CLUES IN SALAAM DEATH POINT TO HEAVY BURDEN
1994 winner saw Heisman as more curse than coup
Before he committed suicide this month at age 42, Rashaan Salaam often seemed to struggle with 45 pounds of extra weight on his back.
That’s roughly how much it measured on the scale — the Heisman Trophy. The trophy seemed to burden him before he even won it, in the fall of 1994.
“I’m scared,” he said then. “I really don’t want to win it because I know how much pressure is put upon me.”
After Salaam won it, that view only seemed to get worse.
He described it like a curse, an impossible set of expectations that followed him everywhere. The stiff-armed statue bedeviled him in other strange ways, too. In 2011, a family member sold Salaam’s Heisman ring for more than $8,000, according to Salaam’s brother.
The trophy itself is also missing, according to an official at the University of Colorado, where Salaam played from 1992 to 1994.
Two Heisman Trophies are awarded to the annual winner — one to the player, the other to the player’s school. Colorado keeps one of Salaam’s Heisman trophies on display here, but the whereabouts of Salaam’s personal Heisman are a mystery. His father said he didn’t know where it was, and his brother said he last heard it was in storage, but he wasn’t sure.
“The Heisman is currently lost — the family (or Salaam) loaned it to someone for display and it was supposed to be sent back to his mom, but it never showed up,” CU sports information director Dave Plati told USA TODAY Sports.
Ultimately, even the time and place of his shocking death seemed to be shadowed by the trophy. He didn’t choose to die at home, where he lived in Superior, Colo. Instead, he picked a quiet park about 12 miles away in Boulder, just a short hike up the Boulder Creek path from the football stadium where he galloped his way to the Heisman as a Colorado running back.
He died Monday night, Dec. 5, the same week of the year he otherwise might be preparing to go to the annual Heisman Trophy presentation in New York. This year’s Heisman ceremony was Dec. 10. He didn’t plan to go.
“Rashaan had previously indicated to us that he would be unable to attend the Heisman this year,” Heisman Trophy coordinator Tim Henning told USA TODAY Sports.
Perhaps no one will ever understand why Salaam felt compelled to kill himself. Family and friends described hints of depression hidden beneath his giving personality and beaming smile. His brother said Salaam had symptoms associated with football head trauma, including memory loss. But there was one memory he would not forget, and it defined his life, for better or worse. He won the Heisman, arguably the most prestigious individual award in American sports.
And that was a huge blessing for him, giving him fame and popularity and a marketing campaign that he later used to help underprivileged kids.
Yet it also sometimes felt like a hex. And he never quite got over it. He also often failed to grasp just how many people loved him for it. THE QUIET PLAN This is where he died — at a neighborhood park at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, a quiet place with towering trees and a playground, next to a creek that flowed by the campus and stadium where he made his name.
The clues indicate he planned it all out. He chose a secluded area away from visible traffic. A note was found, his mother, Khalada, told USA TODAY Sports the next day. Its contents have not been disclosed.
“It was a very short, private note,” said his brother, Jabali Alaji. “But it explained a lot ... I’ll never reveal exactly what it said.”
The cause of death has not been officially released. But multiple people indicated to USA TODAY Sports that Salaam shot himself. His mother, who had possession of Salaam’s trophy after he won it, declined further comment.
Salaam gave no apparent advance notice of his final act. Two people told USA TODAY Sports they spoke with Salaam by phone in the hours before his death: Alaji and Tim James, a safety on Colorado’s 1990 national championship team who became friends with Salaam in later years.
Alaji and James said Salaam gave no hint of his fatal plans. Alaji described it as a “very positive conversation” and said he and Salaam “made plans for the future.”
James said he spoke with Salaam for about 90 minutes, and the topics included CU’s successful football season this year. At the end of the call, James said he urged Salaam to answer the phone when he called him in the future because Salaam had shown a tendency in recent months for being unresponsive to text messages and phone calls.
Likewise, former teammates had trouble reaching him, including Blake Anderson, a former CU receiver. John Reid, a partner in Salaam’s charitable endeavors, also wondered where he was.
