similarly built, but slightly more hulking figure spewed smack talk. Despite trailing his father before the injury, Smith’s oldest son, Chuck Smith IV, claims victory and the title of best basketball player in the house in the months that have passed.
“I am the best hooper in this house,” Smith IV said.
The same competitive flame that burned inside the older Chuck Smith as an NFL player has been inherited by Chuck IV.
Smith’s blue-collar, workman like and intense personality was bread into him early on. His family always placed an importance of working hard. His mother worked many different jobs and his father worked 12-hour shifts four days a week to afford the family’s middle class lifestyle. That was the culture in Athens, GA.
“My dad would work 12-hour shifts for four straight days then have a couple days off,” Smith said. “My mom did everything she could. She had all kinds of odd jobs to help us meet where we were. We lived a middle class life. My parents jobs weren’t necessarily middle class, they just worked extra hard."
Chuck IV, as well as younger brother Maddox have been bitten by the family bug. Both young men have a love for football. Chuck IV plays defensive end, like his father and wears the number 90 like his father. Maddox is a wide receiver.
A senior at North Gwinnett High School, Chuck IV is committed to Wofford College to play football. Maddox is only a freshman in high school and has only been playing the sport for a few years.
Neither of Chuck’s sons is old enough to have watched their father play live in his nine-year NFL career. Chuck IV admits there are bits and pieces of footage he has seen of his father has been a little like looking in a mirror and a bit inspirational.
“I thought he was tough and he was ready to get down and dirty,” Chuck IV said. “I saw video of him going against Willie Roaf where he scores a touchdown and he punches him in the nose. That’s something that I saw and I was like ‘wow, I’ve got to add that to my game’. You just see how competitive he was and how tough he was and that inspires me to be just as competitive and tough.”
There are legitimate comparisons between father and son defensive ends. Both stand 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed about 245 pounds in high school. The toughness is shared as is the ability to find the opposing team’s quarterback.
The differences come in the personalities. Chuck IV has the fun-loving side that his father didn't show much of on the field as a player. In support of his high school's basketball team, Chuck IV sported a crop top and shades in their most recent playoff game.
“We’re kind of around the same size,” Smith said. “We both have toughness, we work hard and we have fun. He’s more fun than I was. I wasn’t a fun guy when I was on the field. He’s a nice guy off the field. I kind of lived it all the time. It’s different today.”
Similarities aside, Chuck IV has always looked to carve his own legacy. Wearing the number 90 isn’t supposed to act as a tribute to his father. The number is familiar and he feels it looks good on him.
“Yeah, he’s my dad, but I’m 90 too,” Chuck IV said. “Growing up, he (my father) always taught me that actions speak louder than words. People say ‘oh you’re Chuck Smith’s son’. Yeah, but I’m still going to end up with three sacks at the end of the game. It doesn’t really faze me. I just go out, do me and ball out.”
Smith never felt the need to push either of his sons toward football. His focus has always been their development as men.
Once football is over, Smith and his wife Mynique want their sons to be able to navigate their way through life. Smith has been one of the lucky NFL players that found their way following his playing career in the business world.
“He’s has been a great example of a hard-working dad,” Mynique said. “Life after football can be a challenge for a lot of guys. My husband has handled it really well and just made a name for himself. He still does what he loves. He eats, sleeps and breathes football to this day... It’s so important for them to see their dad. They didn’t see him play when he was a player. They’ve only seen him as dad the hard worker. I think it’s important that kids see all of it. That’s really life. The good, bad and the ugly, it's all part of it.”
After Smith’s playing career ended he found second career and third careers in the media world and as a pass rushing trainer and defensive line coach at the University of Tennessee.
It didn’t happen overnight, but he got a head start on his life post football by beginning to look into things that interested him outside of football while he was still active.
Smith took internships at Atlanta radio stations, he worked at CNN, on the Nancy Grace Show, before hosting two shows on WVEE or V-103 in Atlanta once he retired.
The culture of the 1980s inspired Chuck’s love for media. In his high school days Smith was a proud DJ.
“I’m a DJ,” Smith said. “I’ve got technique 1200s downstairs right now with about 6,000 records. The era I grew up in, you were a DJ, a rapper or a breakdancer. I was the DJ. I was always into radio... I grew up in a culture in the 80s where it was like we were B-boys. I wore the Adidas. Looking at media and all those people and as the culture started changing with, Geraldo Rivera and Oprah. We were captivated, because at the time there wasn’t a lot of TV options.”
Making the transition from athlete to media personality forced Smith to look at the world differently. It was the first time he experienced people’s negative reactions to his opinions, but it also opened the world’s eye to Chuck Smith the person rather than the football player.
