Photograph by Virginia Lee Hunter
And so the barbell takes on more weight.
Lying just beneath it, Muhammad Abdulqaadir grips the steel bar firmly in his calloused hands as his abdomen, a muscular landscape of hills and valleys, heaves beneath his sweat-stained T-shirt. Veins bulging and muscles taut, Abdulqaadir first engages his elbows, then his triceps, his deltoids and pecs. Raising the barbell's 225-pound load, he breathes deeply as he lowers the bar to his chest, holds his breath on the ascent and expels a short, sharp hiss as he brings the weight to its zenith.
It's 4 o'clock on a sweltering July afternoon, and Abdulqaadir is midway through the two-hour workout he performs each day at HammerBodies, an elite sports clinic in Maryland Heights. A two-time All-American running back, Abdulqaadir has already gone through a series of hip-opening exercises on the facility's indoor track. He's run innumerable 40-yard dashes, churning his feet hard against the synthetic track while propelling his knees skyward toward his chest. He's lain prone across two BOSU domes while the clinic's owner, known to all as Coach Hammer, laid 35-pound weights across the muscular plane of his back. He's run backwards, forwards and sideways. He's completed hundreds of weighted sit-ups and scores of pull-ups. And then there's always the bench press ...
"Ten! Eleven! Twelve!" Hammer barks, encouraging his charge as Abdulqaadir narrows his eyes under the barbell's weight. "He's never been like this before. He's totally reinvented his body."
When Abdulqaadir arrived at Hammer's doorstep intent on bulking up for a shot at the National Football League, he was carrying a respectable 13 percent body fat. Today, he stands 5-foot-7, weighs
203 sculpted pounds and harbors a mere 6 percent body fat. He's recently run the 40-yard dash in 4.22 seconds. He can squat 615 pounds, and his vertical jump has reached a dizzying 40 inches.
"As far as his numbers go, they're as good as anybody's," says Braden Jones, a tight end for the Minnesota Vikings who has often seen Abdulqaadir work out, but has never seen him play. "In the three-cone drill, his times are as good as any I've ever seen. If you stack him up against any back in the NFL, he'd compare favorably."
And yet Abdulqaadir's football career, which includes several 1,000-yard rushing seasons in college, has been marked by several mystifying rejections. He says that in 2002 Washington State University hastily rescinded an informal scholarship offer. During the 2004 draft, as many lesser talents happily entered the NFL, he was passed over by every team in the league. Adding insult to injury: Abdulqaadir was never even invited to a team's training camp as a free agent.
Of course, it could be that in the calculus of an NFL offense, a 5-foot-7 back like Abdulqaadir simply never fit into a team's offensive equation. But Abdulqaadir and his supporters chalk up the league's rejection to a more nefarious cause: His father, a Sunni Muslim convert named Mujahid Abdulqaadir Menepta, was detained as a material witness after the 9/11 attacks for his alleged ties to Zacarias Moussaoui, once known as the "20th hijacker."
Abdulqaadir's father was never formally indicted, but his arrest warrant states that he was investigated for, among other things, "bombing conspiracy" and "seditious conspiracy to levy war against the United States." He has also been linked, albeit tenuously, to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
With a family member like that, Abdulqaadir and others say, his lineage may have simply been too hot for the flag-waving NFL to handle.
"Looking at guys that were drafted the same year and didn't have the stats that Muhammad had and whatnot — it could really be a question: Was he passed on because of where we were at at that time from a country standpoint?" asks Jon Vaughn, himself a former NFL running back who, along with his brother, Britt, now acts as Abdulqaadir's manager and foots the bill for his daily workouts at HammerBodies. "This is a real Jackie Robinson moment."
If so, that moment may be about to pass. Now 27, Abdulqaadir acknowledges that this is probably his last shot at the NFL. In a final effort to get him into the league, the Vaughn brothers have sent Abdulqaadir's highlight tape to several teams. So far there's been no invite, and as the league's 32 teams transitioned into regular-season play last month, the NFL hopeful was left once again practicing wind sprints and waiting by the phone.
Still, after months of training under Hammer's regimen, Abdulqaadir is leaner, meaner and more league-ready than ever.
"The typical back at his age is beat-up, but Muhammad's fresh — he's like a kid," says Hammer. "Watch his face and eyes: He's so singularly focused, he's right where he needs to be."
That, and he's a bull on the bench press.
