Martavius Houston slumped on his mother’s couch, letting his life slip away almost as easily as his football career.
Week after week, month after month, Houston rarely moved. Why should he? His life seemingly had come to a screeching halt. This was not how Houston was supposed to be spending what would have been his senior season at Auburn in 1998.
He was supposed to be impressing NFL scouts with his domination on the field, making a career out of the sport he loved. After all, he won USA Today and SuperPrep All-America honors at Boyd Anderson High School and was one of the most talented football players in Broward County history.
His success continued at Auburn, where he started as a freshman. His future had the NFL stamped on it. Everyone knew it, including himself.
Then things started to fall apart. He ran into disciplinary problems at Auburn and was kicked off the team, almost shattering his football dreams. Now, a year and a half after he left Auburn, Houston has one more chance to make the NFL.
Houston is with the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, trying to piece together his football career and reach his lifelong goal of playing pro football in the United States.
“When I didn’t play in 1998, I gave up football,” Houston said. “I didn’t want to play football. I came back home. Everything hit me so hard. I didn’t have football on my mind or in my heart. I lost all the love I had for the game.”
It took months to convince Houston he should play in the CFL. He felt as if he didn’t belong there, not after all his success in high school and college. So he would sit on his couch, close his eyes and drift back to the only memories he wanted to retain. Those were the days at Boyd Anderson, when he won All-America honors in football and track and was a pretty good basketball player, too, his team winning the 5A state title in 1994.
That also was when his phone rang endlessly, because reporters, coaches and family wanted to know where he planned to continue his brilliant football career. Those were the days he picked up newspapers and read his name in the headlines, or saw a magazine that named him the third best defensive back in the nation.
For much of 1998, Houston’s days were spent sitting around his mother’s house, feeling sorry for himself and sorry that he put himself in the position to get kicked out of Auburn after his junior season. He also felt sorry that no NFL team picked him in the supplemental draft and that he never lived up to all the expectations.
His mother, Melinda Sheperd, urged him to try another route to the NFL. Finally, he listened. In June, Houston began playing with Toronto.
“We kept reminding him about his goal and dream he set,” Sheperd said. “He needed to pick his head up and move forward. Life goes on without football or not. If you have the opportunity to play football and make the minimum of $155,000 for work, where else are you going to make that money? Whether he’s a dish washer or football player, he’s going to have to work and support himself.”
Houston is back, working hard at restoring his image.
It seemed that the NFL was Houston’s destiny at Boyd Anderson. He made the All-County team in 1993 and 1994. He also set a state record in the 200-meter dash (21 seconds) in 1994, the third-fastest time in the nation that year. He averaged 17 points and seven rebounds as a forward on the basketball team, earning second-team All-County honors.
Nearly every college in the country recruited him. In the end he chose Auburn over the University of Miami.
“Martavius was a tremendous athlete with a willingness to win,” said Mike Benanti, his basketball coach at Boyd Anderson. “He was self-motivated, always came to practice, always on time. Even when he was recruited by football coaches, he never let that interfere with basketball.
“I think in Broward County athletic history, he has to be one of the top five players. I’m being conservative. He could be in the top two or three.”
Houston played his first season at Auburn and became the starting safety by the fourth game. His play earned him co-Defensive Freshman of the Year honors in the Southeastern Conference.
That’s when trouble started. By the time his junior season rolled around, agents began pursuing Houston, and people started hounding him about whether he would leave school early for the NFL.
“His junior year he was being bum-rushed,” Sheperd said. “People were calling him asking if he was going to leave early, and he was having to fight off different people. A fan at a tailgate party offered him a hot dog and he was so paranoid trying not to get caught in certain situations that there was no way he was going to take the hot dog.”
Houston withdrew into himself and started hanging out with a different group of people that ended up costing him his career at Auburn.
In March 1998, months before his senior season with the Tigers, Houston was kicked off the team for what Sheperd said were three positive marijuana tests.
Houston would not discuss the details of his dismissal from Auburn, saying only, “I never had problems until Auburn. I didn’t know how to face them. I would blow it over and say everything is all right when I was hiding my problems on the inside. Once you get recruited to go to a big-time college, you get everything on a silver platter. You figure if something’s going wrong in school, the coach can take care of it. I don’t blame Auburn. I blame myself. I take full responsibility for everything that happened to me.”
