A father who traded a professional baseball career for a drug habit and a prison cell.
An uncle, once a basketball star, who was murdered in a bar fight.
A brother, an All-America college quarterback, wrongly accused of a crime that tainted his reputation and threatened to derail a professional career before it even took shape.
All along, Godfrey watched as a series of mishaps and missteps was laid down before him, a path of imminent destruction, a blueprint of how to throw it all away.
But he chose his own road, a road to salvation.
He inherited all the athletic ability that has so richly blessed his family, but he somehow avoided the fate that has so often been its curse.
Now, with his own NFL draft approaching, the former University of Iowa defensive back is standing on the edge of atonement, creeping ever closer to redemption and the realization of a dream to which those lonely shadows simply could not walk the line.
Blood brothers
You might remember Godfrey’s brother, Ell Roberson III, who starred at Kansas State in the early part of this decade.
Roberson was named for their father, Ell Jr., who, according to Roberson, was the first black baseball player to receive a scholarship at the University of Houston. Their parents never married, though, and Ell Jr., who played two seasons in the Detroit Tigers minor league system, was in and out of jail in the five years between Roberson’s birth and when Charles came along in 1985.
So, Charles was given his mother’s maiden name and, with it, a chance to author his own identity.
He worshipped his brother, though. And they were each other’s crutch as they were raised by a single mother in a tough, but loving neighborhood in Baytown, Texas, just outside of Houston.
“It was almost as if he looked up to me as a dad,” said Roberson, who led Kansas State to a Big 12 championship as a senior in 2003. “Everywhere I went, he wanted to be right behind me. Everything I was into, he was into, too. He was a real copycat kind of brother.”
It took a village
It wasn’t just their mother, Alice, who helped Godfrey and Roberson wade through the drugs and crime that consumed so many on their block. Many others played a role in keeping them on course after Ell Jr. was sent to prison, again on drug charges, in 1993.
Their maternal grandmother, Earnestine Jones, was a constant presence, as was their grandfather, Ell Roberson Sr. And there were countless aunts and neighbors and friends keeping a close eye on the brothers who wowed with their athletic potential as early on as Pop Warner.
“I don’t know how it would have been if I did have a father figure around, because I don’t know what he would have done or what kind of role he would have taken,” Godfrey said. “I’m not mad. I’m grateful for the job my mother and grandma did in raising me.”
“We had some very strong women in our lives,” Roberson added.
Those strong women instilled in them fear and love and respect. Fear of consequence, love of family and respect for their elders.
“The woman across the street could whup you just as good as your mom,” Roberson said. “She’d whup you and then take you home for another whupping.”
That fear and love and respect put both Ell and Charles on the fast track and carried them out of town.
Second coming
Godfrey watched as a ball boy as Roberson starred at Robert E. Lee High School before heading to K-State in 1999.
He wanted to be better than his older brother. He said, even then, that he was bound for the NFL.
“I knew he was going to be something in life,” his mother said, “because he was just so stuck up behind Ell in sports. But he learned a whole lot from Ell.”
He learned how to play and how to work, spending the summer between his junior and senior years of high school training with Roberson in Manhattan, Kan.
And he learned how to avoid the troubles that so often gravitate to top college athletes.
He saw Roberson get accused of sexual assault in the week leading up to the 2004 Fiesta Bowl, a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong girl.
That week was supposed to be the crowning achievement of a brilliant college career. Instead, it was tainted. Roberson was innocent, but the incident no doubt affected his reputation in the eyes of professional scouts.
“Charles learned to keep a clean head,” Roberson said. “It was a serious situation, but it was totally blown out of proportion. He saw how something can blow up in your face when you’re a high-profile player.”
By then, Godfrey was a legitimate college prospect, starring as a defensive back and receiver at Lee, catching passes from former Iowa quarterback Drew Tate and drawing scholarship offers from Missouri, Pittsburgh and Iowa.
He took his brother’s advice and followed Tate to Iowa.
“Ell told me when I was at the right place I would feel it in my heart,” Godfrey said. “When I went to Iowa on my visit, I had that feeling like I had at no other place. The people in Iowa are very different from the people in Texas. They’re very loving people.”
A home at corner
At Iowa, Godfrey found a home on and off the field.
Iowa City was miles from the rugged streets of Baytown, and he was given the chance to play as a true freshman.
He served in a vital role on special teams, helping the Hawkeyes to a Big Ten championship in 2004, before stepping in as a reserve safety as a sophomore.
His break came as a junior, when coach Kirk Ferentz asked him to switch to cornerback. With good size (6-foot, 200 pounds) and speed (4.4 40-yard dash), Godfrey had the physical makeup to make it at corner and the mentality to make it big.
“I love being out there by myself one on one with somebody, because I don’t have to depend on someone else to do their job in order for my job to be complete, in order for my job to be done right,” he said. “I’m out there by myself. It’s all on me. If I mess up, it’s on me.”
Godfrey ranked third on the team with 83 tackles and added two interceptions and five pass breakups in his first season after changing positions.