"One more, Muhammad!" Hammer encourages him, guiding the bar as Abdulqaadir's knuckles whiten for a final rep. "Eiiiiggghhhhhteen!"
Racking the barbell, Abdulqaadir rolls up as he grabs a maroon gym towel to wipe the sweat from his close-cropped head.
"I've got a solid résumé," says Abdulqaadir, the towel now draped over his head. "My stats more than meet the requirements. So where's my opportunity?"
Abdulqaadir's opportunity may never come. Though it's not widely publicized, the NFL and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have a long-standing relationship that only deepened after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Perhaps more than any other sporting event, the 2002 Super Bowl — held a mere five months after the attacks — was an exercise in the spectacle of patriotism. Game organizers supplemented the show's usual "Star-Spangled Banner" fare with a pregame show that featured Barry Manilow singing his newly penned song "Let Freedom Ring." The show also presented a duet of Mary J. Blige and Marc Anthony singing "America the Beautiful"; the pop stars were backed up by the "America's Heroes Chorus," which comprised police officers, firemen, members of the postal service and representatives of all five branches of the military.
The game itself was designated a National Special Security Event, featuring a no-fly zone over the Louisiana Superdome, concrete barricades, 8-foot security fences and a complement of roughly 2,000 security agents on loan from local, state and federal agencies.
The man in charge of the operation was NFL security director Milt Ahlerich, a former high-ranking FBI agent who has been the league's director of security for 12 years. Since 2002 Ahlerich has been instrumental in getting the government to designate each subsequent Super Bowl a National Special Security Event, a designation that frees federal resources to help secure the game.
But Ahlerich's office, which reportedly boasts a $12 million operating budget and contracts with scores of ex-intelligence agents as "security consultants," has powers that extend far beyond venues. His office oversees all of the programs aimed at protecting the league's image and most valuable assets: its venues, the game's integrity and its players — including background checks.
"When they hire somebody to be the head of security for the league or of an individual team, those people are usually retired police officers or FBI agents," says Ben Dogra, a St. Louis football agent with Creative Artists Agency. "That allows them to maintain those relationships and tap into those resources when necessary, and when they tap in, they can go through FBI sources."
Many players have histories, and teams weigh these players' on-field ability against their off-field antics. Neither art nor science, a team's decision to overlook a player's illicit activities depends heavily on his gridiron production. For instance, the Chicago Bears released defensive tackle Terry "Tank" Johnson in 2007 after police found six firearms — including two assault rifles — in his suburban Chicago home. Johnson, a second-round draft pick in 2004, may have been too hot for the Bears (the team cushioned its loss by retaining Tommie Harris, the explosive three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle who was featured on the February 2007 cover of Sports Illustrated for Kids), but the Dallas Cowboys were willing to take a risk on Tank, signing the Super Bowl champion to play as soon as he completed his six-game suspension.
By way of contrast, the league is inundated each year with hundreds of athletes who may have marginal NFL ability. Each is vying to secure a rare invite to a team's training camp. Since Abdulqaadir is a small back whose stats did not indicate he'd be a star, it's possible that the image-conscious league — or individual teams, for that matter — looked at his ability and history and determined he wasn't worth the trouble.
"It's all risk and reward," says Dogra, whose firm represents such NFL royalty as Mario Williams and Carnell "Cadillac" Williams (no relation) and was unfamiliar with Abdulqaadir. "If you've got a player with risk or significant distraction, you may take a shot at it if you think you can get a reward that more than compensates for that. But if you think a guy is not a difference-maker and you could replace him easily and he has baggage — off-the-field things — that may make you think, 'Well, I don't want to be the guy to put my name on that.'"
"Moussaoui and I never did nothing but clash the entire time, almost to the point of fisticuffs. He antagonized every Muslim he came in contact with because he went off into this heavy fanatical thing."
It's been nearly seven years since the FBI first detained him, but Mujahid Abdulqaadir Menepta's memory of the ordeal — and his readiness to dispute his alleged ties to Zacarias Moussaoui — remain as fresh as ever.
A rangy man dressed in a traditional Muslim kurta and kufi, Menepta speaks angrily of his past. He's seated on a couch in a sparsely furnished living room in north St. Louis County. He wears a scraggly beard and a pair of false teeth — replacements, he says, for those he lost during a scuffle with prison guards. At 58 years old, his movements are quick and forceful, a legacy, perhaps, from his days as an amateur boxer in St. Louis.
