He’s functioning just fine these days, thank you

Of the countless words written and spoken about Billy Don Jackson a quarter-century ago, few were complimentary and none predicted a future for the former UCLA defensive lineman that would include marriage, a family and steady work.

In 1982, Jackson was Exhibit A for all that could potentially go wrong in the winning-is-everything atmosphere of college athletics.

An admitted drug abuser, the small-town prodigy from Sherman, Texas, had pleaded no contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter in the fatal stabbing of a drug dealer. The judge at his sentencing hearing described Jackson, one of the most talented athletes UCLA had ever recruited, as a “functional illiterate,” even though Jackson had spent nearly three years at the university.

The troubled Texan served eight months of a one-year sentence at the L.A. County jail and Wayside Honor Rancho, about 35 miles north of Los Angeles, but his drinking and drugging continued after his release in October 1982.

His future looked bleak, his prospects dim, even as he embarked on a 2 1/2 -year career in the United States Football League.

But that was then.

This is now.

“I really believe in my life,” Jackson says. “I’m a winner.”

He is 48, married with two young sons, living in West L.A. and working in Hollywood. A set designer for the television series “24,” the former “can’t-miss” prospect says that he has been sober and drug-free since 1990.

At 6 feet 4 and 340 pounds, he is about 60 pounds heavier than when he last played for UCLA as a junior in 1979 but is still competitive, pitching for a Chatsworth softball team. Married for nine years to a UCLA tennis instructor he met while the two were students at the school -- they’ve been a couple for nearly 30 years -- Jackson also is a gardener, happily tending to his tomatoes while “24” is on hiatus.

He is remorseful about killing a man in an argument -- “I wish I could take that back,” he says, “but I can’t” -- and unfailingly loyal to UCLA, despite the judge’s stinging indictment of those responsible for his education.

“The people that were behind me at UCLA did everything that they could possibly do to help me,” says Jackson, who had quit the football team and transferred to San Jose State at the time he was arrested. “I can’t say enough about UCLA. No matter what has happened, I’m going to be a Bruin till the day I die.”

If the school will have him, he says, he’d like to return.

“Of course,” he adds. “To get my college degree? Yeah, of course. I promised my mom when I came here that that’s what I’d do.”

Though obviously a disappointment to his late mother, who died several years ago, the embarrassing aftermath of Jackson’s arrest not only was “life-changing,” he says, “but, in some ways, the best thing that ever happened to me.”

He says it made him realize that he was not infallible.

“I think if things had been different,” Jackson says, “I would have turned out much different -- a spoiled person, I guess you could say.”

Instead, he adds, “I’m a very grateful and humble person.”

His substance abuse, Jackson notes, started at a young age.

“You don’t just jump off the deep end,” he says. “You build into it. It started with some alcohol here and some pot there and then some coke here, smoking crack there. It slowly built. It wasn’t just something that happened.”

Had he been stronger mentally and resisted the temptations, he says, “without a doubt” he would have enjoyed a more successful football career.

“I would have taken better care of my body, would have got more rest, would have become a better athlete,” says Jackson, a three-year starter at UCLA. “I wouldn’t have been in the places that I was in to cause myself to go to prison. And I probably would have been a lot more spiritual. I think that we all need a little help and a little guidance.”

Jackson says that watching his mother physically deteriorate sobered him, adding that the two made peace after she suffered a stroke and a heart attack.

“I let her know that, no matter what happened in my life, I’m still her son and that I’m really a good person,” says Jackson, who was working in tile repair after the 1994 Northridge earthquake when a client suggested that his ample size and good nature would serve him well on Hollywood movie sets. “I just got hooked up with some bad drugs and got off the path. She said she understood but that at any point you can stop doing what you’re doing and get back on the right track. It took awhile but it sunk in. I found a program called AA and I’ve been in the program for 17 years.”

Always in his corner, Jackson says, was an unlikely ally.

“Believe it or not, Coach [Terry] Donahue,” he says of the former UCLA coach who wooed him out of Texas. “He and his wife, Andrea, would always try to make sure that I was OK. They had to keep their distance from me because of UCLA, but I truly believe that they both wanted the best for me, no matter what happened.”

Donahue won’t comment, but Jackson’s wife, Lori, happily explains what made her persevere when, as she puts it, “most people would have run away.”

“I saw through the drinking and the drugs,” she says. “I saw that he had a great will and a good heart. Unfortunately, he went through an experimental stage with drugs and alcohol, but I saw a real person, a caring person, a loving person.”

She still does.

But even she is surprised by the monumental turnaround.

“Who would have ever thought this?” she says. “It’s amazing.”

jerome.crowe@latimes.com