Chester Pitts Story

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What began in the parking lot of a supermarket on Montezuma Road near San Diego State will be shared today with perhaps as many as 100 million people.
But if ever a story deserved that kind of audience, it's this one, a tale so amazing even the participants – a pair of SDSU alums who have combined for 16 NFL seasons – agree that if they brought it to Hollywood they'd be laughed out of every studio and power lunch restaurant in town.

“It's a story that you couldn't script,” Ephraim Salaam said. “Stuff like that never happens.”

Except it did. Salaam is a 10-year NFL veteran who played the past two seasons with the Houston Texans. A tackle, he lined up alongside guard Chester Pitts, the final chapter in this unlikely story, which will be told in a commercial scheduled to air at the start of the fourth quarter of the telecast of Super Bowl XLII.

Most of Pitts' story has been told in these pages – he didn't play football in high school because he attended a math and science academy; went to SDSU to become an engineer; wound up walking on to the football team, and left as a second-round draft choice of the expansion Texans in 2002. But the part he never revealed was one reason he even made the attempt to play was a meeting he had in a parking lot with Salaam.



AdvertisementPitts was working at Ralphs as a bagger, trying to put himself through school, and Salaam was a regular customer who used to ask Pitts if he ever played football. One day Pitts helped Salaam carry some groceries to his new car, a Corvette he purchased in anticipation of his soon-to-begin NFL career. When Pitts asked how he could get a car like that, Salaam told him: “Play football.”
And so when Salaam was asked to participate in a leaguewide contest that would determine the subject of a Super Bowl commercial, the first story that came to mind was the one about Pitts. He told it in a 57-second video that was one of 48 posted on a Web site where fans could vote for their favorite. The 48 videos were narrowed to eight – one for each NFL division – and Salaam's outpolled all of them.

A few weeks ago, Salaam and Pitts filmed the commercial at a grocery store in Calabasas and at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. They got to stay at a hotel on Sunset Boulevard and each player had his own trailer and personal attendants.

“I could get used to that real quick,” Pitts said the other day from Houston. “Everything was first class, from the hotel to the food to the director to the staff.”

Salaam played in the Super Bowl as a rookie with the Falcons in January 1999, which he called his greatest thrill as a player. He also appeared briefly in a Super Bowl commercial three years ago – the one where several players sang portions of “Tomorrow” from the musical “Annie” – but said this would be much better.

“It's really exciting,” he said from his offseason home in Los Angeles. “It's the biggest show on the planet.

“I'm thrilled people voted for it. There were a lot of good stories, heartfelt things. I guess we had a combination of both.”

Salaam said he's hoping the commercial shows fans that offensive linemen have personalities; anyone who's met the two former Aztecs would know he's not kidding.

“I want to try to let people know we don't score touchdowns and we don't dance, but we've got personality,” Salaam said. “The reason we don't do that is we're so damn tired. When we score, it usually means I've done a lot. I don't jump and down. I walk over to the sideline and sit down and get some oxygen.”

The thing is, Salaam's own story isn't too bad, either. He was a seventh-round pick in 1998, the 199th player selected, but wound up becoming just the fourth rookie to start every game from Week 1 through the Super Bowl. Including the postseason, he's played in 145 games, starting 132.

Pitts, who at 28 is three years younger than Salaam, has played in every game during his six seasons, missing a total of just six plays.

“It's been unbelievable,” he said. “Teammates have told me, 'Your story is so cool.' I remember when we all saw 'Invincible,' my teammates were like, 'Whatever. Chester, your story is better than that guy's. When you're 40, fat and broke, they'll do the same thing for you.' I told them I'm not going to be fat, and I'm sure not going to be broke.”

The running joke in the commercial is Salaam talking about how Pitts played the oboe in high school, even though Pitts said his “tool of choice was the TI-92, one of the first graphing calculators. I was much more of a science geek or a computer geek than a performing arts and music guy. For some reason Ephraim tells the story with the oboe. But it got me in a Super Bowl commercial, so I'll roll with it.”

Salaam plans to be in Seattle today at a family Super Bowl party. Pitts thought about throwing a party but decided to stay home with his family.

“I drove 30 miles to get an HDMI cable and make sure my HD is crispy, crispy clear,” Pitts said. “When that commercial comes on, I'll be ready.”

By the way, Pitts never did buy a Corvette. But he said he recently purchased a Mercedes that “would smoke a Corvette.”

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