“It’s scary when you’re not Superman anymore,” he says. “When this game is over, where are your roots? I don’t have that computer in my head that says ‘Dexter, do this’.” What he does have, he says, is sobriety, regular rehab meetings, his own TV interview show and newspaper column. Best of all, “I can read my own book” with the skill he developed at the Lab School in Washington, D.C., for the learning-disabled with his tutor, Sara Hines. No, best of all is his family, his wife of eight years, Glinda (“been through hell”), two sons and a daughter. “I lived in fear of my daddy. He never hugged or kissed me. I broke the cycle. My kids get tired of huggin’ and kissin’.”
In the NFL now, says Manley, “they want smarter guys for today’s market and society. I just wanted to play football, chase women, kick somebody’s head off. I still got problems. But I also got solutions. A lot of people care about me. Now I gotta care about me.”
