You get him on the field and he's a different guy. When his father, who didn't live with the family, died during Hampton's 11th grade year, he used the Social Security checks to buy his a car for his mother. Ivory Anderson refused to go on welfare while struggling to make ends meet and raising four children, ages 13 to 28, in the projects. I had to work harder to do what I could to help. It made me appreciate things.
Football is a tough game.
You've got to do what you can to get it done. Hampton had watched as his mother stood at the bus stop, sometimes in the rain, to go to work at a hospital cafeteria, a Kentucky Fried Chicken and, for the past seven years, cleaning rooms at a retirement home in Galveston. Hampton knew that the NFL was their means to escaping that lifestyle. He wasn't really worried about his first paycheck, just where he would go in the draft and what team he would play for. The Steelers were impressed when Hampton completed his pre-draft workout for them last month despite a pulled hamstring.