“When you’re playing football people don’t really know you, they just see what they see,” Smith said. “Now my life was in the public eye. People started seeing your good, your bad and the things that needed work. That was hard for a lot of people. ‘Hey man that’s my idol and you was on there talking bad about the Ying Yang Twins’.”
It took some time, but he eventually began learning to navigate the two very different perceptions that were portrayed by his two very different career paths.
“When you’re football and you say things, I’m just shaping the football player,” Smith said. “They know Chuck Smith, he goes hard, he’s physical and he does this and that. I was all about me. When I got done I was married, I had kids and a family so it was like I was a regular dude. As a football player it’s like another world. It’s a scripted world. When you make money it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks if you’ve got your stuff together.”
Smith taps into his remaining avid love for football as a trainer at his own camp that focuses on teaching young players the art of pass rushing.
In addition to the young pass rushers that come to him, he also works with around 30 NFL players a month. According to his website, he's trained a total of 517 NFL players at the camp.
Usually his relationships with players remains strictly instructor and pupil. But as players progress out of college and into the league Smith has developed a few relationships in which he acts as the big brother or 'uncle' figure for players that initiate asking questions about dealing with things outside of football.
Chuck IV and Maddox have followed their father’s example in developing their long list of interests away from the playing fields.
Maddox is an avid video gamer and Chuck IV has a skill for chess, marketing, editing videos and editing music.
Neither of the Smith brothers need football. They love it. As numbers around the nation for participants in high school football drop, the Smith's jostle with the reality of why parents have become more hesitant to champion their sons playing the sport.
The elephant that sits constantly in the corner of the room is the discovery of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or "CTE".
Though they haven’t had conversations about CTR with their sons, Smith and Mynique feel their oldest son is aware of the dangers and consequences of the game, while the younger of their sons, may not have a grasp of the full picture yet.
In fact, the struggles that come along with having played the sport for nine years at the professional level are a reality in Smiths' lives.
“I’ve had some times where you’re in a certain state where you just do things differently,” Smith said. “I’m not the same person I was when we first got married when it comes to remembering stuff. It’s words. I’ll forget stuff and (struggle with) how to describe things and she’ll (Mynique) have to remind me of what they are. I’ve gone through the same things... I’m different now, I’m not depressed and I don’t have anger management issues, but I had to get personal help like a lot of guys do.”
The former Falcon has seen the struggles of his friends and former teammates as well.
“Almost every player I’ve known has had some form of depression,” Smith said. “It shows up in anger management. It shows up in being able to socialize and be around other people.”
Having his family close and being able to get help has shifted things for the better. Watching the workings of the league from afar has him and wife Mynique wondering what can be done for players and former players who haven’t had the type of support Smith has had.
One of the barriers dividing former players is masculinity. The fraternity that is the NFL is a list of names that have done the same things, but there hasn’t been unity among the young and old when it comes to sharing knowledge and relating with one another.
Players aren’t reaching out to one another and having conversations about the things they deal with because they’ve been conditioned to keep their personal lives out of sight of their male friends.
Mynique believes if former players confided in each other more often the road to healing would and the willingness to seek help would come sooner.
“It’s harder for men just in general to open to other men about personal things that they’ve been dealing with because society has put it on it not being manly or it’s embarrassing or you always want to come across as you’ve got your stuff together or that you’re hard all the time,” Mynique said. “A lot of them have a problem saying to someone who is a good friend, ‘man, I don’t know what I’m going through, something isn’t right’. Girls, we do that all the time. I can call a girlfriend and go vent. Men don’t have that same open line of communication because it’s not a manly thing.”
There aren't many answers for current or retired players by way of programs that educate and connect players dealing with depression or things linked to brain trauma after retirement.
Smith only hopes that change will come in the form of having players exposed to the older generation of players who have dealt with depression.
"Bring in the real dudes," Smith said. "Stop bringing in the dudes that's on NFL Network and on CBS. They don't get to see the cat that's struggling and in it right then. It would be great for him to go and get that out. It's unfortunate."
Today, Smith is the person he wants to be. His family has been key in guiding him to where he is today. Family is important to the Smiths and in the years to come, they hope the same rings true for newly retired NFL players coming out into the real world.
"A lot of them don't know what to do to make it out of it and come through," Mynique said. "They'll be in it for a long time. If you have a strong family around you, they can be there to point it out to you. Even though you may know, just to help you get out of it is important. Family has your back. They care about you. They want to see you get through it... There are a lot of things that go along with it and I definitely think we went through a lot of those and have been able to weather the storm just based on how important family is."
