Barry Word, Now Getting 2nd Chance, Trying to Be a Saint

NEW ORLEANS —  The jail sentence for a cocaine conspiracy is something Barry Word can overcome. The pain he caused his dying father is something he’ll live with forever.

“The last thing he said to me before he died was, ‘It’s a shame. You worked so hard, and now you’re not going to get a chance.’ After that, he didn’t make any more sense, and he died,” Word said.

Word, 22, is getting another chance, although it’s coming too late to let his father die happy.

He signed a three-year contract with the New Orleans Saints a couple of weeks ago, and he’ll be back in football gear later this month for the first time in a year, taking part in a Saints mini-camp, trying to resume a career interrupted by 4 1/2-months in jail.

“That’s one of the things you don’t realize at the time. It’s not just you. It hurts so many people,” Word said in an interview after a press conference to announce his signing.

Word’s father was diabetic and lost his legs to the disease before Word was born. “He could do anything any other man could do, except walk,” Word said. “He supported his family. I learned a lot from him.”

Word rushed for 1,224 yards in 1986, his senior season at the University of Virginia, averaging 5.9 yards a carry. In February of last year, he was one of over 50 athletes at a scouting combine session who tested positive for banned substances--in his case, marijuana.

The Saints drafted him in the third round, and he took part in a mini-camp last spring. Then the team learned he was involved in a drug investigation and said it wanted no more to do with him, although his rights were retained.

He was indicted for “conspiracy to distribute less than a kilogram of cocaine.”

“It involved my carrying about two ounces of cocaine from one guy to another,” Word said.

He used cocaine over a three-month period and never very much--a maximum of about two grams split eight ways in a social setting, he said. Always in a group and never with a view toward making a profit.

He knew it was wrong, but everyone was doing it, he said.

“Two years after I stopped using it, I got indicted. It came back to haunt me,” he said.

His first three weeks were spent in a county jail. “My cell was about seven feet by four feet. My bed was iron. We’re talking 1930s, now, a mattress about this thick,” he said, measuring about a half-inch with his fingers.

“They put me with a guy who was in for murder. It was a lockdown situation all the way,” he said. “I was in with a guy up for murder, and we were the same. We both broke the law.”

His cellmate told him two men jumped him, and he killed one of them by cutting off his testacles, Word said.

Toilets were always backed up, so the stench was awful, he said. If one had any appetite, the food was barely edible, he said.

“I never thought about what prison would be like,” he said. “There were a lot of people in there who were like I was--just made one mistake and got caught--regular citizens.”

Others were career criminals, he said, and they resented it when he was made a trusty after only two weeks. That gave him some duties that took him outside of his cell.

“There was a lot of prejudice there. There was one other black guy there,” he said.

“They did not appreciate this football player with a college education coming in and giving them Kool-aid,” he said.

He heard the worst of racial eptithets, including being called a monkey.

“Here was this guy with a couple of teeth missing, probably been on welfare all of his life, and I’m a monkey. That one really made me mad,” he said.

But fighting would mean he’d have to spend more time in jail, so he stifled his normal impulses.

He was later transferred to a minimum security prison, and conditions got better. It was a boot camp atmosphere there, he said, strictly regimented, still locked away from friends and family, still no fun at all.

“I worked out with the weights a lot, probably too much. That was my outlet. I’d lift until I was exhausted and then go to bed,” he said.

A desire to be “one of the guys” was a prime reason for his drug involvement, he said.

Marijuana was easy to get as early as his junior high school years, he said, but he turned it down until his third year in high school. Eventually, he tried it and liked it.

“That was my drug of choice, and I liked it. I won’t lie about it. I liked it, or I wouldn’t have done it. But it was illegal,” he said.

It was pretty much the same pattern with cocaine at Virginia, he said. It was so prevalent that almost anyone on campus could get cocaine within 15 minutes.

“There were so many people, and they were all doing so much. And this was your average student,” he said.

“I was picked out of all of these people. It let me know it can happen to anyone,” he said.

After about three months, he decided he didn’t like the cocaine high and disliked the after-effects even more, he said.

He quit using it, but not before committing the offense that sent him to jail.

“Two of my friends dealt drugs --not great friends, not people I saw every day. One of them wanted to meet the other guy,” he said. He got caught taking about two ounces of cocaine from one to the other, he said.

“The way I looked at it, these guys were drug dealers, and I wasn’t,” he said.

“Let me tell you, it doesn’t make any difference whether I did it one time or a million times. I did it, and it was illegal, and I got caught,” he said.

“The guy who got me in trouble didn’t do any time. The guy that got all of us in trouble didn’t do any time at all,” he said.

That friend, whom he refused to identify, called and invited his circle to dinner.

“He told us he was going to be called before a grand jury, and he wanted us all to have the same story,” he said. “We told him that was no problem, because we are all in it.”

Each of them related his part in distributing cocaine.

“Little did we know, he was wired,” he said. The conversations were recorded. His friend was cooperating with investigators in hopes of getting a lighter sentence.

“Right. My pal,” Word said.

The drug informant was put on probation. Word, who admitted his role as soon as authorities called him before the grand jury, was sentenced to six months in jail.

Drug testing may be an effective deterrent for athletes, he said. But every youngster has to learn to resist the urge to get along by going along, he said.

“I’d tell them, ‘Beware of people who want to be your friends,’ ” he said.