Ex-Clark High star Glover set to fulfill dream

Tim Graham

Wednesday, April 21, 1999 | 11:10 a.m.

Glover has supported a family and played college football -- now he's ready for an NFL career

Phil Glover is a fighter.

Because of that, he is a survivor.

When Glover heard his name called during the NFL Draft on Sunday, he reached a stage in life far removed from his days struggling with manhood as a Clark High School vagabond.

Glover, a linebacker at Utah, was taken by the Tennessee Titans in the seventh round. But that landmark moment isn't nearly the biggest accomplishment in Glover's tumultuous life.

"When you sit back and look at the problems he had," former Clark coach Mike Gutowski said, "it's an amazing story that a kid could come through all that.

"He's had a lot of problems. He's beat the odds."

Glover is only 23, but much of his life has been spent as a man.

A fractured family life left him to fend for himself when he was only a sophomore at Clark. Glover's dad had a drinking and gambling problem and left his son in Las Vegas shortly after moving him from his mother's home in South Central Los Angeles.

"Things in the household started going sour between myself, my dad and my mom," Glover said. "We used to bang heads about everything.

"I decided to break out."

Like a stray cat, he roved from home to home, meal to meal until the mother of Clark teammate Chance Larsen was granted guardianship.

During Glover's junior year, his girlfriend, Carmen, got pregnant. But instead of avoiding the situation, they decided to move in together. There was no way Glover was going to allow his child to grow up as he did.

"It was time to move on and be responsible," Glover said.

A sense of family righteousness apparently swelled inside Glover -- so much so that he moved his troubled younger brother from South Central. Glover, at 17, became his brother's legal guardian and virtually raised him as a son.

"I wanted him to have a fair opportunity," Glover said of his brother. "He wasn't going to graduate (where he was). So I said 'Look, you need to come stay with me.' "

To make ends meet, Glover delivered pizzas, bused tables and worked in a gym while excelling in two sports. He helped lead the Chargers to a state football championship and won a wrestling title.

He earned a full scholarship to play linebacker for Washington State.

Glover was projected as a future starter for the Cougars, but he wasn't pleased with his progress. On the advice of former Clark teammate Clarence Lawson, who was starting for the Utes at cornerback, Glover transferred to Utah.

Carmen was pregnant with their second child.

"When you're a family, you back each other up 100 percent," she said. "If he tells me 'I have a better chance at Utah' -- OK. It was risky to move, but I support him in anything he does."

Glover showed Utah fans the meaning of immediate impact. In his first season with the Utes he earned all-Western Athletic Conference first-team honors with 90 tackles, four sacks and seven tackles for losses. He intercepted two passes.

He had become known as one of the country's most vicious hitters and fiercest competitors. One local reporter wrote that "looking into the face of the Grim Reaper would be less intimidating."

Glover was rated among the elite at his position heading into his senior year.

But in the final minutes of Utah's fourth game -- a 31-28 loss to Boise State -- Glover was faced with another obstacle. He severely sprained his right ankle and subsequently had screws inserted through the joint of two leg bones.

"I heard a loud pop and I just knew it," Glover recalled. "I said 'I'm done. I'm just going to hang it up.' But in rehab I got that proper mind frame and said 'I can do this.'

"My past is what helped push me through. I did not get this far to have an ankle destroy me."

What upset Glover most was being on the sideline for his senior season. It was supposed to be one of the finest times of his playing days, and it reminded him of his senior year at Clark.

On the third play of the state championship game against McQueen, Glover absorbed a vicious crackback block and received a concussion. The Chargers won the game, but "I didn't remember a damn thing," he said. That always has bothered him, and now he saw himself missing out on more senior memories.

"It hurt emotionally," Glover said. "It hurt a lot. I had a decent junior year and everybody was hyping me up to do this and do that.

"When a challenge is posed to me I always take it head on. And you want your senior year to be better than anything else."

Glover claimed he might not have made it through the injury without the support of his wife.

"He was down," Carmen said. "I told him 'This is just another one of God's trials, one more thing to do to get over the hill. Once you get over the hill, God has good things planned for you. We've had it worse than this before and we made it though.' "

Glover was supposed to miss up to eight weeks, but he returned to play in the Utes' final two games. He played in the Senior Bowl and took part in the pivotal NFL Draft Combine, where coaches and scouts evaluate the top prospects.

The Titans obviously liked what they saw and took him with 222nd overall pick.

"He's got great movement," Titans general manager Floyd Reese said. "He's a great pickup in the seventh round. He can run in our system, and will really be able to play for us."

Glover is not worried about making the transition to the NFL, where everyone is that much bigger, that much faster, that much tougher.

"They might be a step above," he said, "but everybody puts on their jock straps the same way. Each team has a guy who will knock your head off just like everybody else. That's never been a difference to me."

He will be helped along by Titans receiver Kevin Dyson, a native Las Vegan who played with Glover at Utah.

And it is safe to say the pressures involved with making the move to the big time won't be as great for Glover as for his fellow rookies when minicamp begins in two weeks.

"As far as dealing with pressure, it will be easy," Glover said. "I've been dealing with pressures for six or seven years of my life. But I have to go out there and perform, too."

When asked of his proudest accomplishments, Glover's answer had nothing to do with football.

"I guess I'm most proud of two things: Getting my brother graduated and also that I found a woman that's here for me," he said.

"She was there for me when I was dirt poor from Day 1. She was never of the thinking 'I'm going to get with this guy because he's going to the league.' "

Glover's brother attended the Job Corps in Utah and will return to Las Vegas as a certified painter. He will be married this summer.

Glover will graduate from Utah in May with a degree in exercise and sports science.

"People don't realize how important your education is," he said. "You can't take that for granted."

Glover isn't even sure how, with virtually zero parental guidance, he raised both himself and his brother and brought two children into the world.

"I guess that came from not wanting to be like my birth parents," Glover said.

"They made a lot of mistakes in their lives. My mom had personal problems in California -- and I don't want to get into that -- she needs to deal with. And I didn't want my children to go through the same thing."

Gutowski, who also coached Glover in wrestling, considers his former pupil the ultimate success story.

"He's a role model," Gutowski said. "Sometimes someone will tell you about some problem and I say 'You don't even have a clue.'

"Phil's had it the roughest of any of them. As far as a role model or anybody to look up to, I always bring Phil's name up."

Added Glover: "It's been a long road. It hasn't been easy. All this stuff now is just gravy."

archive