Chasing down the defenders: Roynell Young
Eagles career: His nine seasons here began with the run to the Super Bowl and ended in the Fog Bowl. Indeed, he was often a phantom, as writer Ray Didinger summarized the day after Young was cut. "He passed through here like a train with its window shades drawn and its lights down low." Young admitted as much on the phone. "I'm talking more now than when I was there," he said, laughing at the idea that anyone would call him today. "I'm Joe Public now and loving every second of it." The franchise's top pick in 1980 out of Alcorn State started 109 games at cornerback and finished with 23 regular-season interceptions. He was a Pro Bowler in 1981. It was all good, he said. "Overall, I wouldn't trade it for anything. For me, it was special because I was a newlywed, my wife and I had just married straight out of college. We had our son there. So many magical things that when you reflect back you say, 'Man, 20 years, if I had known it would have gone that fast, I would have paused a little more ." Their son returned home from Iraq last year after a stint as a medical corpsman.
Where he is now: In Houston, the founder and CEO of Pro-Vision Inc. (provision-inc.org), a program that provides structure and motivation for young men whose lives are beginning to fray. "Pro-Vision is about proactively choosing to see something that doesn't yet exist but is there, and it's your job to unearth it," he said. They own a 16-acre campus and are a month away from opening their first building. A staff of 22 handles around 125 kids, grades five through eight. "I'm excited and nervous all at the same time because I realize that the true mark of what we're doing here is not necessarily when I'm here with it, but it's going to be laying the groundwork for who comes behind me."
Eagles memory: He lived in the Wanamaker House for several years here, "so I would just walk right down and catch the Broad Street Subway. A couple of times there were players who'd ask me after the game what I was doing on the subway. 'Going home, like you.' All in all, I appreciated the fans, the way they embraced me."
Perspective on today's game: He rarely watches, but said that he keeps up through conversations with former college roommate Leslie Frazier, the Vikings' defensive coordinator. "He and I talk about eras. kids are typical of what I deal with at the school. That's the reality. It's a different young man today, a different reality financially."
