Peppers doesn’t forget roots or his ‘root people’

During his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech Saturday, Julius Peppers made sure to thank his family members and his “root people” — the ones who are rooted in your tree of life, unlike a leaf or a branch.

Besides his best friend and agent Carl Carey, Peppers, the first Carolina Panthers draft pick to be enshrined, mentioned someone else there Saturday afternoon in Canton, Ohio, as another root person in his life — former Southern Nash High football coach Brian Foster.

As the camera quickly found Foster sitting in the audience, Peppers related how Foster, who was a young Firebirds assistant coach not long out of Lenoir-Rhyne College, would sometimes give him rides home from practice when his mom couldn’t make it.

“Sometimes he would give me insight on what it would take to play sports on the collegiate level,” Peppers recalled. “One day after a bad practice, he told me that I would (have) two choices in life: I could be complacent and waste my talents or I could work harder and one day make it to the Hall of Fame. There would be no in-betweens, he said, and it turns out he was right — because I’m here.”

Peppers then gave his former coach the biggest shout-out on the ultimate stage.

“And everything we talked about came true, Foster, so I want to thank you for your guidance, your friendship and your foresight,” he said. “You guys are our family, too, so thank y’all!”

I can imagine that a lot of memories and emotions coursed through Brian Foster sitting there on a summer afternoon in Canton, Ohio. Thousands of high school coaches have coached millions of kids in this country, and very few of them have ever gotten to attend one of their former players’ NFL hall-of-fame ceremonies.

Julius Peppers wasn’t the first or the last Firebird to get Foster’s words of wisdom, just the most famous. Foster spent his entire 31-year coaching career at Southern Nash, which is unheard of these days, and 23 of those years as head coach. It took him seven years just to have a winning season, but once the Firebirds started winning under Foster, they haven’t stopped — even three years after he retired.

But the success on the field was never Brian Foster’s main goal as a coach. It was always about trying show love to his players so they would be prepared, be thankful and love one another. The fact that one of those kids who got lessons they probably didn’t want to hear at times from Foster ended up talking about him at his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction is no less remarkable than the thousands of others who got the same message from Foster.

Southern Nash had sporadic gridiron success since it opened its doors in 1967. There were runs of three or four years with winning records and a couple of spikes of deep playoff runs. Even Peppers’ presence on the roster didn’t exactly make Southern Nash a powerhouse team, and Foster struggled for more than seven years to achieve a win-loss record above .500.

It just took faith — and that’s the crazy thing about faith: even when you have a lot of it, it’s still not enough. But when other people start to believe in you and share that faith, mountains start to move.

Foster’s assistant coaches, most of them former players, bought in. The players bought in and the parents bought in, and pretty soon, the whole school adopted “All In” as its credo.

Julius Peppers was a star athlete the first time he ever tried out for anything. He was blessed with physical gifts that most humans can only dream of. It didn’t take much for Foster and Peppers’ other coaches at Southern Nash to see that greatness in him. But Peppers still needed someone to believe in him and make him push himself to be as good as he possibly could at that time in his life. To go all-in on himself and never accept anything less.

That mindset worked out pretty good for Peppers, merely one of the greatest defensive ends in the history of the NFL. The gold blazer emblematic of a super elite fraternity is the highest of many career honors that Peppers has received since retirement in 2018.

Peppers should probably expect to get one more induction invitation when Southern Nash holds its first and long overdue inaugural hall-of-fame banquet next spring. In fact, Peppers and Foster both should expect that invitation.

Paul Durham is sports editor of The Wilson Times, a sister publication of The Enterprise. Reach him at 252-265-7808 and paul@wilsontimes.com .

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