Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Fourth Down and 50: How One Night Almost Took Me from a Promising Football Career to 50-Years-to-Life
    Fourth Down and 50: How One Night Almost Took Me from a Promising Football Career to 50-Years-to-Life
    Fourth Down and 50: How One Night Almost Took Me from a Promising Football Career to 50-Years-to-Life
    Ebook60 pages1 hour

    Fourth Down and 50: How One Night Almost Took Me from a Promising Football Career to 50-Years-to-Life

    By James Leon "Jimmy" Wilson and Andrea Williams

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    From a murder charge to the San Diego Chargers—defensive back Jimmy Wilson spent more than two years in jail before he was acquitted of murder. In this motivational coming-of-age memoir, he shares the inspiring story of how faith in God and the love of his family helped him turn his life around and achieve his NFL dreams.

    Jimmy Wilson knew he shouldn’t have gone to his Aunt Opal’s house on the eve of his return to the University of Montana, where he was a star football player and preseason candidate for All-American. But when he learned her partner had badly beaten her, his primary concern was for the safety of her and her two young children.

    Growing up a biracial kid in the San Diego projects, Wilson was always fighting. Kids tested him, and he relied on his physical prowess. Tussling with his aunt’s abuser on the lawn of her home, trying to defend himself from the man’s gun, Wilson was in his element—until a shot accidentally rang out, changing the game. Wilson was labeled a murderer, and his football dreams all but faded.

    The next two years in jail opened his eyes to another world. When he was finally acquitted, he felt adrift back in his old neighborhood. But through his faith and the support of those who believed in him, Wilson made it back to Montana and eventually to the NFL. This is his uplifting story of growing from a boy to a man and how one bad decision that threatened to end his life became a catalyst for complete transformation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGallery Books/Karen Hunter Publishing
    Release dateAug 24, 2015
    ISBN9781476792293
    Fourth Down and 50: How One Night Almost Took Me from a Promising Football Career to 50-Years-to-Life
    Author

    James Leon "Jimmy" Wilson

    James Leon “Jimmy” Wilson is a cornerback and safety for the San Diego Chargers, his hometown team. He played college football at the University of Montana before the Miami Dolphins selected him with their final pick in the 2011 NFL draft. He and his wife Alexandria have two children.

    Related to Fourth Down and 50

    Related ebooks

    Biography & Memoir For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Wolves of Karelia

      Jul 19, 2019

      Wolves of Karelia
      19 min read

    • Article

      The Defiant One

      Jun 17, 2021

      The Defiant One
      13 min read

    • Article

      Take Nothing For Granted

      Feb 2, 2022

      Take Nothing For Granted
      2 min read

    • Article

      Actions Speak Loudest

      Feb 13, 2023

      Actions Speak Loudest
      2 min read

    • Article

      The World Is Not Enough

      Mar 10, 2021

      The World Is Not Enough
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Lineup

      Apr 6, 2022

      QUESTION: HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE SURF CULTURE? To me, surf culture as a whole has been swallowed, digested, recycled, and upchucked into the mainstream ether many times, but if you look close enough, you can find epic pockets of real surf culture. Cert

      2 min read

    • Article

      Reefer Rant

      Apr 7, 2020

      Reefer Rant
      4 min read

    • Article

      Win Lose or Draw

      Oct 21, 2021

      Win Lose or Draw
      5 min read

    • Article

      Go Legend

      Aug 11, 2020

      Go Legend
      9 min read

    • Article

      The End Of Fights

      Mar 17, 2022

      The End Of Fights
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Eb-66 Destroyer

      Nov 8, 2022

      The Eb-66 Destroyer
      2 min read

    • Article

      From The Desk Of …

      Aug 5, 2021

      IF OUR ANNUAL Readers’ Poll is any indication, a vast majority of wrestling fans have yet to witness a live grappling event since the onset of the pandemic. Until recently, I counted myself among them. On March 8, 2020, I attended WWE’s Elimination C

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Hammer Interview

      Jan 4, 2024

      The Hammer Interview
      9 min read

    • Article

      Getting Over The Gold Buckle Hump

      Nov 18, 2022

      Getting Over The Gold Buckle Hump
      3 min read

    • Article

      Charles Shay

      Oct 28, 2021

      Charles Shay
      2 min read

    • Article

      Olympic Observations

      Nov 23, 2021

      The 2020 Olympiad, held in 2021 because of COVID-19, marked the debut of the third martial art in the Games. (We know — boxing, wrestling, shooting, fencing and so on are also martial arts, but we’re limiting this discussion to sports derived from As

      11 min read

    • Article

      Brave New World?

