Rookie Diary #15: Adibi Signs Contract
by TechSideline.com, 7/23/04
The contract worked out good. We were trying to get a $125,000 signing bonus, so we got real close to that. A three-year deal is always great. All in all, I had an increase in salary from last year, and the money’s good. I’m happy with what I do have, and I didn’t really want to press for more. I may buy the condo that I’m renting, because the area is nice. I may just do that and wait a few years until my second deal comes around before I build something really nice. I’ve been trying to come up with different things to do for my taxes, so I can put my money to good use so I won’t have to give everything to Uncle Sam. And I’m working on different options and different plans so I can use my money to benefit the area I’ll be living in. I plan to do something in Hampton, and maybe Richmond, and definitely the Pittsburgh area. So Hampton and Richmond definitely. I’m not really sure yet what I’m going to do in the way of charity organizations. Nothing big has really ever happened to me and my family that would really inspire me, like I don’t know anybody that’s been killed by a drunk driver, that might make me want to support Mothers Against Drunk Driving, for example. Maybe I’ll help out a couple of organizations, or some smaller organizations that need to build themselves up. I have continued working out at Velocity in Richmond. Last week, Ernest Wilford came down and worked out with me. This past Sunday, we had something at Velocity where me and Ernest set up drills for some kids, basically drills we learned at Virginia Tech. We set different drills up and let them do them, plus some open-field tackling drills, some one-on-one. But we had the kids do two-hand touch instead of tackling to the ground. We talked to them about the importance of following directions, listening to coaches, that kind of thing. These kids were mostly 12 or 13. These are kids that work out there, that pay money to work out at Velocity. Different age groups work out there. They have young kids all the way up to college kids that work out there. So the kids came, and some of the people who work there, their kids came. Some of the kids who were there knew who Ernest and I were, and some of them didn’t. To me, being an older brother [to Xavier], I always tried to set a good example for him. I tried to always keep my nose clean, just to let him know that he shouldn’t get in trouble. You can’t be successful and be a bad person. So, things like … I never smoked – I hate that. I’ve never done it before, and I’ve never had reasons to do it. I was around it a lot, but I’ve never been tempted to do it. And when I talk about smoking, I’m talking about marijuana. I never did nothing serious as far as getting in trouble. I did some stupid stuff when I was young, though. One time my brother was sick, when I was in third or fourth grade, my mother asked me to get him a glass of water. I wanted his water to be cleaner, so I put some dishwashing liquid in it. He started throwing up, and my mom tasted the water, and she got into me real good! The same guy who hooked me up with the Carmelo Anthony thing a few weeks back asked me if I wanted to go up to DC. They were shooting a commercial up in DC with Kevin Jones, Laveranues Coles, LaVar Arrington, and Clinton Portis. They were shooting a car dealership commercial at Gonzaga High School. They were in the car, singing the car dealership jingle. They were in the car, like lip-synching the song. To be honest, I don’t know how it’s going to come out on the commercial! We had to wait for some stuff to come in, some jerseys or something like that, so it took a couple of hours, from about twelve o’clock to about two o’clock. It was tight meeting some other players, and after that, Clinton Portis had a cookout at his house. There were some media people from Richmond who found out I was at Velocity, and they wanted to come by and interview me and do a story on me working out at Velocity. One of the news guys asked me, “What do you think about Marcus getting in trouble again over the weekend?” I was like, “What?” I didn’t even know about it, and that’s how I found out about it. It’s bad that he got in trouble again, because he’s always in the spotlight, you know. All he has to do is keep his nose clean, and pretty much he has his ticket already for the NFL. Marcus is a great person. He’s cool to be around with, you go to his place and chill, whatever. Even Mike Hinton was cool to be around with. He just kept making mistakes and getting into trouble. All those people you hear about getting in trouble, they’re not bad people, they just make bad mistakes. When I was at Tech, my biggest thing was that I didn’t want anything to happen where my parents were going to find out anything about it. Like being caught drinking and driving, and having it be on the news, and having my parents hear about it on the news and my family hear about it on the news. For me, it was more not wanting to disgrace my name with anything. In one sense, you have to know when to say when to a player, but then again, you have to give a player a chance. Everybody deserves second and third chances sometimes. Everybody’s made mistakes in the past, and some people’s mistakes are worse than others. You’ve got people who want to see him gone, but if he transfers to another Division 1 school and does well, some of those same people will be wondering why Coach Beamer didn’t give him another chance. It’s a tough situation. I’m not staying with Kevin Lewis in Richmond anymore. He’s gone back to Virginia Tech. I’m staying with [former Hokie player] Franklin Bowser now. He works construction here. I think he’s a supervisor, so he’s doing good for himself. He did all four years of eligibility at Tech, and he got his engineering degree. I think it’s a Civil Engineering degree [Editor’s Note: Bowser was enrolled in Building Construction in 1999]. I played with him one or two years at Virginia Tech, so I kept in touch with him, hollered at him every once in a while, and when he heard I was in Richmond, he said I could come live with him if I needed to. Training camp starts on the 30th. During training camp, we’re going to be at Saint Vincent College up in Latrobe. We’ve got four preseason games, and the first one is against Detroit. Then our first home game of the regular season is against Oakland, so there’s Jake Grove right there. Jake told me he’s going to cheap shot me, and I said, all right, we’ll both get kicked out of our first NFL game together. Jake’s all right -- I went to his wedding in Blacksburg about two weeks ago. I don’t really know what to expect, with it being my first training camp, so I’m a little anxious, but not too much. It’ll be good to get back into everything, get my plays back to where I was in the end of my summer sessions. I’ll be heading up to Pittsburgh on the 29th. I’m going back to Hampton next weekend, but then it’s off to Pittsburgh. I’m going to play in a charity golf tournament this weekend that Ben Wallace is putting together. Hopefully, I’ll hit the ball straight a little, and when I hit it with a wedge, it’ll go up in the air instead of straight along the ground. I can drive pretty well, except the ball goes off to the right every time. Every single time. I won’t hurt myself like Jim Davis did, but I can’t promise I’m not going to hurt anybody else!
Rookie Diary #14: Adibi Working Out in Richmond,
6/25/04
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