Heart of the Marleys Part 3

Heart of the Marleys BY MICHAEL MCKNIGHT

Like the college football success of his son and grandson, Bob Marley’s rise to prominence was extremely unlikely. He was a scrawny teenager from the hills, abandoned by his white dad and raised by his mom and Kingston’s streets. Rejected by Jamaican society because of his light skin and European nose, he lived through the worst kind of Third World poverty in a neighborhood called Trench Town because of its lack of plumbing. From this meager beginning, surrounded by violence and death and belly-bloating hunger, he wrote songs that reached every corner of the planet and changed it -- musically, spiritually, politically -- for the better. He helped make history as much as he witnessed it: playing amid tear gas at Zimbabwe’s independence celebration in 1980; attempting to unite the murderous political factions in Jamaica; getting shot as a result and then playing a free concert for 80,000 the next day, daring the gunmen to try again. In 1972 one of Bob’s many mistresses, Janet Hunt, gave birth to the son who would play college football, twice competing for national titles. For a 5' 8", 200-pound player to start as a D-I linebacker was a bit of a miracle -- especially on a team such as Miami’s, which from 1992 through ’94 had seven linebackers who would later play in the NFL. And for an undersized son of this undersized Hurricane to come along 20 years later and win co–freshman of the year honors in Conference USA was just as improbable. Nico was a playmaking, angle-eliminating linebacker at Cypress Bay High, a South Florida power, but he received little interest from colleges for the same reason his dad received only one D-I scholarship offer: At 5' 9" and 200 pounds he doesn’t fit the prevailing model at the position. “Watching [high school] film of Nico,” says -Tulane coach Curtis Johnson, “it was like going back in time 20 years. One of our assistants here, Keith Williams, played for me at San Diego State [from 1991 to ’93] back when we played Miami…Nico had the same fire as his dad, the jumping around, the energy. I said, ‘If this kid can play special teams the way he’s playing linebacker on this film, I’ll take him just to cover kicks and punts for us.’ ” A good many Tulane students have assumed that Nico has a closetful of sinsemilla in his dorm room, but according to junior safety Darion Monroe, “Nico might be the most straight-laced, most depend-able guy on the team.” He is calmer and quieter than his dad, who in early middle age is a slightly thicker version of the headhunter who led the Canes in tackles in 1993, with 19 more than a freshman All-America named Ray Lewis. But Nico has the same ferocity on the field. “Our first practice [in 2013], I thought, God, he’s shorter than I thought he was,” recalls Johnson, who won a national title as a Miami assistant in the 2001 season and Super Bowl XLIV as the receivers coach for the Saints. “The first couple of days in pads, he’s out there tackling everybody, just like his dad. In my mind he was just moving up the depth chart. After our first scrimmage, there was no question. I had to start him. “I was worried about him the first game, just the mental aspect of it, but then -- god, he was good. You would look at the stats: 10 tackles, 10 tackles. I mean, he lifted us.” www.ganolifevo.com/ganoforlifeusa