Leinart angered by media criticism
BY DAN BICKLEY | THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
<!--ARTICLE BODY TEXT-->SANTA ANA, Calif. - There are no signs of Hollywood in the Leinart neighborhood.
No signs of Paris, either.
There are just modest homes bunched inside a middle-aged suburb, a place where modest people work and live and tend to their gardens.
Here, they don't worry about photographers hiding behind trees.
"Dude, I remember when I was a kid and all the kids from the neighborhood ..." Matt Leinart said, looking wistfully down the street.
But like his sense of innocence, the sentence just dies.
At the tender age of 23, Leinart has already absorbed some rough hits and tough lessons. He has grown weary of the media, leery of people outside his small circle of trust. The chip on his shoulder is great news for his new employer, the Arizona Cardinals.
"I won 37 of 39 college games, and suddenly, I'm too Hollywood? That my arm strength is a negative? I mean, what's the deal? What happened here?" Leinart said. "I'm so tired of the drama. The whole thing has just brought me down."
And it hurts his mother something fierce.
"We're a family, a middle class family," his mother, Linda, said. "We're totally unprepared for this world."
Deconstruct Matt Leinart all you want. Dissect his arm strength and his laid-back demeanor. Fixate on his relationship with a hotel heiress. Ultimately, the story always comes down to money.
After winning the Heisman Trophy and a national championship as a junior at Southern California, it was widely assumed that Leinart would be the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft.
Except he decided to stay in school because he was already happy ... because he was hurting physically and his body just didn't feel ready for the NFL ... because chasing money wasn't the game he was playing in the first place.
While Leinart has yet to sign a contract with the Cardinals, here's a rough idea of the losses involved:
The No. 1 pick in the 2005 draft (quarterback Alex Smith) received a $24 million signing bonus. The No. 10 pick (wide receiver Mike Williams ) received a $10.7 million bonus.
The math is simple, grotesque and largely misleading.
"People say he lost all this money," Linda said. "Well, it was money he never had. Second of all, there is no price for happiness. Matt was not mentally ready to leave, he was not physically ready to leave. Now he is. I think he's going to the perfect spot, and you can't put a price tag on that. I think people need to put this in perspective."
Besides, the math is based on an erroneous assumption. Had Leinart left USC as a junior, there's no guarantee he would've been the No. 1 pick. He could've slipped in 2005 the way he slipped in 2006. In fact, his father is sure of it.
"He was hurt," Bob Leinart said. "He wouldn't have been 100 percent when he worked out and the (NFL) scouts, they're brutal. They would've killed him."
But, no doubt, the decision to stay in school ultimately worked against Leinart.
It gave off signals that he was too enamored with the Hollywood scene, too in love with being the big man on campus, and that playing professional football wasn't that important.
And in a sad twist, he is now the poster boy for not staying in school.
"Everyone praised me for that decision, for being the guy that stayed in school," Matt said. "And now I'm getting blasted for it. It's a joke."
As the outside world caves in on Leinart, he is finding solace in a familiar place:
His family.
In Arizona, Leinart will live with his older brother Ryan, his best friend from high school and his new pet, a bulldog named Max. His parents are coming in later this week to help him find a house, and they plan on attending every game the Cardinals play.
"We're going to have a strong support system there for him," Bob said.
It's the way it has always been.
While operating his own giftware business, Bob Leinart was able to invest much time with his two boys. He taught them how to play soccer, basketball and baseball. He boasts how he attended all their games and all their practices.
They grew even closer when Bob underwent emergency quadruple bypass surgery 12 years ago, surviving a close brush with death. During Matt's career at USC, the father drove to Los Angeles every Wednesday to have lunch with his son.
Ryan is five years older than Matt, and has always kept his younger brother grounded. But you want love? When Matt was entering high school, Ryan paid for his younger brother to attend a football camp for assimilation purposes.
It came out of money Ryan earned parking cars.
And his mother?
Well, she is Matt's original bulldog, comforting her son, protecting her son, helping him find balance in a tilted world. And as they share a couch, it's obvious they are very close, very comfortable in each other's presence.
"I never wanted my kids to move to another state, but it's the best thing that's going to happen to him," said Linda, a school secretary for the Orange County Department of Education. "I also explained to him that, when I was 22, I made a lot of mistakes. But no one cared what Linda did. I remember my brother running down the street with a BB gun to shoot the boy I was dating ... but who cared? Nobody."
"But Matt hasn't even slipped up. He hasn't made any mistakes. He's done everything right. It's just what they've made him."
Here's what happened to Matt Leinart:
He became close friends with a guy named Nick (Lachey), who was married to a pop star named Jessica (Simpson). Nick and Jessica had a really bad television show, precisely the kind of show that feeds the tabloids like a slow-drip IV. Suddenly, Leinart found himself swimming in the fishbowl.
Making matters even more complicated, the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Dodgers were struggling and Kobe Bryant was going through personal/injury problems. Leinart became the pin-up quarterback for the only really good team in Los Angeles, and the best Trojans became rock stars.
"I don't blame (USC coach) Pete Carroll for any of this, but he encourages Hollywood people to come to practice ... Snoop Dogg and Will Ferrell," Bob said. "I don't think he saw the repercussions."
It gets worse. After Matt had the gall to lose a second football game - the national championship game against Texas - the quarterback became linked with Paris Hilton. And just last week, another picture surfaced on the Internet, this one featuring Leinart leaving Hilton's mansion in the morning.
It was the moment when a mom knew her son had to leave L.A.
"Nick Lachey is just the most down-to-earth person you can imagine," Linda said. "And Paris is just a friend. Paris ... I hope she can turn her story around because she's actually a very nice person."
You might not know this, but Matt Leinart was not always a pretty boy.
He was born cross-eyed. He wore big glasses. He says he was overweight, and to prove it, he goes and gets pictures off his bedroom wall.
"I had the whole dorky look going," Leinart said. "I was a fat kid, and I'd get made fun of. I wouldn't want to take my shirt off. When I didn't have my glasses on and I was tired, my eye would cross, so everyone made fun of that, too. Kids are so cruel to each other. But fortunately, I was good at sports. If I wasn't, I probably would've killed myself."
He points to a picture of himself in Little League.
"See? Here's a fat one," Leinart said. "I was huge. But I threw gas."
Now, ask yourself:
Would a superficial, image-conscious Hollywood type be talking so openly about cosmetic flaws?
Probably not.
"Once people know me, or are around me, they know how I am," Matt said. "I just hang out. I don't do anything. I lead a boring life. I mean, Mom, what do I do?"
Answered Linda: "He's not a partier. He'll go to parties, but he's never been a partier. He likes to hang out, play video games, have dinner with his parents."
Alas, this will be quite a shock for all the nightclub owners in the Valley, the ones that eagerly await Leinart and his Hollywood posse.
"They're not going to see me much," he said. "They're going to be disappointed."
The guess here is, they'll be the only ones.
