Devote yourself in full every day to your job or your schoolwork, then get your rear end back to this house and devote yourself in full to your family. Adults will be respected here; children will be supervised. You want to play football? It better not get in the way of your chores. You want to run around at night? Then you'd better be a man and handle your business.
Inside the home of Benjamin Rogers--son of a minister, grandson of a minister, himself a laborer for General Motors in the hard-edged, industrial town of Saginaw, Mich.--the old saws whirred. Despite that, and because of it, here a superstar was born.
Ask one of the people who raised him, ask his high school coach, ask his current coaches and teammates at Michigan State in nearby East Lansing--they'll all say Charles Rogers is as humble and level-headed as a kid from Saginaw with the keys to wealth and fame possibly could be. Rogers is the best player in college football, and next year or the year after--bet on the former--he'll be one of the first players selected in the NFL draft. "And it won't change him," says his uncle Ronnie Rogers. "He'll handle it well because he knows how to face whatever challenge arises. He's already faced a lot of them."
As a wide receiver with great size (6-4, 205) and speed (4.25 seconds in the 40-yard dash), excellent hands and an unmatched ability to adjust to a ball in the air, Rogers is too much to handle for any defender he'll face all year. Not counting his performance in last season's Silicon Valley Bowl--which he dominated with 10 catches for 270 yards and two scores--Rogers has caught at least one touch-down pass in 11 straight games. With one this Saturday against Notre Dame--which MSU has beaten five years running---he'll tie the NCAA Division I-A record shared by former Michigan player Desmond Howard and former Marshall star Randy Moss. One won a Heisman Trophy for the Wolverines, the Spartans' sworn enemies. The other merely is the most gifted wide receiver alive.
Years ago, Charlie Rogers was a boy in need of male guidance. High school would be starting soon, and his single mother, Cathy, who worked nights, didn't want her only child to be alone at home. So she sent him a mile or so down the road to live with her father, Benjamin. He and son Ronnie, an industrial `electrician who always had looked out for Charlie, now had their mitts on him every day. They would teach him to be a Rogers man, which means, in Ronnie's plain speech, "We're homebodies who take care of our responsibilities in every aspect of life."
But Charlie didn't come straight home from school every afternoon. By his junior year, he was a record-setting receiver and a state sprint champion. But he also was a father (to Charnae; his second child, Charvez, came two years later). In his first year Michigan State, the kid who had been wanted by Michigan, Florida State, Tennessee and UCLA was practicing with the scout unit of a team that would go 5-6; he was an academic non-qualifier.
Fortunately, this is not where his story ends. Saginaw can treat its offspring harshly. As Don Durrett, Rogers' coach at Saginaw High and now the school's principal, says, "It's a rough, rough town. You can easily get into trouble. Most of our top athletes don't make it out of here."
Rogers' fellow starting receiver in high school, Daniel Smothers, was murdered four nights after he was offered a college scholarship. Saginaw hasn't had a football player make it big since Terry McDaniel, who's now out of the NFL after a solid career. But along with rising NBA star Jason Richardson, Rogers gives the city's youth hope.
When Ronnie Rogers repeats, "We take care of our responsibilities. Do you know what I mean by that?" he's talking about fathers looking after their children. His nephew's children are back in Saginaw with their mother, but their father is very much in their lives. "It's private, man," is what Charles Rogers says when asked to describe their relationship, but he does offer this: "What motivated me when I had to sit out as a freshman, and what motivates me now, is that I have a family of my own. It's all about sacrificing. We've got an understanding. We look at the bigger picture, and it's going to be pretty to paint."
As he nears the day when he can do wondrous good for the people who need him most, Rogers carries along MSU, a talent-rich program that has yet to turn the corner under, third-year coach Bobby Williams. Quarterback Jeff Smoker, who came in with Chuck (that's what his teammates call him) and has been an inseparable friend ever since, is a terrific player and a strong pro prospect. He and Rogers have distinctly different backgrounds--"I can't even imagine what it's like to have kids," Smoker says, "but I know how much he loves them"--and yet are so compatible on the field it's as if they grew up on the same sandlot.
The Spartans' offensive game plan, like Rogers, is multilayered but simple. Longtime offensive coordinator Morris Watts likes to power run, and he uses his receivers in more ways than anyone in the Big Ten except for Purdue offensive mastermind Joe Tiller. Eventually, though, it comes down to the quarterback and the featured receiver.
Get a load of the wideouts MSU has had since the mid-1980s: Mark Ingram, Andre Rison, Courtney Hawkins, Muhsin Muhammad, Derrick Mason and Plaxico Burress. Where does Rogers fit in? "He's as good as any of them," says Watts, "and he could become the best."
Burress was one of a kind with his towering size and strength and his ability to get off the line of scrimmage against any defender. Ingram and Rison were glorious route runners, and Rison could bust big plays like nobody else--until Rogers, who averaged 21.1 yards per catch in his first season and is near that number this year (20.9). Senior corner-back Cedric Henry, who was a starter in Burress' final season and matched up against him in practice every day as he does now with Rogers, says Rogers must get off the line better before he can be considered the better of the two. Watts echoes this.
Rogers appreciates the sentiment behind the criticism, but he doesn't particularly welcome it. He previously has dwelled on negatives in his life and found it wasn't for him. "He's matured as a person and as a football player to where he only focuses on the positives," says his position coach, Don Treadwell.
Rogers applies the same simple philosophy to football that he does to his complicated but rewarding life. Asked to list three areas where he needs to improve as a player, Rogers says, "I don't know if they're there. I'm getting better at everything. That's the way I like to look at it."
What do Miami's Andre Johnson, Texas' Roy Williams, Tennessee's Kelley Washington, Washington's Reggie Williams and Rogers have in common? They're all 6-3 or taller, they all weigh more than 200 pounds, they're all underclass-men--and some combination of them will lead what could be the best draft class of receivers ever into the NFL in 2003. According to one pro scout, if they all are available next year, all five could go in the top 10 of the first round.
The scout says it's too early to rank the players, but his personal favorite is Johnson. "But Roy Williams is right up there, and so is Washington" What about Rogers? "To be honest, I haven't seen as much of him as the other guys. But everybody knows he's a guy to watch. Everybody will have seen a lot of him by the end of the year."
Rogers, more than any of the other four, would benefit from a big season by his team. Michigan State is a major program, but it's not featured in a nationally televised game of the year every other week, nor does it give players quite the same implied credibility that they get at, say, Miami or Tennessee. But imagine if Rogers got to do in the Rose Bowl what he did in the silicon Valley Bowl. The Spartans, though they were awful in a loss to Cal last weekend (Rogers had nine catches for 166 yards and a score), are talented enough to compete for the Big Ten championship.
Might Rogers' early fatherhood and his academic history taint him in the eyes of NFL personnel men? "Oh, yeah, you have to look at all that stuff," says the scout. "But let me tell you something: A whole hell of a lot of these players these days have kids. You talk to enough people to find out about these guys. As long as things aren't affecting their work ethic, you can't afford to be overly skeptical."
As they descend on East Lansing, scouts will learn Rogers' dedication to football is there. No matter whether they're able to view him in the context of great team success--or whether Rogers plays at MSU as a senior--they'll soon get to know the best college receiver in 2002. No one is faster. No one makes more big plays. No one has more to play for.