Added Sheperd: “In a way, I think it may have been peer pressure and trying to fit in. He said, ‘Mom, you get put on a pedestal and you want to fit in.’ I guess smoking weed was part of fitting in.”
Then-Auburn coach Terry Bowden said he tried to help Houston but that Houston never reached out for help. Auburn policy for one positive drug test is to undergo counseling, which Bowden said Houston received. Houston was then subject to weekly drug tests.
Bowden said Houston was aware of the consequences of his behavior, but never seemed like he wanted to change.
“We couldn’t get him grown up, no matter what I did or his mother did, we couldn’t quite get to him. He grew up late maturity-wise,” Bowden said. “He was a very polite kid. He was not a leader. He was a follower. He did not make the normal maturation and because of that, it got him dug deeper in a hole.
“He didn’t accept help very well. It wasn’t like he looked you in the face and hated your guts. He cried about it. He would tear up. He just didn’t like school. He didn’t like going to college. That doesn’t make him a terrible person. If there was ever a reason to have minor league football, like there is in baseball, it was for a guy like Martavius. He wasn’t a thug. He was irresponsible.”
After the third positive test, Bowden had to dismiss Houston. Bowden said he felt “awful” for Houston, but had to follow university policy by dismissing one of his top players. Houston accepted the decision and was not surprised when Bowden kicked him off the team.
In his three-year career, Houston started 32 of 37 games with 246 tackles. He remained in school for one quarter, but returned home because he could not afford tuition. He has half a year of school left to receive his accounting degree.
“I tried to pay for him to go back to school, but I’m a single parent and I couldn’t afford it,” Sheperd said. “Martavius told me, ‘Momma, I know you can’t afford to pay for me to go to school.’ But I would have made that sacrifice. I would have lost everything, and I don’t have that much, so he could go back to school and get a decent job. He wouldn’t be able to get a decent job without a degree.”
Houston wanted to try professional football. After not being selected in the supplemental draft, he felt his chances for the NFL were over. Enter Ford McMurtry.
After Houston decided to give the CFL a shot, McMurtry became his agent. He called his friend, Jim Barker, the coach at Toronto, and let him know that Houston was ready to give the CFL a try.
Toronto signed Houston in June. He is a starting linebacker for the Argonauts and a leading candidate for Rookie of the Year.
“For Martavius, he got an opportunity and he seized it,” Barker said.
“There’s nothing but a bright future ahead for that young man. Since he’s been here, he’s been nothing but enthusiastic and wide-eyed in terms of wanting to learn. I’ve never discussed his past with him. I don’t want to know. If his past has some black marks, for a guy to come back from that and do what he’s done up here is fantastic.”
McMurtry is not concerned with the off-the-field problems, either.
“We were aware of them but I said to him: ‘Look, obviously you’re thing is you want to get to the NFL, and that’s my primary mission. There’s going to be some questions to be asked by the pro teams, and I need to be able to give them some answers.’ The thing I told him is it doesn’t matter what you did in the past. You made some mistakes. You paid the price, and the price was you were out of football. The thing we are concerned with is you have a clean slate.”
Houston has not gotten into trouble since he left Auburn, knowing one more problem could spell the end of his career.
All he wants is a happy ending to a life that with so many roller-coaster rides. Then he can sit back on his couch and remember all the good times — and even the times at Auburn that helped him realize the value of staying out of trouble.
“I always look back and think I never expected this,” Houston said. “I wanted to play all four years at Auburn. I wanted to be an All-American football player, a first-round draft choice. Those were my plans. I set my goals high. I never doubted my ability. Life off the field caused all the problems.
“I’m not where I want to be, but I’m on the path. Everything is going fine. I know the reason I’m not in the NFL is not my ability. It was my off-the-field problems. I’m getting more mature. NFL coaches know I can play on that level. But they always question will I be able to handle the success? I can handle it.
“I know one day I will be in the NFL.”
Andrea Szulszteyn can be reached at .
