Behind the cluttered facemask that adorned bits of turf and paint from the field, he peered into the roaring depths of orange and blue that drowned the stands of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
That was 20 years ago.
Behind a surgical mask and a series of tubes protruding from his arm, he looked out his Shands hospital bedroom window just for an obstructed view of his former playing grounds.
That was two months ago.
Tony McCoy knows what it’s like to fall hard.
***
About 11 years removed from his nine-year NFL career with the Indianapolis Colts (1992-1999) and Arizona Cardinals (2000), McCoy said there wasn’t too much missing from his life. He was the senior pastor of Hope International Church, the owner of a restaurant, Fish Pro, the director of McCoy Investments Inc. and also a husband and father of three.
However, the life he built after football was put on halt in November 2011.
“I volunteered at South Lake High School, where my oldest son started playing football and one day after practice we’re running sprints, and I would always run with the kids,” McCoy said.
“After the second (sprint), I fell to my knee, just gasping for air, and I said, ‘I can’t do it.’ This is the first time I can ever tell you that I quit something in my life. I just quit.”
***
The 6-foot-1, 280-pound former UF defensive tackle was never known as the biggest or strongest player, but he had a reputation as one of the hardest-working athletes on the team.
Although Steve Spurrier was McCoy’s head coach for just two seasons in Gainesville, he took notice of the diligent defensive tackle.
“He was a model player,” Spurrier said.
“[McCoy] did everything right. We would have runs after practice without pads and he would run with his on. He kept up with everybody and pretty much led the pack the whole time, too. He played extremely hard. He played with tremendous effort all the time and . . . he was one of the best-conditioned athletes I ever had. I would say Tony McCoy is one of my favorite all-time players.”
Even current Florida head coach Will Muschamp, who played against McCoy in 1991 as a freshman safety for Georgia, remembered McCoy’s fierceness as a player.
“I remember Tony as being an athletic, disruptive pass rusher who played with a tremendous amount of energy and passion,” Muschamp said.
In McCoy’s final season as a Gator, he was a first-team All-Southeastern Conference selection, an honorable mention All-American and voted MVP by his fellow teammates all while helping lead UF to its first official SEC Championship.
The man who was supposed to be too small and unable to make it at a high-profile football program went down as one of the best defensive lineman Florida had ever seen.
But now, the same man who impressed Spurrier with his physique and stamina had to peel himself off the bed. He could not even perform his usual workouts.
***
In between preaching services one Sunday morning, McCoy found his lymph nodes had swelled tremendously.
He visited an otolaryngologist — more commonly known as an ear, nose and throat doctor — and the appointment concluded with a diagnosis of an ingrown hair in his throat.
“I walked out of there and the Holy Spirit wouldn’t let me rest with that,” McCoy said.
“So I went to my general doctor and told him, ‘I’ve been feeling fatigued, can I get a blood workout?’ So he gave me a blood workout. About three days later, he called me before my son’s football game. I was on the sideline.
“The nurse called me and said, ‘The doctor would like to see you tomorrow to go over your lab work.’ And as I clear as I’m talking to you, I hung up that phone and something said to me, ‘You have cancer.’”
The voice that spoke to McCoy didn’t give specifics. But the doctor did.
He had acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Cancer of the white blood cells.
A nine-year veteran of the NFL wasn’t hit hardest on the field but in a doctor’s office.
“I remember when he was diagnosed, I was with him,” Jodie McCoy, Tony’s wife and co-pastor at Hope International, said. “The first thing that came to my mind was that God is not going to put more on you than can bear. That has been the scripture I have leaned on this whole time.”
McCoy began to focus his energy on fighting the disease, so he turned to the place where he had fought some of the biggest battles in his life.
At the age of 42, he returned to the college campus that he called home two decades earlier.
“I felt like there was something about the Gators,” McCoy said. “This was a place where a lot of people said it was impossible. We proved them wrong once here at Florida, and I think this was an opportunity to do it again.”
Cue the Christmas Day miracle.
