He arrives in New England with trumpets blowing.
He arrives here with his catchy name, and his showy game, arrives here with a personality as big as his talent.
He also arrives here with a certain reputation, one of those stars-in-his-own-movie types, the kind of guy who fans love and coaches seem to grow weary of, whether it was his gold Mohawk haircut, his gold tooth, his nude photo shoot for a magazine, or just about anything else to call attention to himself. He’s already said he’s looking for a fan to perhaps live with this year.
But who is Chad Ochocinco anyway?
Not that we’re probably going to find that out in news conferences that come with playing for the Patriots, where information is usually treated as state secrets.
So we turn to his book for answers.
It’s called “Ochocinco,” the name he gave himself in 2008 because it means “eight five” in Spanish, though his real name was Johnson. It’s subtitled “What Football and Life Have Thrown My Way.” It came out in 2009, and it’s all there: the lack of a father, the mother who essentially abandoned him, the grim ghetto reality of Liberty City in Miami, the journey through an education system that no longer works, football as a life raft, and finally the riches and celebrity of the NFL, the sports version of winning the lottery.
Is it any wonder he says, “I got six paintings of myself in the living room of my town house in Cincinnati. Why? Because I love me. I’m great and I know it.”
Then there are the cars.
But let’s have him describe them, as if you were pulling up in front of his house in a gated community in Plantation, Fla.
“Parked in front are seven sweet-a”¦ cars. One for every day of the week. I don’t like to get bored, you know? There’s the Rolls Royce for chillin.’ There’s the Hummer. The Dodge 4-x-4 Ram pickup. Nice dubs on that. Then there’s the 1971 drop-top Caprice with the rims, the nice paint job, and an interior better than the day they brought it off the assembly line. Same goes for the 1973 Impala. That’s a convertible, too. Hey, man, this is Florida.
“Then there’s the convertible Lamborghini. It’s kind of a Cincinnati Bengals orange. Man, who says I don’t believe in the team? Finally, there’s the Mercedes SLR McLaren. Mercedes makes 500 of these a year and it goes for a cool $500,000. That baby goes 0 to 60 in 3.6 seconds, which is only slightly quicker than me, and hits 208 mph, which is only a little faster than me.
“Then again, most cornerbacks think I’m faster than that.”
This sound like the Patriot way to you?
If nothing else, though, Ochocinco is a survivor.
“If I hadn’t made it in football, I would have done what I had to do,” he writes. “Whatever I had to do to get the things I like”¦.Yeah, if that means sell drugs, I would have done that”¦. In my hood to get the things I wanted, that meant selling drugs, and back then I would have done that.”
All this by page three of the book.
There’s no question Ochocinco’s story has little do to with education, as if school were just some other linebacker to evade. He admits that if he knew then what he knows now he would have cared more about school, that he wouldn’t have had to spend three years in junior college, which ultimately delayed his NFL debut.
“The only school that would touch me for one year was Oregon State and coach Dennis Erickson,” he writes. “He didn’t care, he just said come play up here, do your thing ”¦ I just played football and that was it. I think I went to class the first week and then I was done.”
Wonder how the NCAA feels about that quote.
Yet he says he’s never done drugs, never was into the street life as a kid, even if it was all around him, and credits his grandmother for all that.
He also says, and this was back in 2009 mind you, that Pats coach Bill Belichick always liked to talk a little trash with him, which he always liked.
“There are a lot of coaches I have love for,” he writes. “Belichick is the best ”¦ He knows the game and the players can see that.”
And in the end, what comes through after 161 pages of Ochocinco trying to explain himself?
“You see, the funniest part is that people think I’m so bad, but do you see one arrest on me since I got to the NFL? Do you see me getting suspended for using drugs or steroids? Do you see anything about me beating up my girlfriends or some other guys. No, none of that. Still, people think I’m this bad guy because I do celebrations and talk trash and am flamboyant. Look, I’m working hard, I’m having fun, and nobody is going to stop me from having fun.”
Or as he also writes, “People want to be entertained, but the minute you open up and have some fun, they bash you for it. They want you to play inside this little box, and if you ever dare step outside this little box you’re in trouble. Well, there is no box for me. I am completely out of the box.”
But will the act play in Foxboro?
We’ll see.
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