Curtis Martin is the sixth leading rusher in NFL history.
He didn't like football. At all. For his entire career.
And when Bill Parcells called to tell him he'd been drafted, Martin hung up the phone and told his family he didn't want to play.
Point Breeze, Pittsburgh. Curtis Martin grew up watching his father beat his mother.
The line he used about her at his Hall of Fame induction is one of the hardest things ever said from that podium: you'd get punched in the face and go to work with a black eye with makeup on just to support us.
His father left the family in 1978. His mother worked three jobs.
His grandmother was murdered. His aunt died. And Curtis himself had a gun put to his head as a teenager.
His words: "God's honest truth, the bullet didn't come out."
He didn't think he would live to 21.
He didn't play a down of football until his SENIOR year of high school, and only then because his mother pushed him into it to keep him off the street.
He was good enough to go to Pitt. Good enough that in 1995 the New England Patriots took him in the third round.
And here's the draft day story you've never heard.
He got off the phone with Bill Parcells, turned around to his entire family, and said: "Oh my gosh, I do not want to play football. I don't even know that I like football enough to try to make a career out of it."
His pastor, Leroy Joseph, happened to be in the room.
And he said one thing that changed everything.
"Curtis, look at it this way, man. Maybe football is just something that God is giving you to do all those wonderful things that you say you want to do for other people."
Martin described that moment as a light bulb coming on.
His own conclusion: "I knew the only way I was going to be successful at this game called football is if I played for a purpose that was bigger than the game itself, because I knew that the love for the game just wasn't in my heart."
Then he went out and put together one of the greatest careers a running back has ever had.
He ran 30 yards on his first NFL carry, scored the game winning touchdown, and became the first Patriot ever to rush for 100 yards in his pro debut. Offensive Rookie of the Year.
Eleven seasons. Five Pro Bowls. A rushing title in 2004 at age 31, with a career high 1,697 yards.
He and Barry Sanders are the only backs in history to open their careers with TEN consecutive 1,000 yard seasons.
He finished with 14,101 rushing yards. When he walked away in 2006 that was FOURTH all time. Two decades later, after Frank Gore and Adrian Peterson passed him, he's still sixth.
He did all of it without loving the thing he was doing.
In August 2012 he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. He spoke for 27 minutes with no notes in front of 12,100 people.
"I don't necessarily have notes, so I'm going to just bare my soul. So bear with me."
He said the honor made him feel awkward and out of place, because he'd never been able to identify with the love and passion the other men in that room had for football.
And then he told the crowd what he actually considered his greatest accomplishment.
Not the yards. Not the Pro Bowls. Not the bust.
Getting his mother to forgive his father.
Parcells, who introduced him, put it simply. He has tremendous compassion for his fellow man. He is the poster child for what the NFL is supposed to be.
One more thing.
Martin said he finally became a fan of football that same week, on the Friday before his induction, after hearing 93 year old Bills owner Ralph Wilson talk about the game.
He entered the Hall of Fame roughly 24 hours after becoming a fan of the sport.
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