Second Efforts

By Joe Gutierrez

Spring/Summer 2005

Playing in Super Bowl XXIX in 1995 for the San Diego Chargers pales in comparison to the paper Mark Seay received last December.

Clearly, it better be a darn good piece of paper to surpass the gritty glory of battling in a Super Bowl. But there he was, standing on the podium in early December, standing among 750 other CSUSB graduates, shaking hands with Jack Brown, a former football coach himself, who handed the 37-year-old Seay a CSUSB bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

“This goes to show,” said Seay, “that no matter what you do or what type of adversity you face, education is important to fight for. It took me six years, but I made it!” Seay, who now works in community relations for Stater Bros. Markets, has experienced more as a youth and later in early adulthood than most people have seen in their lifetime.

Signed by the Texas Rangers baseball team upon graduation from San Bernardino High School, Seay was recruited to play football for Cal State Long Beach for the late Hall of Fame Coach George Allen. But his athletic career was almost cut short in 1988 when he was the victim of a drive-by shooting. Doctors removed a kidney and left a bullet lodged three inches from his heart and told him his athletic career was over.

In a reverse Knute Rockne kind of way, it may have been the best pep talk he’d ever heard. Seay came back to play for Long Beach State, where he led the conference in receptions. He then signed as a free agent with the San Francisco 49ers and a year later signed with the San Diego Chargers. He had one of the best years of his career in 1994. The following January, he made the game-winning touchdown catch that led to the Charger’s only appearance in the Super Bowl, the dream of every football player, and he entered the record books by catching the first two-point conversion pass in Super Bowl history.

But a bachelor’s degree was a lifelong dream. “This is far and beyond better. The Super Bowl was just for a moment. Getting my degree is something I will have for the rest of my life,” said the San Bernardino native. “The Super Bowl was for me and my teammates. My degree is for my family, my son who’s in the second grade. I’m setting an example for him to aspire to receive his university degree too.”

Besides family, one man has been instrumental in urging Seay to get his degree – Stater Bros. Markets chairman and CEO, Jack H. Brown. The two men met when Seay was a 15-year-old sophomore at San Bernardino High School and Brown, a San Bernardino High School alumnus, was a volunteer coach.

“Even though Mark played in the Super Bowl,” Brown said, “he knew that in the Super Bowl of ‘life’ he would need this university degree to be able to compete. So, he went after it just like he did for many game-winning passes in the NFL.”

Brown would always visit with students, delivering motivational talks. “He would urge us on to do our best,” Seay said. “A lot of the things he said made sense. He would do whatever he could to help us.” The two men kept in contact and became good friends, and Mark worked at Stater Bros. during summers and vacation periods while attending Long Beach State. After his retirement from the NFL, Seay went to work for Stater Bros. And at the urging of those around him, Seay enrolled at Cal State San Bernardino in 2002, picking up where he left off at Long Beach State as a criminal justice major.

“I promised my mom, I promised my dad and I promised Jack,” Seay said. “He urged me to go back and get my degree.” And now with a degree in hand, Seay said he plans to continue serving as a motivational speaker to high school students in the inland region and prepare for a criminal justice career as a gang counselor. Take away the fact that he has survived a shooting, had an NFL career and played in a Super Bowl, Seay can sound like any other college graduate. “I feel a lot better now that it’s all over.”

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