Brooks, Derrick 1973–

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Derrick Brooks 1973–

Professional football player

Derrick Brooks is best known as the powerful and fast linebacker that helped the Tampa Bay Buccaneers win their first Super Bowl in 2002. He has won awards for his play on the field including defensive MVP awards and numerous Pro-Bowl appearances. Yet Brooks is also known off the field for his work in the Tampa Bay community. With his Brooks Bunch, a group of inner-city children with whom he works with through the Ybor City Boys and Girls club, Brooks is teaching children the value of education as well as showing them the opportunities and wonders that the world has to offer. Brooks and the Brooks Bunch have traveled everywhere from the Grand Canyon to South Africa, and Brooks’ focus is always on teaching the children about history and the different cultures that they encounter. Many people wonder how Brooks can show so much energy and commitment on the football field and still give his all to helping people off the field. But as Brooks told the ESPN website, “That’s who I am. I come here to do a job and be a winner. When I’m away from here, I think the Lord has put me in a position to help others.”

Learned the Importance of Education

Derrick Dewan Brooks was born on April 18, 1973, in Pensacola, Florida, to Gerri Brooks. Brooks, who never met his biological father until he was 16 years old, was raised by his mother, grandmother, and his stepfather A.J. Mitchell—who married Brooks’ mother when Derrick was six years old. Brooks’ lessons started early in life, starting first with the idea of charity. His grandmother, Martha, ran a make-shift soup kitchen for strangers out of her own house.

Brooks also soon learned the importance of education. His parents knew that he was a bright child and would accept nothing less than excellence in the classroom. Once, when Brooks was ten years old, his stepfather Mitchell came into the school unannounced to check on his stepson. What Mitchell saw did not please him. Brooks was not paying attention, making jokes, and shooting staples at other students in the class. Mitchell burst into the room and gave Brooks a spanking in front of the room full of students. Though he did not appreciate being humiliated before all of his peers, Brooks told Joel Poiley of Boys’ Life “That’s the most embarrassing moment of my life. But I obviously never forgot it, and it set me straight on what my priorities should be and what my parents expected of me.” The

At a Glance…

Born Derrick Dewan Brooks on April 18, 1973, in Pensacola, FL; son of Gerri Brooks; married Carol; children: Brianna, Derrick Jr., Dewan. Education: Florida State University, BA, 1994, MA, 2001.

Career: Tampa Bay Buccaneers, linebacker, 1995–.

Awards: USA Today High School Defensive Player of the Year, 1990; Parade All American, 1990; First team All-ACC, 1992-94; Consensus All-American, finalist for the Lombardi Award, 1993-94; GTE Academic All-America, 1994; First Team All-Rookie honors, 1995; Pro Bowl selection, 1997-02; Associated Press first team All-Pro, 1999-00; Associated Press second team All-Pro, 2001; Walter Payton/NFL Man of the Year Award, 2000; Tampa Bay’s Most Valuable Player, 1998-00; Silver Medallion Humanitarian Award, 2001; winner of EDDIE Award, winner of Giant Steps Award, Associated Press Defensive Player of the Year, 2002, named to the Florida State University Board of Trustees, 2003.

Addresses: Office —c/o Tampa Bay Buccaneers, One Buccaneer Place, Tampa, FL 33607.

message about the importance of education led him to achieve stellar grades throughout school, to earn an advanced degree, and in March of 2003 to be named to the Florida State University (FSU) Board of Trustees.

At Booker T. Washington High School in Pensacola, Brooks excelled in both the classroom and on the gridiron. At the end of his time in high school Brooks was named the USA Today High School Defensive Player of the Year, a Parade All-American, and was rated the best defensive player in the country by Super Prep magazine. Perhaps even more impressive for a football player of this stature, Brooks destroyed the stereotype of the dumb jock by graduating from high school with a 3.94 grade-point average. Brooks had the choice of any university in the country, but decided to stay close to home and attend FSU.

Brooks started his career at FSU as a safety and became one of two true freshman to earn a varsity letter. Before the following season Brooks was shifted over to outside linebacker during spring practice and was able to make an immediate impact in his sophomore year tallying 98 tackles and earning First Team All-ACC. The honors and awards kept piling up throughout a college career which saw Brooks finish as a two-time consensus All-American, a two-time finalist for the Vince Lombardi Award given to the nation’s top lineman or linebacker, and a GTE Academic All-America who graduated five months early. Typically superstar football players leave school five months early to prepare for the NFL draft, but Brooks had accumulated enough credits to graduate one semester ahead of his class. Brooks would eventually return to FSU and earn a masters degree in business communications.

Though Brooks enjoyed a level of success that few athletes can even dream of, one of his most influential college experiences occurred off the field. In his junior year at FSU Brooks went to visit his cousin, who was serving time in a work camp in Tallahassee. After putting off the visit several times, he finally decided to go to the prison, but he brought two of his teammates with him. The group drove to Tallahassee, three confident young college football players without a care in the world, but the drive back was different. Where there had been laughing and joking on the way there, on the drive back there was silence. Brooks told David Fleming of ESPN The Magazine about his comments to his teammates: “What’s happened to us? We are dying off in the streets and the jails, and the people we believe in to fix this—politicians, pastors our fathers—are not doing anything.” Brooks pulled off the freeway and the three players vowed to make a difference in the lives of people who had been left behind by society.

Drafted by Buccaneers

Brooks became the second first-round draft choice of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1995 after Miami’s Warren Sapp, and many observers around the NFL thought the six foot, 235 pound linebacker would be too small to be an effective professional player. When it came time to play, Brooks proved all of his doubters wrong. In his first professional season Brooks started 13 games and played in all 16 contests. He did not start every game because Tampa Bay started another defensive back instead of the bigger, less mobile linebacker against teams that primarily used the pass as a way to attack the defense. By the second year of his career, he had remedied that one weakness and started in all 16 games for Tampa Bay. He even turned the element of his game which kept him out of the lineup into a strength for the team. Brooks is so fast and can cover so much ground that the Buccaneers can keep two linebackers in the game at all times unlike most NFL teams which have special packages to defend the pass but are then vulnerable against the run.

