ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 9, 1995 TAG: 9512100001
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
FORMER FLORIDA AND Clemson head coach Charley Pell is coaching again, but not cheating.
You could close your eyes and see how it all happened. You could feel how Charley Pell once held football teams and booster groups at Clemson and Florida in the palm of his hand.
Except the words didn't fit.
Pell spoke Friday morning at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes breakfast at the Salem Civic Center, and the former college coach's message wasn't much about a game he still loves.
It was about how after he thought about punting his life, he instead ran an option play that was there all of the time.
``I'm not a mature Christian,'' Pell said. ``I've just been born again. I'm almost like a child. God has given me the talent and will to be a strong Christian. The question is `What am I going to do with it?`''
He's doing what he did before a crowd of about 150 on the eve of the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl. In a booming and emotional message, Pell talked about being a different kind of winner than he'd been before.
It was a stunning presentation by a man once known as ``Cheatin' Charley,'' a coach who was fired 11 years ago at Florida after 107 NCAA rules violations were reported, a man who left Clemson's program headed toward a national championship but down the wrong road, too.
Pell's audience included some of his former players at Virginia Tech, where he was an assistant under Jimmy Sharpe in 1974 and '75.
``I'm glad to be in the Roanoke Valley again,'' Pell said. ``I'm proud to be anywhere.''
He didn't touch on his suicide attempt of Feb.2, 1994, much more than that. That was the day he drove his Buick to a spot in the woods near his Jacksonville, Fla., home, hooked a hose to his exhaust pipe, stuck it through the rolled-up window, and sat.
Pell had washed down a bunch of pills with vodka that day. He figured the carbon monoxide wasn't going to kill him soon enough, so he put the hose in his mouth.
He began to feel sick, so, groggily, he opened his door, and fell coughing to the ground. Someone called a rescue squad.
Pell, 54, was saved, and then, as he told the audience, was saved again.
``My whole life has changed,'' he said. ``My whole interest has changed. Everything I do, everything I want to do, has changed.''
Well, not everything.
He's a head coach again, at Lake Region High near Winter Haven, Fla. He said he didn't take the job this season because of football. He took it because he could work for the school as a ``peer facilitator ... helping young kids who are troubled, disillusioned and confused, helping them get plugged back into life.''
During 17 days in the hospital after his failed suicide attempt, Pell learned he had acute depression. ``Still have it,'' he said. ``It's just managed now.''
After his breakfast talk, Pell said he'd consider being a college coach again ``but I don't see myself as a head coach. I don't have any delusions about that. There's the age factor.''
There's also his legacy. He played on Bear Bryant's 1961 national championship team at Alabama. He restored success at Clemson and Florida, but he remains tainted, even though he's changed.
``I don't know if I could be a different coach, but I'm certainly a different person,'' Pell said. ``I don't think the competitive fire is gone or changed.
``Asking if I'd be a different coach because I'm now a Christian is like asking a brick mason if he'd lay the bricks better or straighter because he was born again. Some things don't change.''
Some do.
``We like to think of ourselves as being greater heroes than we really are,'' said Pell, who certainly has been one. ``Without Christ, that's just not possible.''
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Pell. color.by CNB