“Some of the volunteers were wanting to know if we were going to plan a winter program this year for the kids,” said Reid, who collaborated with Salaam to send at-risk teens on a ski trip to Aspen in 2015. “We kept calling him. He had sort of gone into seclusion. Blake was actually calling me and asking if I had heard from him. I said, ‘ No, have you heard from him?’ ”
They didn’t know. Nobody really knew. Outwardly, Salaam could flash his famous smile and give the appearance of happiness.
“He was just that type of infectious personality, so happy,” former Colorado receiver Michael Westbrook said. “I guess he was just really good at hiding and concealing anything that was hurting him.”
It was easy to conceal if he kept to himself, alone in his condo down the Boulder turnpike in Superior. It appeared to be a comfortable place for a young, single adult, a one-bedroom unit in a clean, gated community with a view of the Flatiron Crossing shopping mall.
Less than a week after his death, his family and friends gathered to empty it out. Alaji said he looked but found no bottles of alcohol or pills.
He said he spoke with his brother regularly and that Salaam had “all the symptoms” of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is associated with football head trauma.
“He had the symptoms the whole time,” Alaji said. “Maybe he was in denial. He was too prideful to go out here and say, ‘I physically need help.’ ”
At Salaam’s funeral service in Boulder, his father, Sultan Salaam, described his son as having had a “mental breakdown.” About a week later, at a memorial for Salaam in his hometown of San Diego, he expressed anguish to a crowd of friends and family.
“Open the door!” he said. “Love your family. Talk to your family. Real talk. Do not joke. Do not play. Life is serious.”
Afterward, Sultan Salaam said the circumstances that led his son’s death are unclear and might never be known.
“It could be concussions,” he said. “It could be something else.” TRAIL OF DESPAIR Of the eight top votegetters for the 1994 Heisman Trophy, three are dead.
Former Nebraska running back Lawrence Phillips finished eighth that year and died in January after hanging himself in prison at age 40. Third-place finisher Steve McNair, a former quarterback for Alcorn State, was killed in 2009 at age 36, victim of a murder-suicide in which his girlfriend fatally shot McNair before killing herself.
This eerie trail of despair also extends to the NFL, where Salaam played for the Chicago Bears and took handoffs as a rookie in 1995 from quarterback Erik Kramer, who struggled with depression and shot himself in the head last year but survived.
In retrospect, Salaam’s mother seemed prophetic in 1994 when she told a reporter that her son was reluctant about winning the Heisman because, she said, “He seems to think some of the guys who won it in recent years haven’t done that well and that there might be some kind of negative thing attached to it.”
It’s called the Heisman curse — a spotty correlation between some trophy winners and their lack of success in subsequent bowl games or the NFL.
Salaam experienced no such curse in the Fiesta Bowl against Notre Dame, scoring three touchdowns in a 41-24 win. He also rushed for 1,074 yards and was named NFC rookie of the year for the Chicago Bears in 1995.
Instead, the Heisman represented unwanted pressure for Salaam, who often seemed more content being a face in the crowd among teammates or hanging out with friends from San Diego or Colorado. He deflected praise to his offensive linemen so often in 1994 that it seemed he wanted them to have the trophy instead.
“It was always about the teammates,” former CU safety Chris Hudson said of Salaam’s outlook.
After injuries cut short his NFL career, Salaam still described the Heisman as a burden in his post-playing life, James said.
“He just thought it was a curse, the Heisman was a curse, and he didn’t live up to the expectations in his mind,” James said. “It just didn’t pan out for him in his mind. He struggled with that.”
It was a matter of perspective. He didn’t find glory and immense wealth in the NFL, but not many do. His first contract was for four years and $3.8 million. After the NFL, he co-founded a company called the Art of War that helped promote mixed martial arts events in China. That didn’t make him wealthy, either, but longtime friend Greg Morrissey said Salaam was financially comfortable. Morrissey described Salaam as “everyone’s best friend” and questions whether Salaam’s outlook would have changed if his NFL career was more successful.
The Heisman “can be a plus or it can be a negative,” Morrissey said. “Injuries happen and things come up. To be that young, to go in that league, to have success as a rookie, a 1,000-yard rusher and three years later be out of the league, and a Heisman Trophy winner? That’s a hard deal, man.”
