Well, not exactly. Since he entered the NFL out of USC three years ago, the very first pick in the draft, Johnson has been messing with folks–on and off the field. As a rookie he quickly began demanding publicly, “Just give me the damn ball.” He liked the idea so much he used it for the title of an autobiography, which questioned his quarterback’s skills and mocked a fellow receiver as a “team mascot.” Now, coming off his best season (sixth in the NFL in receptions, fourth in receiving TDs) and the Jets’ finest in 30 years, Johnson remains outspoken–and decidedly unapologetic about it. “Some of my teammates think I’m the Devil,” he said as the Jets readied for Sunday’s season opener against rival New England. “But I’m cool in my own world doing my thing.”
Brashness and NFL success often go hand in hand. Jets fans will recall that it was a cocksure quarterback doing his own thing, Joe Namath, who led the Jets to their lone Super Bowl back in ‘69. Many NFL watchers believe the Jets could finally be Super Bowl-bound again behind the fleet feet, soft hands and, yes, big mouth of their star receiver. Johnson has not only the speed to outrace defenders, but the strength and toughness to catch the ball in a crowd. “Keyshawn can really make the big plays,” says Jets coach Bill Parcells. “He has a confidence in himself that can take him anywhere in the game.”
All Johnson’s bravado and comic posturing mask a man of surprisingly lofty ambitions. While most young players are content to revel in the NFL good life, Johnson has mapped out a plan that, he hopes, will yield an economic empire stretching from tough South-Central L.A., where he grew up, to tony Beverly Hills. In South-Central, he has invested more than $1 million in a new shopping plaza, while his charity foundation gives out 20 college scholarships annually and is planning a new community center. “I want to give back early on, while I’m still in the spotlight,” he says. “That’s when you have the biggest impact.” In Beverly Hills, his upscale Southern-style restaurant (“Pass me the damn gumbo” was never considered as a name) is a hot spot, where Keyshawn can hobnob with the black elite, like U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman and director Forest Whitaker. “This is not a hangout for jocks,” he says with a sniff. Though some of his friends fear that he is over his head in the business world, Keyshawn harbors no such concerns. “I’ve been hustling since I was 12, so I’ve always understood money and what it means,” he says. “I’ve always known how to get it and keep it. In a way I’m still hustling, so I know I’m going to be all right.”
That Keyshawn has gotten as far as he has is testament to that conviction. “If this kid hadn’t believed so much in himself, he’d be dead or in prison,” says Jerome Stanley, Johnson’s agent and close friend. Raised by a single mother, the youngest of six children, Keyshawn never knew who his father was. “My mother was my mother and my father,” he says. “That’s all I know, and that’s all that matters.” By the time Johnson was 12, his family was homeless, and he was selling drugs and stolen goods: “whatever hustle was going to put food on the table.” By the age of 14, he had spent time in two juvenile-detention facilities.
But Johnson always viewed sports as his ticket out. He even maneuvered himself into a gig as ball boy for both the USC football and baseball teams. “Even as a kid, I was doing my own thing, going out for ball boy when nobody else in my neighborhood was even thinking about that,” he says. His highly publicized autobiography was deliberately provocative. “Writing that book was the best thing I could’ve done,” says Johnson. “It made me a household name.” It also made cruel jest of undersized Wayne Chrebet–hardly a team mascot, having caught as many passes as Johnson the past three years. But Keyshawn has no regrets. “Wayne’s making a lot of money,” Johnson says. “What I care about him?” Though their lockers are side by side, the two don’t talk. “There was no love lost from the beginning,” says Chrebet.
Nor has Johnson endeared himself to the team’s sizable Christian contingent by sneering at those who proselytize their faith in the locker room. “I’m like, ‘Don’t come up to me with that Christian mess’,” he says. “I know the Lord and don’t need no introduction by no other player. When they come in telling me to stop cussing and quit talking about women, I just turn up my Tupac as loud as I can, and that shuts them up quick.” While some teammates suspect there’s a nice guy behind the incessant talk, about the kindest take most have on Johnson is bemusement. “I just think he likes himself an awful lot,” says one Jet. “He must hate going to bed, because he can’t be Keyshawn in his sleep.”
It’s not exactly Team Harmony, but Parcells, who has coached two different teams to Super Bowls, says Johnson gets along with his teammates “good enough.” Many NFL observers thought the arrival of the no-nonsense Parcells in 1997 would put the two on a collision course. But the only concern Parcells expresses is that Keyshawn may be distracted by all his off-field ventures. (“I can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Johnson says dismissively.) Otherwise, the coach sees a kid “with a good heart who has his ways” and, most important, a player who loves the game and has an “incredible work ethic.” Johnson professes no surprise that he and his coach have clicked. “Everybody thought that this old white coach is going to put the young black kid in his place,” says Johnson. “But I never worried. We both want the same thing.” As he says, he’s always known how to get it–and keep it.
