Bill Sims Emerges in Retirement as the King of Hooks, Texas

HOOKS, Texas —  Billy Sims is the most famous citizen in this tumbleweed town, an end-zone-bound prodigy whose football career moved the way of a twister, then went dead in one sweep-right instant in 1984.

But shed no tears for Sims. He has returned to his 40-acre kingdom here forever more, with two metal screws holding together his right knee. He’s a high plains limper at the ripe old age of 31. He received a tax-free payment from Lloyd’s of London in August which, he said, read in part: Make payable to the order of Billy Ray Sims, $2 million.

If this is football exile, who needs the mainstream? There are 20 head of cattle roaming Sims’ front yard, out by the lake, and six horses off to the left. There are five cars in the garage, which stands in front of the swimming pool, which is to the left of the tennis court, all of which is protected by an attack-trained Rottweiler named Baron.

If the puddles dried out by the front gate, Sims said you’d see where he etched into the drying cement long ago, “Someday, I’ll own this place, B. Sims.” That was about 15 years ago when Sims was a high school dreamer, mowing the grass for the former owner.

The name Billy Sims is so ingrained in the nation’s football psyche, some fans still don’t realize his National Football League career is over. It has been over for more than two years. Of course, that’s one of the most fundamental problems with pro football: rarely will you get a Steven Spielberg ending. The superstars usually disappear amid a smattering of broken bones and torn ligaments, fading from IR (injured reserve) into OR (operating room). The average life span in the NFL is 4.2 seasons. Sims played 4.5 seasons, none of which was merely average.

Certainly, all the folks around northeast Texas know the whole Sims tale. If they don’t, they either don’t read the papers or they died about 10 years ago. Sims is the kid who used to pump gas at Hooks Conoco, right off Interstate 30, then went to the University of Oklahoma, where he wishboned his way to the Heisman Trophy as a junior in 1978, then went on to his brief, sparkling career with the Detroit Lions.

He’s a legend of such proportion around here, he tells out-of-town friends that his mailing address is “Billy Sims, Hooks, Tex.” and that nothing more is required on the front of the envelope. You’d think he were “Santa Claus, North Pole” or “Ronald Reagan, White House.”

Now, Sims is a former football player who says he is ready to “become one of the best businessmen that ever was.” On Oct. 21, 1984, Sims, one of the best running backs ever, ran to his right. Minnesota linebacker Walker Lee Ashley belted him in the upper body.

Sims’ left leg came out from under him, his right leg caught in the Metrodome artificial turf and, he said, “about 600 pounds of people fell on me.” His right knee was a wreck. He had damaged two ligaments and cartilage. “If we’d been playing on grass,” Sims said, “I know it wouldn’t have happened.”

Sims spent seven hours in surgery -- “I could have flown from Detroit to Hooks three times during all that time,” he said -- then spent more than a year in rehabilitation. He visited eight doctors around the country in search of a second opinion that no one would give. His 1985 season was shot.

“Sometimes, I would lay down and sweet-dream about it,” Sims said, “and I’d see myself doing stuff on the field, crowd roaring, ‘Yeah, he’s back! ... ‘ “ But Sims never came back, extinguishing the risk of further damage.

On July 24, 1986, he announced his retirement from football. He had rushed for a Lions club-record 5,106 yards, caught 186 passes and scored 47 touchdowns in 60 career games, excluding three Pro Bowl appearances.

If you take a peek in his game room, the pool table is surrounded with big-time memories: balls from the Nebraska game and the Missouri game, the Pro Bowl jerseys, the NFL Rookie of the Year trophy and pictures of high-stepping in the end zone.

“I never high-stepped,” Sims said, “except when I got into the end zone.”

The gauze wrap Sims wears these days to support his knee serves as a grim reminder that one vicious hit has an alarm-clock effect on a dreamy NFL career. “Few who play the game for very long get out of it without some type of injury,” Sims said.

Sims realizes the brevity of his career might shrink his legacy. “Maybe my name will fade over time. (But) I think I was as good as anybody else,” he said. “Every one of the great running backs has a style of their own. People asked me, ‘Who is better, you or, say, Walter Payton?’ They’d say, ‘If you’re better, then how come he’s played longer?’ I’d say, ‘Because he’s played longer does that make him better? Maybe he’s played on a better team or maybe he was at a better place at a better time.’ ”

Sims didn’t make it into the NFL until he was 25. He said he had lost one year in school due to transferring, another due to being redshirted as a freshman at Oklahoma.

“Coming in as a rookie at 25,” he said, “most people by that time have already had three years in the pros, so I knew I had a short time to play the game, to accomplish some things and to make a name for myself. I thought if I could play until I was 30, anything after that was gravy.”

When he suffered his career-ending injury, Sims was 29. “I think I left my mark as far as playing football,” he said.

Sims knows the sad history of athletes who rise so high, so fast, they hit the ceiling of the world. They crash down, without a parachute, and lose it all. “I know some of the former players at OU and other colleges who lost it all,” Sims said, “and the boxers, Joe Louis and Leon Spinks.”

