Catching up with ... Corey Harris

Four years ago, Corey Harris did the unthinkable. He sold his Super Bowl ring. Strapped financially, saddled with business debts, the former Ravens' starting safety had no choice.

“I was struggling,” said Harris, who played on Baltimore's 2000 NFL champions. “I was at a place in my life where I needed to sell it. I'd made mistakes. Call it immaturity, ignorance or being distracted by the wrong things. Some people have to hit bottom before they can focus again. That happened to me.”

Now Harris, 42, wants to keep other athletes from doing the same. In Nashville, his hometown, he has established a sports education training program for youths from third grade on up. He gives them football, plus a playbook on life skills.

“We're going to partner with banks and businesses, to expose kids to money, credit and investments,” said Harris. “These are arenas where they need instruction, even if they're not going to play pro ball. And I feel like I'm a teacher, at heart.”

It's paramount, he said, for athletes to learn to choose their associates wisely.

“Problems like mine happen when you have people whom you trust, but who aren't qualified (to help), or people who are qualified, but whom you don't trust,” Harris said. “Those are bad fundamentals.”
A 12-year NFL journeyman, Harris played for six teams, none for longer than the Ravens (1998-2001). Fans remember his role in a rousing 38-31 defeat of Indianapolis in 1998, the Colts' first game in Baltimore since skipping town in 1984.

Harris juiced the crowd that day by returning kickoffs for 55, 49 and 47 yards.

“What I remember was that, on every return, I think, I was tackled by the (Colts') kicker,” he said. “The guys liked to kid me about that.”

A standout on special teams, Harris started several games at safety during the Ravens' march to the Super Bowl. In the 34-7 title win over the New York Giants, he threw two key blocks to spring Jermaine Lewis on the latter's 84-yard kickoff return for a touchdown.

“The crazy thing was, I'd slept through most of the team meeting the night before the Super Bowl,” Harris said. “I woke up in the hotel in Tampa Bay and ran downstairs, with my heart beatin' fast. (Defensive coordinator) Marvin Lewis just looked at me and asked, ‘You OK?' There was no yelling. He showed true concern.

“Those were the kind of men that I'm proud to say I went to battle with.”

Few Ravens dressed sharper than Harris, whose flashy wardrobe wowed his teammates. One day, he'd wear platinum pants with a see-through sheer shirt; the next, it would be a red leopard print coat with mink-topped shoes.

“I never said I was the best-dressed guy on the team, only the most eclectically-dressed individual,” he said. “My clothing and my hair showed my entertainment side. I dyed my hair blond before the 2000 playoffs and kept it, until we won the Super Bowl.”

Then, the atmosphere in the Ravens' locker room was perhaps the most relaxed in football, thanks to Harris' efforts.

“I was ‘The Music Man,'” he said. “I'd get there four hours early, set up my portable Sony speakers and get my playlists together.”

Once, Harris ran late, prompting coach Brian Billick to walk past his locker with furrowed brow.

“He didn't hear anything, and he thought something was wrong,” Harris said.

A full-time starter in 2001, he left Baltimore that winter when the Ravens let him slip into free agency. Harris played two more years with the Detroit Lions and retired to Nashville, home of Vanderbilt, his alma mater.

Life was good. He ran a sports bar, a jazz club and a youth performing arts center. He established an independent record label and wrote a self-published novel, “S.L.O.W. (Secret Lives of the Wives),” based loosely on his private life as an NFL player. Harris has been wed three times.

Then misfortune struck, a time he calls “the fire in my life.”

What went wrong?.

“I didn't stick to the plan,” said Harris, who left it at that.

He now lives in Brentwood, Tenn. with his wife, Stacie, whose ex-husband, Chris Sanders, played for the Tennessee Titans. Harris' stepson, C.J. Sanders, is a high school football star and onetime child actor who played the young Ray Charles in the 2004 film, “Ray.”