"They have all of this crap on my police report — even though I've never been convicted of any of it — they've got 'known associate of terrorists,' 'suspected terrorist,' all kinds of crap," says Menepta, who while living in St. Louis founded the Islamic Institute of Learning, where he's no longer welcome. Turning to his son, he says, "Did you say this is exactly what he was going to do? Keep the whole thing focused on me?"
Though he no longer lives in St. Louis, Menepta has come to visit Abdulqaadir and his younger brother, Khalid, before jumping in his car to drive across country. It's just the sort of trip that defined the brothers' childhood — riding in the back seat as their father pursued his own spiritual journey, frequently moving the boys from Islamic enclave to Islamic enclave.
"He has a Bedouin mentality," says Khalid, who at 26 is a veteran of the U.S. Navy. "He's nomadic by nature. Your body is mainly water, and he believes you have to let it flow in order to stay fresh."
It wasn't always so. Born Melvin Lattimore in St. Louis in 1950, Menepta dabbled in the radical black politics of the 1960s before serving 13 months in Vietnam. He converted to Islam in the early 1970s, though he concedes he "was not a good Muslim," and in 1971 reported to a Colorado penitentiary on charges of aggravated robbery. Paroled in 1974, Menepta married Abdulqaadir's mother, a nurse named Tina Goodman, in 1979.
In 1981, the couple gave birth to Muhammad, who they named Drew-Amun. Khalid arrived one year later. Their mother continued working as a nurse, while Menepta worked as a sales manager for Southwestern Bell and later AT&T. Though he continued to dabble in Islam, he says his wife took her adopted religion much more seriously.
"She taught me what marriage was," says Menepta, visually more relaxed as the conversation turns historic. "I was kind of on the wild side, but then I had a complete family life. I was a good husband. A good father."
Their familial stability ended in 1986, when Tina was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died later that year, and the family buried her in traditional Islamic fashion. Menepta washed his wife's body; 5-year-old Muhammad and 4-year-old Khalid helped bury her.
"We were in the grave, and they handed her down to me," says Muhammad, who along with Khalid spread earth over their deceased mother. "Once we closed off the exit, I knew something was wrong."
Today, the brothers' memory of their mother is largely supplied courtesy of their father's stories and old photographs. Not surprisingly, they regard those days as a period of normalcy before their confusing and peripatetic childhoods.
"My mother was like the grounding wire for my dad," says Muhammad. "I feel he never really recovered from that."
Widowed and grieving, Menepta embraced a conservative vision of Islam, which over the next decade led him to uproot the family on a near annual basis, bouncing between Georgia, Oklahoma, Ohio, Kansas and Missouri. He remarried several times, often leaving his wife to care for the boys as he traveled in pursuit of work and spiritual sustenance.
Such was the case in 1989, when Menepta moved his family from outside Atlanta, where he worked in telecommunications and the family lived on a renovated plantation, to Oklahoma City, where he could be nearer his spiritual mentor.
"He hated the things that were going on behind the scenes in the corporate world," says Khalid. "He saw the same criminal acts he'd seen as a kid growing up in St. Louis."
Around this time Menepta took two extended trips to Pakistan "to study Islam." He also changed his name from Lattimore to Menepta and his eldest son's given name from Drew-Amun — after the Egyptian deity, a reflection of his earlier belief in ancestor worship — to Muhammad, after the Islamic prophet.
But while Menepta immersed himself in the Koran, traveling to Pakistan and supporting his family by selling incense and tchotchkes at an area flea market, his sons struggled to adjust to life in the family's small Oklahoma City apartment.
"There was no furniture. There was no carpet. There was no lawn — it was the 'hood, basically," remembers Khalid. "That's where we stopped calling him Dad and started calling him Abi. I remember the day, he said: 'No more of this Dad stuff.'"
Muhammad and Khalid struggled early to square their father's conservative brand of Islam with their Western peers at school. ("Take Easter," says Khalid. "A 6-foot-tall rabbit that has eggs? How's that?") But by the time the family landed in St. Louis, the boys were inured to Menepta's continual travel and austere brand of child rearing, which often shunned material comfort for spiritual rectitude.
It didn't strike them as odd, then, when Menepta, after noticing the children in their north St. Louis neighborhood were picking on his sons, set up a boxing ring and had his boys fight the neighborhood kids.
"He refused to ever let us just be average," says Khalid, who along with his older brother has spent much of the past seven years defending his father. "He didn't care if we were playing checkers — you had to bring tremendous discipline."
