By Steve Sears

Someone, somewhere, has that yellow jacket.

Give it up, whoever you are. The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio wants it.

“The security jacket, it was in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl,” says New York Giants former middle linebacker, Harry Carson. As the Giants were wrapping up their Super Bowl XXI victory over the Denver Broncos in 1987, Carson removed his uniform and shoulder pads and donned a security guard jacket as a disguise, grabbed the Gatorade container, and sneaked up on head coach Bill Parcells, all set to give him an orange bath. Bullseye! “And actually, the Hall of Fame has been trying to locate that jacket to put it in the Hall of Fame along with my bust.”

The jacket has never been found, but Carson’s bust has been in the Hall of Fame since he was enshrined in 2006. He has also been a member of the College Football Hall of Fame since 2002, and the Black College Football Hall of Fame since 2012.

Through it all, Carson, 68, says, “I’ve been very lucky. I’ve been very blessed to have been able to do some of the stuff that I’ve been able to do.”

Carson was born and raised in South Carolina, and as he grew up, others played a huge part in his life. “When I look at my life,” he says, “I think that I am very, very blessed to have been surrounded by the people who encouraged me to be the best that I could be, and to get an education. There were many people who helped to form who I became.”

Carson played high school football at both Wilson High School (9th and 10th grade and predominantly a black school) and later at McClenaghan High School (an interracial school in 11th and 12th grade). In the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force Junior ROTC. “I went from being an airman in ROTC in ninth grade to my senior year, when I was Lieutenant Colonel,” Carson states. “The reality is, I got most of my leadership skills from ROTC, and I sort of transferred those skills from ROTC to football.”

Carson quit his football team at McClenaghan High School during his senior year and never returned. He explains. “The reason why I quit was we had a game and I sprained an ankle. I came off the field, I got taped up and went back in.” He then sprained his other ankle as well. During a follow up practice, when he and his teammates were running sprints, the coach yelled out to Carson, who was still feeling the effects of the sprains, “Hey, Carson, if you can’t run any faster, get off the field.” “It wasn’t so much what he said, it was how he said it,” Carson recalls. “I walked off the field and I changed clothes and that was the end of my high school career.”

After he quit, letters from colleges that wanted to recruit him stopped arriving. One of the teachers at  McClenaghan High School, Dorothy Jo McDuffie, said to Carson, “You need to be playing football somewhere.” She took him to South Carolina State where he met the coaching staff, who saw some game film of Carson and on the spot gave him a full scholarship. Carson played every game for four years at the school, was team captain as a junior and senior, and won consecutive Defensive Player of the Year awards. “Those four years at South Carolina State were the best four years of my life,” Carson says. “My head coach was Willie Jeffries. Coach Jeffries is the person who broke the news to me that my father passed away, and so Coach Jeffries has been like a surrogate father, too. All the other players who have played for him have been like his family. And he has built men. At South Carolina State, I went in as a boy, but I came out as a man.”

The Giants drafted Carson in the fourth round of the 1976 NFL draft, and after being a down lineman in high school and college, he would become the Giants middle linebacker for 13 seasons, the highlight being the team’s 39 – 20 victory in Super Bowl XXI. “When we lost to Chicago in 1985 at Soldier Field,” Carson says of the 21 -0 playoff defeat, “I remember what it felt like being in that locker room after that loss. All I knew at that point was that we were going to be in the Super Bowl the next year, because what I was feeling at that time, everybody was feeling the same thing, and that was the pain of losing and being so close.”

The next season, the New York Giants beat the Washington Redskins and San Francisco 49ers in the playoffs to get the opportunity to head to Super Bowl XXI. When it came time for the coin toss, Carson went to midfield alone. It was just he in blue and nine Denver Broncos in white. “I’m standing on the sideline, and I’m waiting on Phil Simms and George Martin – the other captains – to join me because this is the Super Bowl. The official is standing there with me, and they made a motion for the captains to head out to the center of the field. So, I said to Bill Parcells, ‘Where are George and Phil?’ He just said, ‘Go!’ I couldn’t believe it. I started walking toward the center of the field with the official, and there were all of these white jerseys headed my way, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Why am I going out here all by myself?’ Then I kind of realized that he (Parcells) wanted me to go and represent not just the Giants football team, but the Giants organization and all the Giants fans.”

Carson retired after the 1988 season. He was named to the All-Rookie Team after his first season, and during his NFL career, he was named seven times to the All-NFL Team, eight times to the All-NFC Team, once was selected as NFC Linebacker of the Year, and was also a nine-time Pro Bowler. He also served as Giants team captain for 10 seasons.

Carson in 1990 was diagnosed with post concussion syndrome, and is an advocate for concussion and brain injury prevention. “It’s important for me because I was just a normal or average player who played the game,” Carson says. “I knew that there was a danger in playing sports; if you’re looking at any football game, you see somebody get hurt. But nobody ever told me about damage to the brain, or how you injured your brain. People downplayed it for the longest time back in the old days. Nobody tells you about the lingering after effects of concussions, and so I have been speaking on this issue for more than 30 years now. Me having been diagnosed with post concussion syndrome, I’ve learned how to live a very normal life, and I’ve used my college degree, because I’ve got a degree in education, to talk to people about this issue and to sort of put a warning out there for people who may be non-believers that it can happen to anyone if you play the game. I’ve been an advocate in regards to this issue to sort of alert people that there’s a neurological risk that you assume when you take your kids to football practice. They look good in uniform and everything, but you don’t know what might happen down the road as a result of even practicing or playing the game.”

Carson and his wife, Maribel, have three children; a daughter Aja, and two sons, Donald and Lucky. The couple has also been blessed with four grandchildren, Jamison, Kellen, Carsen, and Lenny. Charlie, a Scottish Terrier Westie, is the Carson family’s loveable pooch.

For more information about Harry Carson and Harry Carson Inc., a Sports Consulting and Production Company, visit www.harrycarson.com.