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Bell seeks college degree, tutors rookies

Thursday, June 20, 2002

By Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Steelers linebacker Kendrell Bell earned the NFL's defensive rookie of the year award in 2001, but, in many ways, he's going backward.

	In the span of a year, Kendrell Bell goes from young pupil to wizened teacher. (Lake Fong, Post-Gazette)

He's attending college and, this weekend, he's attending rookie camp.

Bell has been taking home-study classes this spring through the University of Georgia to work toward his college degree. On the other hand, he'll serve somewhat as a professor next week in San Diego at a symposium that every NFL rookie is required to attend, including the eight Steelers draft choices.

"The purpose is to educate the players, to get them thinking about things maybe they never thought about before," said Mike Haynes, a former first-round draft pick and now the NFL's vice president of player development.

Student/teacher/player Bell will be among a bevy of guest speakers for the annual event, which enters its fifth year and covers areas such as how to deal with the news media, finances, peer pressure, money grabbers and -- one of the more popular topics -- women. The symposium will be Sunday through Wednesday.

"It's important because it, hopefully, will help the rookie players get off to a good start with regards to the National Football League and this new lifestyle they're about to enter," Haynes said. "The purpose is to educate the guys about a lot of things they never had to deal with or things that maybe they didn't know exactly how to deal with.

"We bring in a lot of experts from different fields and talk about things that guys from my era would have loved. We basically had veteran players to rely on."

The symposium has been an attempt by the NFL to help ward off problems for its new players. It can range from players being duped by poor financial decisions to succumbing to gold diggers of all kinds.

"These guys are marked men now, and they're going to be confronted with all types of things, forced to make a lot of decisions where a wrong decision could change their life or damage their opportunity to have a long career in the NFL -- or damage their career when they get out of the NFL," Haynes said.

Attending the symposium last year helped Bell.

"I took it in, but you still have to experience it. It's not about playing football, it's more outside football things. I'm going to try to lay some of that down for them."

Bell also is determined to earn his degree, which is another program that falls under Haynes' direction. The NFL has tried to make it more attractive for players to return to school for their degrees and will even start this year to reimburse their tuition.

"I play football, but the time is going to come when I can't play football and it doesn't matter how much money I get paid, I'm still going to be working," Bell said.

He is pursuing a degree in sports business at Georgia.

"Nah," he said, "I'm not trying to be an agent."