Eureka High School head football coach Ferrell Shelton remembers it like it was yesterday. It was near the beginning of the school year when a tall black man strode into his office.
"His dad sat in the office and said, 'I've got the best running back you've ever seen,'" recalls Shelton, at the time an assistant coach at the suburban St. Louis school. "Then we saw him run the ball. All our eyes just went whoa. Muhammad was the purest football player I've ever coached."
Twenty-five miles south of St. Louis, Eureka was a world away for the brothers Abdulqaadir. While both brothers played football, it was Muhammad who became a celebrity as he shattered several school records, rushing for a 4,739 career yards, scoring 56 career touchdowns and 342 total points.
But as good as Abdulqaadir was on the field, his home life was increasingly chaotic. His father routinely traveled for extended periods of time. By 1998 he was gone so much that Muhammad ended up living with friends. His grades suffered, and though several larger schools were looking to recruit him, he says, "They saw the transcripts, and it was off."
"It was a really bad situation," says one coach who tried to recruit Abdulqaadir. "He had no support. His father wasn't a factor. He simply said, 'My dad doesn't support me. I do everything on my own.' The kid just had nothing. It was sad."
Barred from playing at the bigger schools, Abdulqaadir accepted a football scholarship to Coffeyville Community College, a junior college in southeastern Kansas that has served as a way station for Ron Spring and many other NFL greats.
"Mo was a great one," says the school's running back coach, Dickie Rolls. "He's not the fastest kid I've ever coached, but he's one of the most talented. He had great vision, great poise, and knew how to get in the end zone. That's really what you want. That's what makes a running back coach look good."
During his first season at Coffeyville, Abdulqaadir rushed for more than 1,300 yards, along the way shattering Ron Spring's single-game rushing record by running for 381 yards on only 22 carries.
But as Abdulqaadir plotted his trajectory to the NFL, a far more sinister plot came to fruition on September 11, 2001, as members of al-Qaida flew planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
A rising star on his way to gridiron glory, Abdulqaadir was only nominally aware of the effect the tragedy would have on his father and brother.
Menepta and Khalid were by then living in Norman, Okla., where Khalid was a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, and Menepta was active in the same mosque as Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old zealot of Moroccan descent.
Earlier that year, in August 2001, Moussaoui and his 24-year-old roommate, Hussein al-Attas, had traveled to Minnesota, where Moussaoui aroused the suspicions of flight instructors after telling them he wanted to practice only steering planes — as opposed to taking off and landing. Authorities detained the pair on August 17, 2001, jailing Moussaoui indefinitely and holding al-Attas until later that month, when Menepta drove to Minnesota and bonded the younger man out of jail.
"He was a beautiful youngster," says Menepta, adding that he acted as a "mentor" to al-Attas. "He had totally memorized the Koran, but he was easily influenced. This guy [Moussaoui] overwhelmed him."
As the man who bonded Moussaoui's roommate out of jail, Menepta came under suspicion that fall as authorities tried to tie Moussaoui to the 9/11 hijackers. It didn't help that as a de facto spokesman for the mosque, Menepta told reporters that he "was as close to [Moussaoui] as anyone" and that he believed the man who'd once eaten at his house was being used as a "scapegoat."
That October, federal agents arrested Menepta, holding him for three weeks in New York as a material witness to the 9/11 attacks. His arrest warrant states that he was being investigated on charges of "conspiracy to destroy aircraft," "bombing conspiracy" and "seditious conspiracy to levy war against the United States."
Today, Menepta has few kind words for the man he once defended.
"They were asking me what did I know about Moussaoui's involvement. I told them Moussaoui's an idiot — you're barking up the wrong tree," says Menepta. "This guy was not in good standing with one Muslim at the mosque. He was trouble, a disturbance."
With his father detained, Abdulqaadir did what he's done his entire life: He ran the ball.
Coming off his record-breaking year as an All-American, Abdulqaadir was considered a top junior-college prospect. Division I teams were showing a lot of interest, and for many it was a foregone conclusion that Abdulqaadir would be playing for a top four-year school by fall 2002.
"He would take control of the situation on the field," says Coffeyville's Rolls. "That's what I used him for. A lot of times things got a little raggedy out there, and Mo would go in there and clean them up — that's how he got hurt."
One week after his father was detained, Abdulqaadir was riding out the fourth quarter in a game that was shaping up to be an easy victory for Coffeyville. Abdulqaadir had played most of the game, and the coaching staff was giving freshman Brandon Jacobs (now a star running back for last year's Super Bowl champion New York Giants) some game time.
