Excerpt One

	Looking back, I can see that my propensity for trying to lie my way out of trouble 
only made my consequences more severe.

     I got used to not being honest in a lot of situations and getting through them 
based on my story, but not the whole story or the true story. I got away with it for 
so long, you start to get into a routine and start to feel like, "Hey, if it worked 
last time, it will work again."

     I’ve discussed some of the following examples of lies already in this book, but I 
believe it is important to revisit them in the context of what I’ve learned about the 
value of truth-telling.

    (x) I claimed I used the secret compartment in the water bottle confiscated 
        by security in the Miami airport in January 2007 to stash jewelry, not 
        marijuana.

    (x) After the raid of my Virginia house where dogfighting evidence was 
        found, I said publically, “I’m never at the house,” when in reality I 
        went there regularly, including most Tuesdays during football season.

    (x) I gave my publicist wrong information to release to the public to cover 
        up my not wanting to attend a Washington, D.C., event when I was 
        scheduled to speak as an advocate for after-school children’s programs. 
        The statement contradicted Air Tran airline, which ruined the business 
        relationship we had with one another.

    (x) I lied to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Falcons owner Arthur Blank 
        and my lawyer, Billy Martin, about my involvement in dogfighting.

     All of this happened in a span of less than half a year!

     When the dogfighting allegation surfaced, my lawyer told me, "If you were involved, 
you need to tell me you were involved." That's when it was on the state rather than the 
federal level. I kept telling him, "No, no, I wasn't involved, no, no." The whole time 
they were building the case, my lawyer was saying "no" but he was seeing all this evidence 
saying "yes." If I had just told the truth, maybe I would've received a smack on the wrist 
instead of a lengthy sentence.

     So now that I think about it, I believe it was the Lord. It was God saying, "Kid, I 
gave you a chance to get this thing right." It was like, "Carry your ass to jail." I know 
He didn’t say it like that, but it was like, "Go on. You need to do some time. You need to 
learn a lesson."

     He gave me a chance. He gave me three months – April through July – to go to all 
these people and say, "Look, I was wrong," and to get the correct advice, and to use it 
correctly. But I didn't do it.

Excerpt 2

	I woke up on Nov. 19, 2007, to a cloudy, gloomy day, which matched the way I 
felt inside.

     It was the day I had been dreading for weeks. It was time to leave my family 
to go to jail and begin serving a prison term that was still three weeks away 
from being finalized in my sentencing hearing.

     Turning myself in early was one way of putting myself at the mercy of the 
court. I hadn’t helped my case two months earlier when, after pleading guilty 
to the dog fighting charges, I tested positive for marijuana while on supervised 
release.

     The day when I had to leave my family behind was one of the saddest days of 
my life.

     My family and I would ride from our home in Hampton, Va., to the courthouse 
in Richmond, and from there I would be taken to jail in Warsaw, Va.

     The whole time leading up to that point meant a lot to me. Every day 
counted – every hour, every minute, every second – even at night, going to sleep.

     I woke up that morning and I told myself, “This is the day.”

     My girlfriend, Kijafa Frink, and I had two children – Jada, who was 3, and 
London, an infant who was only a month old.

     Jada could tell something was different about that day.

     When I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth, she asked Kijafa, “Mommy, 
what are we doing?” It was like she sensed that something wasn’t right. It was 
like, “Why are we getting up so early? Where are we going?” She said it with a 
crack in her voice that she knew something was wrong.

     When I walked back into the room, Kijafa was laying on the bed crying 
because she knew it was real. We cried on the bed and finally got ourselves 
together.

     Kijafa would later say she was so distraught she felt her life was almost 
over.

     We were driven to the Richmond courthouse by my security guard, Paul 
Wilmeyer.

     The whole time we were in the car, off and on, I just kept crying. I’d cry 
and I’d cheer myself up. I’d cry and I’d cheer myself up. Even in the car, every 
second, every minute counted. We were 45 miles away, so we had about an hour to 
relax. Then we were 30 miles, 20 miles.

     Then we pulled up to the courthouse, and Kijafa said, “Please don’t go, 
don’t leave.” My daughter, she was just crying out of her mind. She was three 
years old and it was like, “How does she even know what’s going on?” I guess she 
saw me crying and she saw her mom crying and she must’ve felt it. She was just 
in outrage, crying like a monster was trying to get her.

     I just had to walk away from the car. I shook hands with Paul, shook hands 
with C.J. Reamon, my close friend and personal assistant.

     Then I told everybody that I loved them and I walked up to the two officers 
who were waiting for me. When I walked myself in, they started handcuffing me 
right there on the spot. They put the cuffs on my hands and put the cuffs on my 
legs.

     At that moment, my freedom was gone.

Table of Contents

Foreword
By Tony Dungy

Introduction
By Charles Chandler

Chapter One
In The Beginning

Chapter Two
Seven’s Heaven

Chapter Three
Blacksburg’s A Blast

Chapter Four
Favorite Falcon

Chapter Five
Dirty Bird

Chapter Six
Dog Days

Chapter Seven
Failing The Truth Test

Chapter Eight
The Prison Experience

Chapter Nine
Mad Money

Chapter Ten
Family Time

Chapter Eleven
Starting Over

Chapter Twelve
A Crucial Offseason

Chapter Thirteen
MV 2.0: The 2010-11 Season

Chapter Fourteen
Moving Forward

Postscript