      Jun 1, 2021

      Brave New World?
      3 min read

    • Article

      My, My! How Napoleon Bonaparte Is Still Influencing Pop Culture 200 Years After His Death

      May 5, 2021

      Jack Nicholson, who paid £250,000 in 1984 for the rights to a film about Napoleon, mused back then about the English obsession with France’s famous emperor. “Napoleon was a man who conquered the world twice and then became a symbol of the devil – tha

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Farewell To Kings

      May 27, 2022

      A Farewell To Kings
      18 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Fourth Down and 50

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Fourth Down and 50 - James Leon "Jimmy" Wilson

      Prologue

      The nightmares rocked me daily for six months straight. Every night, without fail, the lights would go off and my cell would go black, and as the snores of my cellmates lifted from their beds, my own sleep would be tortured. Kevin, my aunt Opal’s boyfriend, haunted me in my dreams. Sometimes he would just stare at me, snickering and threatening me, daring me to come after him again. But mostly we fought—over and over and over again. For a hundred and eighty days, it seemed like the fight would never end.

      One

      I’ve been fighting all my life, really. I grew up in San Diego, California, in Section 8 housing, and there were always so many kids. By the time I walked outside at eight in the morning, there would already be thirty of us running around and playing, trying to stay as happy and entertained as possible in the midst of poverty and government assistance. Eventually, we’d break up into teams and play football or basketball, and we’d have fun for a while, but a fight would always break out at some point. Some kid would end up with a bloody lip or a black eye. Somebody else would have their arms and legs scraped up from being pushed down on the hard concrete. But those fights never signaled a permanent break to our activities. No one ever went home to nurse their wounds and refused to come back outside to play the next morning. For me and the kids I grew up with, fighting was just a part of life. It was just what we did—even with friends and people we cared about. Then, if some kids from another neighborhood came around, we’d have to beat them up, too. It was just the customary thing to do.

      Part of the reason we threw punches, wrestled, and slap boxed at will is that there was no one there to regulate. There were no adults breaking up fights, and there were definitely no police called. Nowadays, kids can’t fight like that. There’s always somebody filming with their iPhone camera and posting it on the Internet, getting some thirteen-year-old locked up for assault. But when I grew up, parents were the closest thing to smartphones, and if they didn’t see something go down, it was like it never even happened. And for those of us (most of us) who were being raised by single moms struggling to make ends meet, busted lips and head lumps were of little concern anyway. There was just always something more important for the adults to worry about. So we fought. And if we got beat up, we took our beating and the ridiculing that came with it.

      I didn’t get laughed at much, though, because I didn’t get beat up. I was doing the beating. My uncles and cousins were in and out of jail, but when they were around they wanted me to be tough, so they started teaching me to jab and hook when I was just two years old. The thing is, growing up as a biracial kid with a white mom and a black dad who was always locked up meant that I actually needed the training. Kids were constantly testing me, so I had to scrap to maintain my own reputation and keep up my self-­confidence.

      A lot of mixed kids who are raised by white parents grow up with an identity crisis and don’t know whether they want to be white or black. I never had that problem. My mom and everybody else in my family always told me that I was a black man and that I’d be treated as a black man, so I should act as such. I knew I couldn’t do the same things that the white kids did because I’d get in more trouble. I knew the police would still see me as a black man and treat me like a black man.

      But even though I always knew I was black, there were other black kids in my neighborhood and at school who saw me as a white boy. Those California kids didn’t think I was as black as they were, despite the fact that most of my family is from Albany, Georgia—deep in the country. I knew we were blacker than the families of most of the kids teasing me, but I had to fight to prove that. Meanwhile, for everybody else including the white kids I went to school with, the one-drop rule definitely applied. I was 100 percent black in their eyes, and that alone was reason for them to want to fight me, too.

      As I moved into high school

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1