In his second NFL season Brooks led the team with 133 tackles, but was next to last in recognition from the outside world. Then Tampa Bay coach Tony Dungy told John Oehser of The Florida Times Union about Brooks’ value to the team: “He had a very good year for us. Unfortunately, if you’re not an outside linebacker who’s a blitzer, or who gets a lot of sacks, the recognition can be slow to come. Derrick played well for us, and I think he’ll play at a real high caliber for a long time.”

Brooks continued his quiet excellence in 1997 starting all 16 regular season games and tallying 182 tackles. He was starting to get some recognition around the league as one of the NFL’s premier linebackers and was selected to play in the first of his many Pro Bowls. The following season continued in the same way except that Brooks was now starting in the Pro Bowl and was named an All Pro by nearly every sports publication in America. He recorded the third highest tackle total in team history with 189 including double-digit stops in nine games.

Started the Brooks Bunch

The accolades continued for Brooks during the 1999 and 2000 seasons after making 180 and 179 tackles. Brooks would make the Pro Bowl both years and be named the Buccaneers’ Most Valuable Player in 2000, but there was one award that stood out above all the honors he received for being an outstanding football player. After the 2000 NFL season Brooks received the Walter Payton/NFL Man of the Year Award for his efforts for the children of the Tampa Bay area.

When Brooks first came into the NFL he began to look at ways he could help the community. Remembering all the hours he spent at the Boys and Girls Club when he was growing up, he made arrangements to send a group of kids from the Tampa Bay area Boys and Girls Clubs to each Buccaneers game. In 1996 he started to make appearances at the clubs to encourage the kids to do well in school, but then he decided that he had to do more. Brooks started to put together educational trips for the kids as a means of rewarding them for good grades. First the excursions were small, such as a cross-state bus trip to Fort Lauderdale, but the next year he took the Brooks Bunch to Atlanta to visit the Martin Luther King Center. The year after that he took the kids to Washington, D.C., to study the government. And unlike many athletes, who have foundations or give money for charitable enterprises, Brooks is very hands-on when he decides he is going to get involved with a project. He not only pays for the trips and gives the kids spending money, he leads the expeditions. Bertha Gary, director of Tampa’s Ybor City Boys and Girls Club told Paul Attner of The Sporting News, “That’s what really impresses me about Derrick. He is incredibly hands-on. He’s not one of these athletes who gives money and has cameras take his picture, and then you never see him again. He is in the middle of everything. He doesn’t dominate; he blends in. But he knows exactly what is happening.”

After the 2000 season Brooks took a group of 40, including then Buccaneers head coach Dungy and his wife, to South Africa and Swaziland. The group toured Soweto, went on a safari, and saw the prison where Nelson Mandela was held. In his work with the clubs around the Tampa area he usually just shows up and begins to talk with the kids there. After years of dropping by unannounced to the Boys and Girls Club, the kids are used to his presence and feel they can relate to him. Brooks has taken his bunch to visit Oprah Winfrey’s studio in Chicago, to New York, and after the 2002 season, he took them on a trip out west to see the Grand Canyon and the Golden Gate bridge. Brooks told Thomas George of the New York Times that for him, the Brooks Bunch is about expanding the kids’ horizons: “I will not allow my group or anyone else to use the words ’underprivileged kids’ when talking about them. Sure, we’ve got students who come from homes with single parents, both parents, some being raised by their grandparents, and others, frankly, who are raising themselves. This group is about breaking down stereotypes. It’s about educating themselves with these trips and then passing it on to their friends about the possibilities. It’s a dynamic situation and I have earned their respect. Now my job is to live up to it.”

Won Defensive MVP

On the field Brooks continued with his usual excellence. Once again after the 2001 season he led the team in tackles with 165, as he had done every year since 1998 for the leagues best defense. Not only was he an excellent all-around player who was named to his fifth straight Pro Bowl, but Brooks was durable, playing in all of his teams 16 games for the sixth straight season.

While the 2001 season was another measure of Brooks’ excellence, the 2002 campaign was truly exceptional for the linebacker and his team. For the last five seasons Brooks had consistently been the best player on the NFL’s best defense winning the Team’s Defensive MVP from the 1998 through the 2000 seasons, but after the 2003 regular season Brooks was named the Associated Press Defensive Player of the Year. He again led his team in tackles with 170 and scored four touchdowns on turnovers including one in the Super Bowl as the Buccaneers destroyed the Oakland Raiders. He became the only linebacker in NFL history to return three interceptions for a touchdown in a single season. Brooks achieved career highs in interceptions with five and passes defended with 15. The 2002 season ended with Brooks’ selection to the Pro Bowl for the sixth straight time and with his games-started streak having reached 128 after having started every Tampa Bay game for seven straight seasons.

It was finally time for the pass rushers to take a back seat to the smaller, quicker linebacker who could cover any receiver and blow up any play better than anyone else in the league whether it was a run or a pass. Now the whole league and all the fans of the NFL saw what the players and people surrounding the Buccaneers had seen since 1995—the best linebacker in football. Teammate John Lynch told Greg Garber on the ESPN website, “He’s just a tremendous man of character. He does his best in every aspect of life, and I don’t care if (he’s) playing board games, he’s going to want to win. He wants to be the best whether it’s playing or helping the community or helping kids. A lot of people put their money out there, Derrick puts his time and money in, and I think that’s what separates him.”