The NFL Quarterback was a fugitive

In this week’s Sports Illustrated, writer Jon L. Wertheim tells the sad, mysterious demise of ex-NFL quarterback Jeff Komlo. Komlo is not well known; a friend who loves the NFL of the 1970s and ’80s, joked that since he had not heard of Komlo, he must not have existed. But the story of his fall is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma.

Komlo had it all. He was a successful quarterback in high school, college, and the pros; he was a successful businessman; and he was a successful husband and father. Yet he threw it all away. After his divorce, he rarely saw his wife and four daughters, got a new girlfriend, was accused of attempting to kill his girlfriend via arson, and fled U.S. authorities to Greece. Here’s Wertheim’s attempt to explain Komlo’s downfall:

Even those closest to Komlo could make little sense of what he had done. How could the BMOC and successful businessman have turned into a fugitive from justice? Komlo wouldn’t be the first athlete to make a mess of his life after his playing career. But to those who knew him, his downfall defied belief.

It seems everyone in Komlo’s life has a theory to explain his decline. His parents and siblings think it all started with his divorce. “When his marriage fell apart, he fell apart,” says Wendy Komlo. Several friends think his volatile relationship with Winters was the catalyst. Clearly, drugs and alcohol were also factors. A Florida attorney who represented Komlo, Kenneth Lemoine, says, “I think he lost faith in the system. He didn’t think he could get a fair shake.”

Those less sympathetic to the old quarterback, such as Chester County prosecutors, throw around clinical terms such as sociopath and psychotic.

It’s hard not to wonder whether the “athlete’s mentality” cited admiringly by Tubby Raymond also played a role in Komlo’s downfall. When he played football in college, he overachieved through sheer self-confidence. His risk-taking was rewarded. Again and again he was able to make the big play. Even as criminal charges against him mounted, he carried himself in a way that suggested that somehow he’d pull off life’s equivalent of a hook-and-ladder. The guys liked him; the girls still thought he was hot. Everything would be O.K. Then, suddenly, he realized he was out of downs.

This is the best, perhaps because most mysterious, sports story I have read all year. Read the whole thing.