“We spent Thanksgiving in the hospital,” Jodie McCoy said. “Everybody’s birthday is in November. Our anniversary is the 24th of November. We were in the hospital for all of them. So trust me, Christmas time came and we wanted to get out of here.”
Doctors said it wasn’t going to happen, nurses said it wasn’t going to happen and it looked as if his body was saying the same.
McCoy’s daughter, Khrystyna McCoy, who actually visited her father on emergency leave from the Air Force, was prepared to spend Christmas at Shands.
“That night, his body was under attack,” she said. “He had a reaction to the platelets he was given. So all night he didn’t sleep and he broke out in hives. I was like, ‘There is no way he is going home tomorrow, look at him.’”
McCoy’s absolute neutrophil count, or ANC, was supposed to be at 500 in order for him to leave the hospital. One person, McCoy recalled, even said he would allow McCoy to leave if the ANC reached 250 after he mockingly called the McCoys, “The Jesus people.”
McCoy’s ANC climbed to more than 1,500 overnight. He was going home for Christmas.
“(The hospital staff members) couldn’t say anything after that,” Jodie McCoy said.
***
The hope and determination that drove McCoy to fight leukemia is also what compelled him to help others with the same battle.
McCoy established the “Your Battle is My Battle” foundation while still undergoing chemotherapy at Shands. The organization was created to assist families with the hefty medical bills associated with treatment for leukemia. McCoy’s foundation also encourages medical students to continue their journey to find a cure by providing scholarships for their schooling.
However, McCoy was especially driven to bring awareness of the disease to minorities. The risk of death is 45 percent higher among African Americans with ALL than it is with Caucasians. Hispanics face a risk of death 46 percent higher than Caucasians.
The processes of bone marrow transplants and stem cell transplants are included in the methods of treatment for ALL. However, McCoy was unable to have the transplants because there were no matching donors, thus he had to receive sessions of chemotherapy as a treatment.
“We need more African Americans and more minorities, period, to be tested so that we can find more 10 out of 10 matches for bone marrow transplants,” McCoy said. “We want to educate and encourage.”
***
McCoy received plenty of encouragement throughout his stay in Gainesville.
Players such as Peyton Manning, who was McCoy’s teammate for two seasons in Indianapolis, called to let McCoy know he was praying for him. Jeff Saturday who lined up against McCoy at every practice during the 1999 season called to give his former teammate encouragement throughout the intensive radiation therapy.
Dwight Freeney sent his jersey to be auctioned off to help the foundation. Jim Irsay, the owner of the Colts, hand wrote a letter for McCoy.
“Those types of comments encouraged me to name the foundation, ‘Your Battle is My Battle,’” McCoy said.
But the support came, not just from NFL players, but also from former Gator teammates he played alongside years ago, like Emmitt Smith, Ellis Johnson and Brad Culpepper.
And when McCoy returned to The Swamp a few months ago, he ran into Muschamp and athletic director Jeremy Foley, who both extended an invitation to become more involved with the team through speaking engagements.
“He is carrying that energy and passion today in his fight with leukemia and he is an inspiration to others,” Muschamp said.
Foley added: “Tony was an extremely driven and competitive football player and he will tackle this disease with the same drive that he brought every day to the football field. Gators everywhere will be pulling for him.”
Both McCoy and Toni Bryant, his publicist, are currently working on possibly taking Muschamp and Foley up on their offer and hosting a charity event in Gainesville in October.
The event, which may feature an appearance from Irsay, would raise awareness and funds for the “Your Battle is My Battle” foundation.
Although McCoy’s fight with leukemia is not over yet, he is winning. In June, he underwent his last round of chemo and went from being 95 percent impacted by the cancer, to having no trace of the leukemia anywhere in his blood.
“He is going full speed ahead,” Bryant said. “He is scheduled to preach all of August. People are just amazed. It’s phenomenal how he was able to go through this battle with leukemia and come out as if he was never touched.”
Now, he is focused on keeping the illness away for good in his body and is working to do the same with many other patients.
“In the medical field, doctors are mostly scientific and don’t use the word cure,” McCoy said.
“But this is one disease where we use that word. Cure. And I want to be a part of that fight.”