"It was getting a little raggedy," recalls Rolls. "So I sent Mo in to get in the end zone — to go in there and clean it up. Well, he ran into the back of somebody kind of weird and blew his knee out."
With one false step, Abdulqaadir tore his lateral collateral ligament, an injury requiring surgery and a full leg cast to heal.
As Abdulqaadir underwent surgery, federal authorities declined to press terrorism charges against his father. Instead, they shipped Menepta back to Oklahoma, where, as a convicted felon legally barred from possessing weapons, he faced charges stemming from a shotgun, an SKS rifle and a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol agents recovered during their initial sweep of his house.
During court proceedings, a federal agent testified that after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, a source had contacted the FBI and described Menepta as a "violent individual." He added that St. Louis police arrested Menepta in 1997 for carrying a concealed weapon and that one of the terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had fraudulently used Menepta's visa number to exit the country.
Menepta disputes any involvement with the Oklahoma City bombing as ridiculous, saying, "Those guys wouldn't have wanted anything to do with me — they were bona fide racists." How did one of the terrorists involved in the 1993 WTC bombing get his visa number? Menepta says that someone must have copied it at a mosque during one of his trips to Pakistan in the early 1990s.
That November, as Menepta's well-publicized case moved through the federal court system, his son went on a recruiting trip to Washington State University. Still in a full leg cast following his surgery, Abdulqaadir says he signed a letter of intent to play for the Pac-10 school.
One month later, Menepta pleaded guilty to the weapons charge, for which he ultimately served 15 months in prison.
"Then one day I called [Washington State], and they didn't show me the same regard," says Abdulqaadir. "It was almost like they were afraid of me."
In the end, Washington State told Abdulqaadir that his medical records revealed his surgeon had botched the operation. The team couldn't use him. Still recovering from the surgery, Abdulqaadir was mystified as Washington State opted instead to take another running back who'd had the same surgery.
"They told me that the way the guy reconstructed my knee wasn't up to their standards," says Abdulqaadir. "Well, it didn't stop me from rushing for 1,331 yards and 21 touchdowns in six games my first year at Southern Illinois."
His Pac-10 dreams dashed, Abdulqaadir accepted a scholarship to play at the lesser Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Again he excelled, this time rushing for 2,372 yards over two seasons and scoring 32 touchdowns. Named an All-American in 2002, Abdulqaadir at times led the division in rushing. He was named National and Gateway Conference Player of the Week for several weeks running and was considered a top candidate for the prestigious Walter Payton Award.
"He dominated," says Rob Reeves, who coached Abdulqaadir at SIUC. Reeves adds that Abdulqaadir's backfield production played a large role in turning SIUC football into the winning program it is today.
"We were a team that was 4–8. He really kind of made us go and turn the corner," says Reeves, who now coaches at Northern Illinois University. "I guarantee you every player, every coach is going to tell you they loved Mo. He practiced hard. He did everything you told him to do. He was great. You couldn't ask for anyone better."
Running for all those touchdowns, Abdulqaadir was insulated from the open scrutiny faced by the rest of his family. Khalid had already dropped out of college after being assaulted because of his Muslim faith and his father's infamy.
"I didn't go out much," he says today, adding that federal agents asked him on several occasions to become an informant.
Hoping to clear his family name, Khalid enlisted in the Navy, where records indicate he submitted to a polygraph test regarding his "knowledge of and/or participation in terrorism against the United States."
Meanwhile, Muhammad was preparing for the 2004 NFL draft when he was selected to play in that year's Las Vegas All-American Classic, an all-star bowl game for college seniors. Once again Abdulqaadir dominated, leading the game with 52 yards rushing. But while nearly half the players in the game were later drafted or signed as free agents, Abdulqaadir's career ended with a fizzle as he went undrafted in 2004. The snub still mystifies Abdulqaadir, who has committed to memory the names and stats of comparable players who made the cut.
"That kind of stuff just tears me up. I played these guys," says Abdulqaadir, who graduated with a B.A. in university studies. "I at least expected to be invited to a camp — at least a phone call."
That summer, the New York Giants flew him out for a one-day workout. He was the only running back there that day, but the team never called him back. Giants spokesman Pat Hanlon confirms that Abdulqaadir worked out with the team, but adds, "We bring hundreds of players in for workouts, the vast majority of whom we do not sign."