In recent years, Salaam moved back from San Diego to Colorado, where the community embraced him. He served as grand marshal of the CU homecoming parade in 2014 and started working with atrisk kids.
“When you give that much of yourself away, when you need something one day, there’s not much (of yourself to) hold on to,” said Shannon Clavelle, another former CU teammate. “It’s spread out so much. But he loved doing that. That’s what he was about.”
Salaam spent time with kids through a charity called SPIN, which stands for Supporting People in Need.
Riley Robert Hawkins, who founded the SPIN organization, said he sensed Salaam had regrets that his football career came to an end after parts of four seasons. Kids helped him get away from that.
“He loved Colorado and he loved CU and he loved making kids laugh and trying to figure out where their hurts are, and where they’re misunderstood,” Hawkins said. “Sometimes I think he was misunderstood, too.” ‘HE DIDN’T HAVE AN EGO’ The Heisman Trophy isn’t easy to tote around and doesn’t exactly fit in the storage bins of an airplane. So Salaam had to find another place for it as he made his way back to Colorado from New York, where he won the award decisively in December 1994.
He placed it on the seat next to him on the airplane.
“It had its own seat in first class with a blue blanket over it,” said Plati of CU. “Made it look like E.T.”
It was an unforgettable time in an unforgettable season. Salaam was barely 20 but burst to fame while becoming just the fourth player in major-college football history to gain at least 2,000 yards rushing in a season. He slashed for big gains behind his blockers all season, helping the Buffaloes finish No. 3 nationally with an 11-1 record, with the lone defeat coming against the Nebraska, the eventual national champion.
In one game, a 27-26 win at Michigan, he rushed for 141 yards and two touchdowns before throwing a key block on the game’s final play, when his quarterback, Kordell Stewart, launched a game-winning Hail Mary touchdown pass to Westbrook as time expired. A week later, Salaam rumbled for 317 yards to help CU beat Texas 34-31 on a hot day in Austin.
On his final regular-season college play, he raced downfield for a 67-yard run in a win at home against Iowa State, giving him 2,055 yards and 24 touchdowns for the season. His teammates swarmed him in the end zone and lifted him up.
About 20 years later, the sparks of those college years still burned. About two years ago, he ran into Shelley Martin, who lived in the same dorm as Salaam at CU during their college days.
The relationship blossomed the last two years, said Martin, his girlfriend.
“I don’t want our pain to be in vain,” she wrote in an email. “Still in disbelief and hurt. … Hoping he will be coming through the door, pick me up. … Never this pain I have felt.”
In early 2015, Salaam helped organize a “Ski for Heisman” event in Aspen that brought about 30 inner-city teens to the slopes with law-enforcement officers. The idea was to improve relations with police and at-risk youth.
Reid, who helped raise funds for the event, remembers CU alumni and fans in Aspen asking Salaam for photographs and autographs. They didn’t care about the length of his NFL career or how famous he did or didn’t become after leaving CU.
“One night, the kids were back in their rooms, and we were just hanging out,” Reid said. “I remember saying to him, ‘You don’t get it. You don’t have a grasp of how people hold you and what they think of you.’ ”
According to Reid, Salaam responded by asking if these people really knew who he was.
“Holy crap!” Reid said he told Salaam. “They know who you are, dude!”
“He didn’t have an ego,” Reid said. “I just think he was there for the right reasons and he was oblivious to himself being a superstar or someone who people held in high regard.”
More people now wish they had told him about how much they loved him. But they didn’t know he didn’t know. And he wasn’t showing he needed it.
“It’s about holding on to pain and not letting people know what’s really going on,” said Alaji, his brother. “They’re gladiators. They’re strong people. … Whenever something goes wrong, or they hurt, they would never let the world know until almost like it’s too late.”
Salaam’s father said if there was anything that should be said or written about his son it was this: “He was a team player,” he said. “That means together each achieves more. Not by yourself.”
As for the Heisman, Salaam’s father said it was only a football award and didn’t define his son’s life.
“It is very damaging to hear some of the reports coming out, like he had a long, slow fall from grace,” he said. “The Heisman Trophy is an award given for football. There is no long, slow fall. It’s a football award. You can’t put anybody on a pedestal like that.”