In fact, Sims said he recently saw Spinks who, like Sims, spent his early years living in the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis. (Sims moved in with his grandmother in Hooks when he was 12.) The similarity between Spinks and Sims ends there, the former running back said.

“It’s sad to see a guy who was once on top of the world, and now he’s barely crawling. Leon is still trying to box, and he can’t do it anymore,” Sims said. “That’s just a case of being associated with the wrong people, because his brother Michael is totally the opposite -- he’s doing real well.”

Sims is, in essence, an introvert, a country guy who prefers the trees to the bright lights. Nearly always, he wears a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. Those who know him best say he always has wanted to be judged as a person, not as a football player. This is not to say he doesn’t miss the game.

On the first football weekend of his first year as a former player, Sims attended the Hooks-vs.-Clarksville high school game on Friday night. The next morning, he took a private jet to Norman, Okla., to see his alma mater Sooners crush UCLA. Of course, Sims stood on the Sooners’ sideline that day. After the game, he shook hands and signed autographs.

He may walk with a limp, but he is still Billy Sims, after all.

Maybe Sims’ limp will be eased by the insurance payment, which was awarded tax free, he said, because he paid $90,000 in premiums over his 4 1/2 seasons rather than having the Lions pay for it.

“I suppose I could quit and just live off the interest,” said Sims, but his pride would never allow it. Whatever he does, Sims said, you won’t see him hitting the financial skids soon. Ever since earning his recreational therapy degree at Oklahoma, he has prepared for “the real world after football.”

Sims said he has received his financial advice over the past five years from a Cleveland-based company called Assets Management. His business interests are diversified: he said he owns 100 apartment units and is a co-owner of a brass company in nearby Texarkana, Tex.; he owns a nightclub called Cheeks which, he said, “is probably the nicest one in all of Texarkana”; in Detroit, he owns eyeglass-optical stores called 20-20 Vision; there is Billy Sims Enterprises, which includes the manufacturing of car parts; and Billy Sims Chemicals, which includes the production of an adhesive sealer for car paint.

And coming soon to Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, Sims said, is a small chain of “Catfish King” fast-food restaurants. The first opened last month in Pine Bluff, Ark.

Most of his days he spends at the nightclub, in a dingy back office, beer cases stacked high outside the door, newspaper clips from his final news conference in Detroit near his desk. Sims also makes frequent trips to Detroit to keep up with his other businesses.

“I have protected myself the way I’ve done things,” Sims said.

Perhaps it would have been fitting to play “Another One Bites the Dust” at Sims’ farewell news conference. That was the Lions’ theme song in 1980, the year Sims set a then-NFL record for rookies by rushing for 1,303 yards.

A franchise was reborn. Sims was a smoking pistol then, shooting holes in opposing defenses. Both the automobile industry and the Detroit Tigers were in recession at the time, but the arrival of Sims enabled the Lions to have seven sellouts that season, after having had just eight in the preceding five years. Sims made the cover of Sports Illustrated (“Pride of the Lions,” the cover read) and more than 4,000 copies sold out in 12 hours on Detroit-area newstands.

“I’ve done a lot of things and been a lot of places. Now, it’s all for my kids. The money will help them branch out, to grow and to be respectful in the right way,” Sims said. “Man, would you listen to me! I’m talking like I’m 80 years old.”

He has plenty of free time now. Once, he was a Heisman sensation surrounded and suffocated by reporters. “Simbo” is what Oklahomans called him. Sims recently called Oklahoma Coach Barry Switzer, a close friend. Switzer picked up the phone, laughed and said, “We’ve got UCLA tomorrow and you’re calling me today to talk. I wish I had the time.” To which Sims replied, “No time to talk to me, huh? Man, times sure do change, don’t they?”

Furthermore, when a reporter called to arrange for an interview, Sims told him not to get a rent-a-car. “I’ll pick you up at the airport,” he said. “Just call when you get in.” He arrived at the nearby Texarkana airport in his pickup truck, one son (Brent, 4) asleep on his lap and another waiting at school. When B.J. Sims (Billy Jr.), who is 5, was picked up at 3:30 p.m., he hopped into the truck and the first thing he asked the reporter was, “You spendin’ the night?”

Indeed, Brenda and Billy Sims’ house is full. In addition to B.J. and Brent, said Sims, “There’s Bre, which is short for Breony (3), and then there is Bariel (3 months). That’s B-a-r-i-e-l or double-l or something. And don’t forget the dog: Baron. Yep, we’re the home of the Bs.”

Later in the afternoon, Sims is over at his nightclub, paying the plumber who fixed a leaky ceiling. As Sims wrote out the check, several workers swept the floor behind him, turned chairs and tables right side up and argued about how a customer managed to get three free drinks the night before. Flaw in the system, they agreed.

For Sims, this is the new real world. The spotlight is gone, replaced, for now, by the strobe light and the Miller Lite.

“Some people might consider my pro career disappointing,” Sims said. “I consider it rewarding. I ran for 153 yards and three touchdowns in my first game, against the Rams. I showed I could play at the same level as the best of them. But, I guess before you know it, you’re on to something else in life.”

Sims said he has shown his children tapes from his games, dating back to Hooks High School. Those were the days when nobody did it better.