Of course, it may be that at 5-foot-7, Abdulqaadir simply didn't have the skill set to make it in the NFL. In preparation for the 2004 draft, scouts clocked his 40-yard dash at 4.62 seconds — by no means glacial, but well shy of the flat-out speed the league requires of its smaller backs. And though one scouting report described him as an "instinctive player" who can "burst through the hole," it added that he "lacks height, speed and cannot run to daylight," concluding that he will "not pass the eyeball test and as a result will go undrafted, but could find a spot at the next level should he catch the ball well in a camp."
It's the sort of frank assessment that leads some of Abdulqaadir's college coaches to say they weren't surprised when their beloved "Mo" didn't make the league.
"Mo was an overachiever. He did a great job and had a great career at SIUC, but it's probably the level he should have played at," says Skip Foster, who coached Abdulqaadir at Coffeyville and is now the offensive coordinator for the Arizona Rattlers, an arena league team. "Our teams are full of guys like Muhammad — good football players, but not exactly what the NFL was looking for — whether it was timing or the right place/right time, they just didn't get a shot, or they weren't good enough."
Reeves, who also coached New York Giants running back Brandon Jacobs at SIUC, adds: "He's as talented as Brandon Jacobs, but you get to that next level and everyone's a step faster, a step stronger and a step bigger, and while Brandon Jacobs has the freak size and speed, Mo didn't have that."
Sidelined, Abdulqaadir returned to St. Louis to live with his father, who had been released from prison the year before. He took on a series of odd jobs, working as a loan officer and at one point selling T-shirts in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Eureka, the site of his early football fame.
With whatever protection his star status may have afforded him now vanished — one coach says the feds came asking about Abdulqaadir after he graduated — the running back began to suspect that his family was still under investigation. While he idled at a stoplight in summer 2004, a fellow driver flagged him down, saying he had wires hanging from below his car.
Pulling to the side of the road, Abdulqaadir crouched to discover a cylindrical tracking device on the inside of his car's bumper.
"It was connected by Velcro and magnets," says Abdulqaadir. "So I yanked it off and put it in the trunk of my car."
When Abdulqaadir returned home, he photographed the device and alerted Khalid, then stationed at a naval base in California, who checked his car and says he found a similar device. Early the next morning, FBI agents descended on the family's home, looking for — the accompanying search warrant stated — "an FBI electronic tracking device."
A spokesman with the FBI's St. Louis office declined to comment on the matter.
Even before 9/11, the image-conscious NFL relied heavily on former intelligence agents to keep players out of trouble and the league's image tidy. The only difference today is that the former agents who contract with NFL security have been schooled in the clandestine intelligence wars of the past seven years.
"It used to be DUIs and ladies of the night, now it's international terrorism," says Joe Adams, a St. Louis private investigator who has often contracted with the league. "Even though they're retired, they still have access to those FBI databases to do background checks. It's like a pyramid. Each team has their own security specialist to do background checks. If they get a spike on a guy, they'll coordinate with league security. Any team that looks at him will have to answer to the NFL. They can't have that kind of embarrassment."
Asked about Abdulqaadir, an NFL spokesman said the league had no record of him.
"You have to realize the NFL is a billion-dollar business," says sports agent Ben Dogra. "They get very detailed into it — very detailed."
As the 2008 football season swings into high gear, Abdulqaadir continues his grueling workout regimen on the off chance he'll be tapped later in the season.
But unlike in years past, he has the Vaughn brothers in his corner. They imagine a player like Abdulqaadir would be marketing gold for the NFL, a league that is trying to extend its international reach.
"How much more patriotic can you get?" asks John Vaughn. "This is a black Islamic athlete in today's world that has an A.A. and a B.A."
Still, as Coach Hammer says, "We're all big people here," and if the NFL again passes on him, Abdulqaadir imagines there may be a place for him in the Canadian Football League. He's even considering rugby. Along with the Vaughns, Abdulqaadir imagines his struggle may be the stuff of a reality show, or even a film. Khalid is in the middle of writing a book about their family's saga, and the Vaughns are keeping their ears to the ground.
If worse comes to worst, Abdulqaadir could probably take up again with the RiverCity Rage, as he did last year when he was named the league's "Rookie of the Year."
But one thing is clear: At 27 years old, this is likely Abdulqaadir's last shot at the NFL. It would be a bitter pill to swallow for a man who as an adolescent began wearing cleats and football pants to school.
But as he says: "You can put a lot of love into something. But sometimes it doesn't love you as much as you love it."
