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Keys to Success

Written by Rick Cleveland - The Clarion-Ledger

The Super Bowl often is touted as the ultimate event in sports. But for 46-year-old Jackson native Tyrone Keys, who helped the Chicago Bears win Super Bowl XX, football's biggest game served more as a means to an end.

"My ultimate goal in life all along has been to help young people the way my coaches and teachers helped me," Keys said. "What I accomplished in football has helped me achieve what I have always wanted to accomplish in life."

Twenty years ago Thursday, Keys, a hulking, 6-foot, 7-inch, 270-pound defensive end, helped the Bears pound the New England Patriots 46-10 in the Super Bowl. Keys was part of a Bears defense many experts consider the best in football history. Before dismantling New England, the Bears shut out the Los Angeles Rams and the New York Giants in the playoffs.

Keys to Success"Twenty years ago," Keys says, in his rich, almost soothing baritone voice, "man, I'll tell you, it's gone by fast."

In Keys' case, time must fly when he's helping young people.

Keys, a graduate of Callaway High School and Mississippi State, founded All Sports Community Service, a non-profit organization, in his adopted hometown of Tampa, Fla., in 1993. In the 13 years since, All Sports has helped more than 700 mostly disadvantaged inner city teens, often from single-parent homes, find ways and means to attend college. All-Sports helps teens prepare for college entrance exams and find scholarship help. In return, the students give back in the form of community services such as Habitat for Humanity, Meals on Wheels and volunteer work with orphanages in the Tampa Bay area.

"The key is to have them give back, to know what it feels like to help someone else who needs help," Keys says. "We help a kid who helps someone else, who helps someone else. So many of the kids who have been part of our program have gone on to college and then come back and served as mentors to other kids. It's almost like a snowball effect."

Keys says the community service is the "deposit" part of what he calls All Sports' ATM system.

"The students invest with their time, and then All Sports helps them with college prep and finding scholarships," Keys said. "You have to make a deposit in order to make a withdrawal."

Keys has won numerous awards for his work, including Tampa Man of the Year twice by two different organizations. He has also been cited by President Bush and by the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame. Next week, he will be honored as Alumnus of the Year by the MSU College of Education.

Keys' caring deeply rooted

In a paper for an education class at Mississippi State in 1980, Keys wrote, "Growing up you spend half your life at school, especially if you are involved in sports. I will always help youngsters growing up, because I know what it means to have someone care. Upon graduation, I hope to play professional football, but I still plan to work with youngsters in some way, either in counseling or coaching."

Says Stratton Karatassos, State's football trainer at the time, "Tyrone always had this sweet nature about him. He was a great big guy, obviously, but he had this great big, ol' warm heart. He cared about people, and he always let you know it."

After graduating from State in 1981, Keys played two seasons in the Canadian Football League before joining the Chicago Bears in 1983. His NFL career, cut short by injuries, included stints with the Bears, Tampa Bay Bucs and San Diego Chargers and lasted until 1989. Throughout his playing days, he fulfilled his prophecy by working with various youth groups and also as a substitute teacher in the Tampa school system.

Upon retirement from the NFL, Keys went to work as a counselor and coach at Tampa Catholic High School.

"I had great coaches in high school in the late Charles Allman and Odell Jenkins," Keys says. "They cared about you as people, not just players. I wanted to be the kind of coaches they were."

He became that — and more.

His work as a counselor and advisor at Tampa Catholic became so well-known that students and athletes from other Tampa-area schools sought his advice. One such player was Albert Perry, running back at Leto High. Keys helped Perry put together a highlights film and prepare for college admissions tests. The result was a scholarship offer to Texas Southern.

Weeks later, after school had started, Keys ran into Perry at a midnight basketball game in Tampa and asked him why he wasn't in Houston, attending college and playing football. Perry answered that he hadn't had a way to get there. And, says Keys, Perry told him this: "If I don't get out of here, I'll end up dead or in trouble."

A week later, Keys, watching the evening news, learned that Albert Perry had been shot and killed.

That's when Keys knew he needed to do more. That's when the idea that became All Sports germinated.

Keys knew he would need backing, so he went to a car dealership owned by a man named Jerry Ulm. Keys told Ulm about Perry and others like him and told him of his desire to start an organization dedicated to helping disadvantaged athletes find their way. Ulm agreed to help.

The first three athletes in Keys' informal new program all earned scholarships. And then Keys got a call from Ulm's son, who told him Jerry Ulm had died of cancer. In lieu of flowers at the funeral, Ulm had requested donations be made to Keys' program. All Sports was born.

To this day, Keys credits Ulm as co-founder of All Sports. But Keys will tell you so many others have helped along the way.

Former NFL teammates, such as Hall of Famer Mike Singleterry, have made sizable contributions of money and memorabilia. Former Mississippi State teammate and roomate Mike McEnany, now a Tampa businessman, has been a huge contributor.

Says McEnany, "Tyrone is a gentle giant, the most warm-hearted human being I've ever been around. His program is unbelievable. His love for kids is so genuine. He finds kids who are sleeping in cars and the next thing you know they are graduating from college."

Guidance pays dividends

All Sports' success stories seem boundless. Teens who have gone through Keys' program have gone on to colleges across the U.S. and abroad. Many of them have gone into teaching, coaching and counseling.

Take Kewon Foster, for example. Foster, now studying for his Masters in edcuation at Tennessee Tech, was a struggling high school junior with a 1.2 grade point average, ineligble to compete athletically, when he first met Keys and enlisted in All Sports.

Under Keys' guidance, Foster raised his grades, played football his senior season and earned a football scholarship to Itawamba Community College in Fulton. After two years there, he garnered a full scholarship to Tennessee Tech where he also earned an undergraduate degree. What's more, his wife, Idalmis Foster, is also an All Sports alumnus, working on her Masters in business administration at Tech (with a 3.9 GPA). Both husband and wife are active in mentoring disadvantaged youth.

Says Kewon Foster, "I don't know where I would be if it hadn't been for Tyrone Keys, but I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't be this far along. If I had gone to college at all, I would be looking at paying back a whole bunch of college loans."

Nate Peoples, the strength coach at Western Michigan, was one of the first students to be part of All Sports. Keys found Peoples when the latter was a senior at Tampa Armwood High. Keys arranged for Peoples to attend Mississippi State as a walk-on athlete. Two years later, Peoples, a linebacker, earned a full scholarship. He earned his undergrad degree in fitness management and a Masters in athletic adminstration. After leaving State, he first went back to Tampa to work with Keys at All Sports. He has since moved on to first Stanford and now Western Michigan, but he keeps close ties with Keys and All Sports.

"There's an angel quality to Tyrone Keys," Peoples says. "He really cares and he'll do anything within his power to help you. I'll put it to you this way: If I can be half the man Tyrone Keys is, I'll have done all right."

Understand, there are literally hundreds like Kewon and Idalmis Foster and Nate Peoples.

Twenty years after the Super Bowl, Keys remembers his playing days fondly but says, "The most important thing to me is that I've parlayed what I achieved in football into something that to me is much more meaningful."

He has used his football connections to further All Sports' cause. Contributions to All Sports approaching $17 million have come from several foundations including NFL Charities. Keys is executive director to a full-time staff of three and a host of volunteers.

Keys' cell phone rings almost constantly with calls from staffers, mentors, volunteers, students and former students. He makes it a point to talk to all his former All Sports students at least once a month. And, he says, he always asks how the community service is going.

"The key is giving back," Tyrone Keys says. "We as a society take so much for granted. Just think what the world would be like if everyone gave back."