Who Killed Lawrence Phillips?

Edge of Sports

Dave Zirin / The Nation

News, Sports News, Sports, History, Politics

4.8 • 616 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2016

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lawrence Phillips was a phenomenal football talent, a back-to-back National Champion at the University of Nebraska and a top NFL draft pick in 1996. But a childhood marred by trauma and violence undercut Phillips’ promise of a fruitful life. Despite his obvious athletic gifts, a pattern of disturbing off-field behavior pushed Phillips out of the league and into legal trouble. In 2008, Lawrence Phillips entered Kern Valley State Prison. He would never get to see the outside again. In January of 2015, while awaiting trial for the alleged murder of his cell-mate, Phillips was found dead in his cell - a suspected suicide. Today, Dave Zirin seeks clarity and lessons from the tragic life of Lawrence Phillips. Our guests are Damon Benning, a Cornhusker teammate of Phillips and a current radio host in Lincoln, Howard University Professor Christian-Dotson Pierson, and Neil Irvin, Executive Director of ‘Men Can Stop Rape.’Zirin article: “Who Killed Lawrence Phillips?” http://www.thenation.com/article/who-killed-lawrence-phillips/Edge of Sports homepage http://edgeofsportspodcast.comhttp://twitter.com/edgeofsports | http://fb.com/edgeofsports | email [email protected] Damon Benning twitter http://twitter.com/damonbenningMen Can Stop Rape http://mencanstoprape.org | Neil Irvin twitter http://twitter.com/mcsr_nirvinChristian Dotson-Pierson twitter http://twitter.com/profcdpMusic: Hide & Seek by WTCHCRFT http://soundcloud.com/wtchcrft2 | Blankets by Swell http://soundcloud.com/swll | 808s and birthday cake by Tim Legend http://soundcloud.com/timlegend Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Edge of Sports, the podcast. I'm Dave Ziron. This week we talk about Lawrence Phillips.
0:06.4	Former NFL player found dead of an apparent suicide in his jail cell at Kern Valley State Prison in California at just 40 years old.
0:15.7	Phillips was serving a 31 year sentence for hitting teenagers with his car and beating an ex-girlfriend. He was facing trial
0:22.8	as well for killing his old cellmate in a situation that he said was self-defense. Now, to be clear,
0:29.1	don't listen to this show if you are comfortable with demonizing Lawrence Phillips, if you're calling
0:34.5	him a thug who's better off dead. But also, don't listen to this show if you expect us to somehow rehabilitate Lawrence Phillips,
0:42.6	where we say there's no personal accountability for his actions.
0:46.2	No, this is a show where we want to look at this in three dimensions.
0:48.9	We want to unpack every part of this story.
0:52.2	Violence Against Women, Mental Illness, Childhood Abuse, the Possible Role of Football story. Violence against women, mental illness, childhood abuse,
0:56.2	the possible role of football and head injuries, and the sin that is the criminal justice system
1:01.2	in the United States, which really does have Lawrence Phillips's blood on their hands.
1:06.0	Now, to figure this out, as we'll hear, I have people to help. I'm going to have a teammate of
1:10.4	Lawrence Phillips,
1:11.3	who's currently a radio host in Omaha, Damon Benning, who is part of those championship teams
1:15.8	at Nebraska with Lawrence Phillips. Then I'm going to have our favorite professor, Chris
1:21.2	Dotson Pearson, who's going to be here to help us unpack this. And lastly, we're going to
1:25.0	have Neil Irvin, the executive director of men can stop
1:27.7	rape. Because as we talk about all the ways that Lawrence Phillips was done wrong by the public school
1:33.5	system, the sports world, the absence of health care, the prison industrial complex, we never
1:38.6	want it forgotten that the women in his life were damaged by him being damaged as well.
1:50.0	Before we start, I just want to say some facts, so we're all on the same page.
	...

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