The Good Guy

“We sat on the floor next to the [classroom] door, because I wanted to make sure that he actually did talk to that professor,” she says.

NCAA rules prohibited Piliavin from taking Vincent out to a restaurant for dinner, so he soon was spending most Sundays at her home for brunch. Her late husband, Irv, a professor of social work, didn’t cook, but he learned how to make omelets. Sausage, bacon, and morning buns were plentiful, and Vincent usually brought three or four hungry friends along with him. He says those Sunday conversations with the faculty couple, combined with his classes on campus, “stretched my mind in places that I never thought it could go,” and they guided his life in the years that followed.

“They shaped how I became a father. It shaped my relationship with my parents, my mom. It shaped what kind of teammate or leader I would become,” he says. “That’s what Madison did for me.”

As a UW student, Vincent volunteered at food pantries and women’s shelters. He saw himself in the young kids he met in those places: children of single mothers working two or more jobs who often had to take care of their younger siblings.

Halfway through Vincent’s college football experience, Barry Alvarez arrived to take over the losing program. At that point, Vincent had begun to conflate his abilities on the field with that of the team’s 3–19 record during the previous two years. “Troy was really a gifted athlete but didn’t know it,” Alvarez says.

That changed for Vincent in a conversation with Alvarez, when he compared him to Todd Lyght, a defensive back he had coached the previous season at Notre Dame. Lyght was the fifth overall pick in the 1991 NFL draft — very impressive, but Alvarez told Vincent that he was bigger, faster, and more physical than Lyght. “He’s the fifth guy taken. Not the fifth round. Fifth guy. That’s how I see you,” Alvarez told him.

Vincent’s subsequent performance on the field earned him accolades, including first-team All-American, runner-up for the Jim Thorpe Award as the nation’s top defensive back, and Big Ten co-Defensive Player of the Year in 1991. He also set the school record for career punt-return yards.

During the fall semester of Vincent’s senior year, agents called day and night, Piliavin recalls. “We went home one day and found him in our bed asleep, because he had not been able to sleep the night before because people kept calling him. But that, of course, made him realize, ‘I can be something. I can be somebody,’ ” says Piliavin, who attended the 1992 draft with her husband and daughter, seeing Vincent selected seventh overall, heading to the Miami Dolphins.

A photo of him in his Dolphins uniform hangs in her Madison office, where she still teaches a summer course on the sociology of sport. “He would not have told you this,” she says as she pulls a magazine from her file drawer. It’s the July 2003 edition of Sporting News, with Vincent gracing the magazine’s cover as its No. 1 Good Guy. Piliavin discusses Vincent with her students at the conclusion of a section on bad behavior by professional athletes, reminding them that they won’t hear about the good things some of them do.

• • •

When Vincent was growing up, his grandfather had the family make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to pass out to hungry people in their neighborhood. When he played for the Philadelphia Eagles, Vincent did the same with his wife, Tommi, and their children. The family also filled trucks with coats, hats, and gloves to give to those needing winter clothing. The couple formalized their charitable efforts in Trenton in the 1990s by founding Love Thy Neighbor, a nonprofit organization that has provided college scholarships, mentoring programs for fathers and college-bound students, and school supplies for children in inner-city elementary schools, among many other initiatives over the years. The Vincents also helped to restore a park in his old neighborhood where he once played basketball, but insisted it be named for his grandfather, Jefferson Vincent. “He had gardens. He organized the community, made sure people got out and voted,” Vincent says. “[He] was a difference-maker.”

Vincent was short the credits needed to graduate when he left Madison for Miami, but he took classes at Temple University in Philadelphia while still playing in the NFL. He completed his undergraduate degree at Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, before moving on to earn certificates from executive education programs at several universities, including Harvard and Northwestern, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as president of the NFL Players Association for four years and then joined the NFL front office in 2010 to lead the league’s player engagement department, which provides support programs for players and their families.

These days, his top priority is preserving the integrity and the competitive fairness of the game, he says. It was his signature on the letter sent to New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady detailing his suspension due to “Deflategate,” allegations that Brady was involved in tampering with the ball during last year’s AFC championship game.

He is now working his way through an online sports-management graduate-degree program. “I told my son I’ll have my MBA before he finishes college,” he says.

Troy Jr. plays cornerback for North Carolina State University. Vincent’s son Taron is a high school sophomore who is already being recruited by a number of colleges, including Wisconsin. Vincent has seven concussions on the books, but he doesn’t hesitate to say he feels good about the safety of the game today, especially when compared to his rookie season in 1992.

“We know more today,” he says. “There are natural risks associated with the sport itself, but we’re trying with all of our power, resources, and the right partners to [protect] players from unnecessary risk.”

• • •

When Vincent discussed growing up in the shadow of domestic violence so publicly on Capitol Hill, he did so with his mother’s blessing. “People don’t understand what a victim goes through or what that’s like,” he says. “It’s important to me to be the voice for the voiceless.”

The NFL established a mandatory education program for five thousand league employees and is training critical-response teams to quickly react to family violence and sexual assault. Earlier this year, Vincent traveled to the Austin, Texas, headquarters of the National Domestic Violence Hotline to visit with staff and learn more about the services it provides to victims. The league is giving the organization $5 million a year during the next five years — money that has allowed the hotline to add staff, seek larger office space, and open shop in Washington, DC, to lobby lawmakers on key issues.

Most important, the staff can answer more calls. Too many were going unanswered for those seeking help, Vincent says.

“If you think of the calls as answered, someone is being advised properly. Someone’s hearing a voice on the other end of the phone. That may be the voice that saves their life,” he says. “This is so important, because the difference we’re making is not in football, we’re making a difference now in society.”

Jenny Price ’96 is senior writer for On Wisconsin.