He followed that with 65 tackles, five interceptions and nine pass breakups last fall, good enough to earn second-team All-Big Ten honors and land him on the radar of NFL scouts.
‘An excellent prospect’
The same size and speed that made Ferentz want to move Godfrey to corner now is intriguing NFL coaches, who saw him back up the numbers at the Senior Bowl in January and again at the league’s scouting combine last weekend in Indianapolis.
He’s been training the past two months at the Athletes Performance Institute in Tempe, Ariz., and the feeling is he’ll only get better.
“He’s got the physical qualifications, the size and the speed,” Godfrey’s agent, Sean Howard, said. “He has the game film, the competition against big-time players in the Big Ten, and I think he’s got an upside seeing as how he didn’t play the cornerback position all four years at Iowa. I think taking that to the next level is going to serve him well.”
ESPN.com rates Godfrey the 11th-best cornerback in a deep pool of talent, and he is projected by most to be a mid-round pick.
Howard expects him to go anywhere from the late first round to the early third, depending on how he performs at the Hawkeyes’ pro day March 24 and the kind of impression he makes in his personal visits with NFL teams leading up to the April 26 draft.
“Charles presents himself as a professional,” Howard said. “Those intangibles are only going to help him. He gets it. He gets what it means — what it takes — to be a pro.
“He created a buzz starting back with the Senior Bowl. That was the first opportunity a lot of coaches and general managers got to see him. His size really popped, and his speed — he’s got a tremendous burst — really showed."
Redemption
Godfrey’s father was released from prison in 2002. He had been behind bars since Charles was 8, and the two are just now beginning to forge a relationship.
“I talk to him. I respect him,” Godfrey said. “He’s still my dad, but we’re not all that close.”
Godfrey is close to fulfilling the dream his father and brother couldn’t — a pro career, a ticket to a better life.
Roberson tore his rotator cuff coming out of college, which, on top of the arrest at the Fiesta Bowl, all but eliminated his chances of being selected in the 2004 NFL Draft. He knocked around the CFL for a few seasons and is back in Houston working as a safety processing engineer.
He has his memories, and he has hope for Charles.
“He’s up for the challenge,” Roberson said. “I think he can do it. He’s fought all this adversity all his life … change is nothing to him. He’s done everything he needs to do. He stayed out of trouble, he took care of business in school, and now the sky is the limit for him.”
True to his roots
Hearing Godfrey’s name called on draft day would mean so much to so many, all those aunts and neighbors and friends who looked out for him back in Baytown.
It would mean financial relief for his mother, who worked countless jobs to provide for her children.
It would be a proud day for his grandmother, who six years ago told his high school coach, “If you’re not going to throw him the ball, put him on defense.”
As Godfrey’s mother and grandmother like to point out, he might not have had a father around, but “he had all kinds of daddies.”
They have served him well.
He has remained humble and grounded. He’s still the shy kid who grew up in the shadow of a star older brother. He still calls his grandmother at least twice a week. And if he doesn’t … “He knows better,” Jones said.
He knows, too, that he is where he is because of where he came from.
“Being in the environment that I grew up in, seeing a lot of different things, I had to work for everything I got. It wasn’t something that was just given to me,” Godfrey said.
“Seeing my grandmother and mother trying to provide for me, I knew that they were going out and working for that to provide for me. That gave me an attitude of you have to go out and work hard in order to receive the finer things you want in life. I think that’s always helped me.”
For now, the NFL remains a dream.
But it’s not so distant anymore.
“I sit back and I think about it and I would have never thought I would have been in this position,” Godfrey said. “I’m grateful. I never take it for granted.
“Even if I wasn’t to make it to the NFL, I’m thankful for being able to go to college and play Division I football. A lot of people don’t get that opportunity.
“That said, it would be a huge honor to be selected to play in the NFL. That’s something a lot of kids dream of but most never get the chance to do.”
Contact Eric Page at (563) 383-2277 or epage@qctimes.com.
Comments
Shy Girl wrote on Apr 29, 2008 5:24 PM:
" This family is deserving of all the things God has blessed them with. Ell Jr has turned his life around and is very much a family man. Their mother is still the supportive, hard working woman that she has always been. Their grandmother is still in the same neighborhood supporting every child that is trying to do something with their life. Ell and Charles are both very high spirited, easy going men who love their family and friends very much. May God continue to bless them all. "
Bama Gal wrote on Apr 9, 2008 6:45 PM:
" God Bless this amazing family. This young man deserves a big chance, and I believe if it is given to him, he will be a big star in the NFL! The team who gets him is very lucky. "
joy wrote on Mar 18, 2008 2:28 PM:
" Ell Jr has completely turned his life around. He supports both his sons and his daughter in every possible way. Life has a strange twist to things but God is always in control and only He is all knowing.
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bunnymoney wrote on Mar 11, 2008 9:37 PM:
" great read. nice to hear good things about athletes off the field. shows there are more good than bad. "
